- Carnegie Mellon University, Modern Languages, Department Memberadd
- Mariana Achugar (PhD University of California, Davis 2002) is Full Professor at the Faculty of Information and Commun... moreMariana Achugar (PhD University of California, Davis 2002) is Full Professor at the Faculty of Information and Communication at the University of the Republic, Uruguay (Udelar). She is part of the National System of Researchers of Uruguay (SNI) and is a Guggenheim Fellow (2009). Her research program has focused on the exploration of discursive processes of cultural transmission/transformation and identity construction. The examination of these theoretical issues has been in three main areas: social memory studies, women studies, and Latin American cultural studies. Her research approach seeks to document the dynamic nature of semiotic work as part of historical processes in case studies of key events or problems at the social level (e.g. the traumatic past of the last Uruguayan dictatorship, gender differences, and environmental conflicts). She coordinates the Cátedra UNESCO de DDHH at Udelar, leads the Observatorio de Medios del Uruguay (https://omu.fic.edu.uy) with Natalia Uval and is principal investigator of the research group on Discourse, Human Rights and Media at the Udelar.edit
This interdisciplinary monograph explores the discursive manifestations of the conflict over how to remember and interpret the actions of the military during the last dictatorship in Uruguay (1973-1985). Through the exploration of the... more
This interdisciplinary monograph explores the discursive manifestations of the conflict over how to remember and interpret the actions of the military during the last dictatorship in Uruguay (1973-1985). Through the exploration of the discursive ways in which this powerful group represents past events and participants, we can trace the ideological struggle over how to reconstruct a traumatic past. By looking at memory as a social and discursive practice, the analysis identifies particular semiotic practices and linguistic patterns deployed in the construction of memory. The discursive description of what is remembered, how it is remembered, and who remembers serves to explain how the institution’s construction of the past is transformed and maintained to respond to outside criticism and create an institutional identity as a lawful state apparatus. This book should interest discourse analysts, historians, sociologists and researchers in the field of transitional justice.
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ABSTRACT: Classrooms around the world are becoming more multilingual and teachers in all subject areas are faced with new challenges in enabling learners ’ academic language development without losing focus on content. These challenges... more
ABSTRACT: Classrooms around the world are becoming more multilingual and teachers in all subject areas are faced with new challenges in enabling learners ’ academic language development without losing focus on content. These challenges require new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between language and content as well as new pedagogies that incorporate a dual focus on language and content in subject matter instruction. This article describes three professional development contexts in the U.S., where teachers have engaged in language analysis based on functional linguistics (for example, Halliday & Hasan, 1989; Christie, 1989) that has given them new insights into both content and learning processes. In these contexts, teachers in history classrooms with English Language Learners and teachers of languages other than English in classrooms with heritage speakers needed support to develop students ’ academic language development in a second language. The functional linguistics met...
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Maracana. If you ask any Uruguayan youth about the events of Maracana, anyone will most likely be able to answer what it means. The intergenerational transmission of the narrative of the 1950 soccer World Cup victory has been passed on... more
Maracana. If you ask any Uruguayan youth about the events of Maracana, anyone will most likely be able to answer what it means. The intergenerational transmission of the narrative of the 1950 soccer World Cup victory has been passed on for several generations. This narrative centers on how the Uruguayan national team was able to overcome incredible difficulties in order to win against Brazil in Brazil. The Brazilian team was the favorite to win, being on its own ground and with 250,000 fans cheering, and having defeated all their rivals in previous games in huge upsets (e.g., Spain lost against them, 6–1). The Uruguayan team were the underdogs, but they played to win. The team captain, Obdulio Varela, coined a phrase then that is still remembered today, “los de afuera son de palo” [those outside are made of wood], meaning that the team had to ignore the loud cheers of Brazilian fans, and the comments of all experts who went against them — to focus on winning. After a heroic game that ended with Uruguay’s victory, 2-1 over Brazil, the narrative of the “garra charrua”1 [Charrua’s-go-get-it attitude] was constructed. This narrative highlights team spirit and the desire to win, as well as the courage and fearlessness of the players. The Maracana narrative contributes to a national identity construction where Uruguayans see themselves as confident, brave, and hopeful in the face of adversity.
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Why do family conversations matter in processes of intergenerational transmission? Family narratives provide a context for creating and re-creating individual and group identity. In addition to this consideration, families have different... more
Why do family conversations matter in processes of intergenerational transmission? Family narratives provide a context for creating and re-creating individual and group identity. In addition to this consideration, families have different styles of reminiscing that may influence how individuals remember the past (Fivush, 2008). Family conversations have previously been examined to better understand how youth are socialized into political discourse in the private sphere (e.g., George, 2013; Gordon, 2004; Ochs and Taylor, 1992) and to explore how the historical self develops (Fivush and Nelson, 2006; Wineburg, Mosborg, Porat and Duncan, 2007).
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Este trabajo presenta una innovación curricular diseñada con el fin de desarrollar un abordaje integral en la enseñanza de comprensión lectora en la lengua comunitaria (LC) (español) y en lenguas adicionales (LA) (inglés y portugués) de... more
Este trabajo presenta una innovación curricular diseñada con el fin de desarrollar un abordaje integral en la enseñanza de comprensión lectora en la lengua comunitaria (LC) (español) y en lenguas adicionales (LA) (inglés y portugués) de la carrera de Comunicación de una universidad pública uruguaya. Como base teórico-metodológica tomamos las concepciones de género del discurso de Bajtín (2008) y de Martin y Rose (2008), el concepto de lectura como práctica de literacidad disciplinar (ACHUGAR; STAINTON, 2010; ACHUGAR; CARPENTER, 2012; HYLAND, 2008; LEINHARDT; MCCARTHY, 1996; SPIRES et al., 2018) y el modelo de enseñanza de literacidad a partir de los géneros discursivos desarrollado por la Escuela de Sídney (EGGINS; MARTIN, 2000; 2003; MARTIN; ROSE, 2008; ROSE; MARTIN, 2018). El objetivo es mostrar los principios guía de un modelo de secuenciación para la enseñanza de la comprensión lectora en el que se articulan las dimensiones socioculturales y discursivas de un determinado género ...
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This chapter reviews key studies regarding the representation of the concept of dictatorship in history textbooks published in Latin America and Spain. In order to explore how different studies have addressed this topic, we distinguish... more
This chapter reviews key studies regarding the representation of the concept of dictatorship in history textbooks published in Latin America and Spain. In order to explore how different studies have addressed this topic, we distinguish two main lines of research, one that approaches the representation of dictatorship in textbooks from a discourse-analytical perspective and another that considers the issue from an educational and sociological perspective. Research in the first group pays particular attention to the role of language in the construction of meaning with the purpose of exploring the role of contested memories of recent dictatorships. The second group, meanwhile, focuses on diachronic changes in the representation of dictatorships in connection to educational reforms and social changes in those societies.
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Transiciones de lo real alude a distintos procesos de cambio surgidos a partir de la década del 70' en el documental del Cono Sur (Argentina, Chile y Uruguay): por una parte, la transición se vincula directamente con los procesos... more
Transiciones de lo real alude a distintos procesos de cambio surgidos a partir de la década del 70' en el documental del Cono Sur (Argentina, Chile y Uruguay): por una parte, la transición se vincula directamente con los procesos abiertos a partir del resquebrajamiento de los regímenes dictatoriales y la posterior consolidación de gobiernos democráticos que atravesaron en forma desfasada y diferenciada a los tres países. Por otra parte, aquella noción también se refiere a los cambios tecnológicos que afectaron el acceso al audiovisual –ya sea en fílmico, video o digital–, su potencial expresivo y sus posibilidades de circulación. Pero más allá de estos grandes lineamientos, la producción documental de estos años también está atravesada por otro tipo de transiciones, desplazamientos entre narrativas y corrimientos en el espacio, a través del retorno de cineastas exiliados y la articulación de distintos horizontes mediáticos y modalidades de trabajo situadas entre la industria y la producción “artesanal”, y entre el cine, el video y la televisión. El estudio de las transiciones como categoría cultural y estética no ha tenido un peso equiparable al que este concepto posee en el marco de las ciencias políticas. Sin embargo, la confluencia de desplazamientos políticos, culturales y tecnológicos en el documental ha dejado distintas marcas en las obras que permiten pensar en una estética de las transiciones.
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Resumen: Este artículo presenta los resultados generales de una encuesta sobre lectura realizada a profesionales en actuación, egresados de la licenciatura en Comunicación de una universidad pública de Uruguay. La encuesta forma parte de... more
Resumen: Este artículo presenta los resultados generales de una encuesta sobre lectura realizada a profesionales en actuación, egresados de la licenciatura en Comunicación de una universidad pública de Uruguay. La encuesta forma parte de una investigación-acción iniciada en 2020 sobre literacidad disciplinar (HYLAND, 2004; MOJE, 2007; ACHUGAR; STAINTON, 2010; ACHUGAR; CARPENTER, 2012). El objetivo es describir las prácticas lectoras de profesionales del área (LEINHARDT; YOUNG, 1996; WINEBURG, 2001) y los géneros asociados (BAZERMAN, 2005; 2008; BAJTÍN, 2008; MARTIN; ROSE, 2008), para informar la planificación de los cursos de comprensión lectora de la misma facultad. El cuestionario de ítems deductivos e inductivos fue realizado por 82 profesionales, y sus resultados muestran que la lectura en el contexto profesional se realiza en varias lenguas, en géneros periodísticos, académicos y profesionales, que son leídos para producir textos escritos, pero también orales. Sus principales o...
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Last year, I heard a report on the radio about a study of Czech deer that still avoided the Iron Curtain a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War.1 Tracking 300 deer showed that the animals maintained the boundary even though... more
Last year, I heard a report on the radio about a study of Czech deer that still avoided the Iron Curtain a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War.1 Tracking 300 deer showed that the animals maintained the boundary even though the electric fences dividing the Czech-German border had been taken down. Despite the fact that the land is now a forested part of a national park with no barriers, the deer continue to stay on “their side” of the border. Since the life expectancy of deer is about 15 years, none of the deer now living would have encountered the physical barrier. How do they learn these boundaries? The scientists involved in the study believe that the fawns learn these boundaries and movement patterns by following their mothers. Thus, the territory remains the same for new generations, because of the reproduction of embodied practices. The story is a metaphor for the main goals of this book. I seek to reveal how intergenerational transmission of recent history occurs and how, in this process, youth construct a historical identity.
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Processes of intergenerational transmission are discursive practices through which social actors, in interaction with other subjects and objects through time and space, give meaning to the past. As a communicative process,... more
Processes of intergenerational transmission are discursive practices through which social actors, in interaction with other subjects and objects through time and space, give meaning to the past. As a communicative process, intergenerational transmission has an institutionalized space in school contexts (e.g., Heer, Manoschek, Pollak, and Wodak, 2008; Wineburg, Mosborg, Porat, and Duncan, 2007; Welzer, 2008; Zullo, 2014). The history classroom is a socially legitimated space to transmit values, arguments, and representations of the past. This space is also designed to construct national identity based on our “common past.” Educational discourses have an important role in the reproduction of shared beliefs in society. “For their impact in the shaping of beliefs of a large amount of people, public discourses have a primordial influence, much more meaningful than private conversations and texts” (Van Dijk, 2004:15).1 Potentially, the educational context can influence how a large number of people construct the recent past. As spaces of cultural reproduction, schools have a role in the legitimation or challenging of dominant narratives about the past.
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... Click on any of the links below to perform a new search. ERIC #: EJ673221. Title: Learning Language and Learning History: A Functional Linguistics Approach. Authors: Schleppegrell, Mary; Achugar, Mariana. Descriptors: English ...
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ABSTRACT This paper reports on a design experiment (Brown, 1992) where we explored how providing a linguistic support for understanding historical documents affected students comprehension of historical documents and their disciplinary... more
ABSTRACT This paper reports on a design experiment (Brown, 1992) where we explored how providing a linguistic support for understanding historical documents affected students comprehension of historical documents and their disciplinary literacy. The functional approach to disciplinary literacy parallels historians’ reading practices while supporting language development. This language development is assisted through the discussion of difficult texts and complex issues using linguistic tools that support the development of metalinguistic awareness (see e.g. Schleppegrell, Achugar, & Oteíza, 2004). We collected data documenting the intervention (disciplinary literacy lessons) and students’ performance (pre and post test of reading comprehension tasks) from five multilingual history classrooms taught by the same teacher. The data were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods to determine the characteristics of the disciplinary literacy lessons and students’ learning. The analysis of the data shows students expanded their linguistic resources and had a deeper understanding of historical texts at the end of the semester. The case studies presented also show the great diversity in a population that is homogeneously labeled (i.e. being English learners), but which has different linguistic resources and experiences to work with. The detailed functional analysis of their textual production revealed how they attempt to construct a disciplinary gaze.
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Investigating how contested periods are remembered by younger generations allows us to better understand the contents that are passed on as well as the discursive processes through which intergenerational transmission occurs. This article... more
Investigating how contested periods are remembered by younger generations allows us to better understand the contents that are passed on as well as the discursive processes through which intergenerational transmission occurs. This article explores the intersections of collective and personal memory. We investigate what Uruguayan teenagers know about the dictatorship (1973–1985) and what discourses come into play in shaping these views. The analysis of a group interview, part of an ethnographic project, identifies arguments, representations and evaluations of the period, while exploring intertextual links. The findings show that there are four main arguments used by the youth to explain the dictatorship: reaction to guerrillas, authoritarianism, regional ideological war, and intolerance. The social actors are evaluated in terms of social sanctions with negative evaluations of the guerrilla. Intertextual connections foreground the reception of hegemonic discourses that explain the per...
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Page 1. What We Remember Page 2. Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC) The editors invite contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view.... more
Page 1. What We Remember Page 2. Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (DAPSAC) The editors invite contributions that investigate political, social and cultural processes from a linguistic/discourse-analytic point of view. ...
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ABSTRACT We explore the role of CLA in teacher development through a high school history teacher's understanding of disciplinary literacy (DL), and his classroom's discourse practices in DL lessons. A Critical Language... more
ABSTRACT We explore the role of CLA in teacher development through a high school history teacher's understanding of disciplinary literacy (DL), and his classroom's discourse practices in DL lessons. A Critical Language Awareness (CLA) focus highlights how linguistic practices shape and are shaped by social relations of power. Disciplinary literacy, in this particular case of history, focuses on particular linguistic practices, which are valued in the field and help to understand the discipline as an interpretive community. In this paper, we investigate how CLA can be an effective tool in teacher development. We do this by tracking qualitative changes in the language he produces, we provide linguistic evidence of how a teacher develops a critical language awareness stance, which is ultimately used in classroom teacher talk. Our focus in this paper includes both what changed and how it changed, while the first part of our analysis highlights the qualitative changes in the way he conceptualized the lesson, the second part of the analysis focuses on the types of activities designed showing how his changing understanding translated into particular pedagogical actions; while the last part of the analysis focuses on the teacher's reflection of the designing and using DL lessons.
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This paper analyzes the piropo in Spanish discourse as a speech event and as cognitive metaphor. This form of indirect speech act represents a Spanish discourse tradition that is still present in today's discourse practices of... more
This paper analyzes the piropo in Spanish discourse as a speech event and as cognitive metaphor. This form of indirect speech act represents a Spanish discourse tradition that is still present in today's discourse practices of Spanish-speaking cultures. These piropos are seen as reflections in language of the traditional roles of men and women in Spanish speaking cultures. The roles of men and women as depicted in the analysis of piropos shows a very defined place for each sex in these societies. Women are constructed as passive recipients and reactive, men as active producers and initiators.
ABSTRACT: Classrooms around the world are becoming more multilingual and teachers in all subject areas are faced with new challenges in enabling learners' academic language development without losing focus on content. These... more
ABSTRACT: Classrooms around the world are becoming more multilingual and teachers in all subject areas are faced with new challenges in enabling learners' academic language development without losing focus on content. These challenges require new ways of conceptualizing ...
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El discurso pedagogico de la historia en manuales revela lo que una sociedad considera que vale la pena ensenar y por que. El presente trabajo exploro como se representa la ultima dictadura uruguaya y que orientacion se inscribe hacia... more
El discurso pedagogico de la historia en manuales revela lo que una sociedad considera que vale la pena ensenar y por que. El presente trabajo exploro como se representa la ultima dictadura uruguaya y que orientacion se inscribe hacia este periodo y sus actores en manuales usados actualmente en ensenanza secundaria. Tambien se investigo el uso de estos textos en el aula de historia para ver como se abren o cierran lecturas posibles de estos. El analisis textual se realizo desde una perspectiva critica utilizando herramientas de la Linguistica Sistemica Funcional como la transitividad, la evaluacion y el metadiscurso (Halliday, 1994; Martin & White, 2005). Luego este analisis se contextualizo con datos provenientes de una encuesta a profesores y observaciones etnograficas del uso de manuales en el aula de historia. Los resultados muestran que existe un discurso dominante sobre el pasado reciente en los manuales que explica el golpe de Estado como resultado de un deterioro gradual de ...
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Classrooms around the world are becoming more multilingual and teachers in all subject areas are faced with new challenges in enabling learners' academic language development without losing focus on content. These challenges require... more
Classrooms around the world are becoming more multilingual and teachers in all subject areas are faced with new challenges in enabling learners' academic language development without losing focus on content. These challenges require new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between language and content as well as new pedagogies that incorporate a dual focus on language and content in subject matter instruction. This article describes three professional development contexts in the U.S., where teachers have engaged in language analysis based on functional linguistics (for example, Halliday & Hasan, 1989; Christie, 1989) that has given them new insights into both content and learning processes. In these contexts, teachers in history classrooms with English Language Learners and teachers of languages other than English in classrooms with heritage speakers needed support to develop students' academic language development in a second language. The functional linguistics metalan...
Research Interests: Sociology, Content Analysis, Language Development, Professional Development, Critique as Political Practice, and 11 moreTeaching Methods, Subject Areas, Teaching Material, Second Language, English teaching, Teaching practice, Learning Process, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Metalinguistics, Languages Other Than English, and English Language Learner
This chapter reviews key studies regarding the representation of the concept of dictatorship in history textbooks published in Latin America and Spain. In order to explore how different studies have addressed this topic, we distinguish... more
This chapter reviews key studies regarding the representation of the concept of dictatorship in history textbooks published in Latin America and Spain. In order to explore how different studies have addressed this topic, we distinguish two main lines of research, one that approaches the representation of dictatorship in textbooks from a discourse-analytical perspective and another that considers the issue from an educational and sociological perspective. Research in the first group pays particular attention to the role of language in the construction of meaning with the purpose of exploring the role of contested memories of recent dictatorships. The second group, meanwhile, focuses on diachronic changes in the representation of dictatorships in connection to educational reforms and social changes in those societies.
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Transiciones de lo real alude a distintos procesos de cambio surgidos a partir de la década del 70' en el documental del Cono Sur (Argentina, Chile y Uruguay): por una parte, la transición se vincula directamente con los procesos abiertos... more
Transiciones de lo real alude a distintos procesos de cambio surgidos a partir de la década del 70' en el documental del Cono Sur (Argentina, Chile y Uruguay): por una parte, la transición se vincula directamente con los procesos abiertos a partir del resquebrajamiento de los regímenes dictatoriales y la posterior consolidación de gobiernos democráticos que atravesaron en forma desfasada y diferenciada a los tres países. Por otra parte, aquella noción también se refiere a los cambios tecnológicos que afectaron el acceso al audiovisual –ya sea en fílmico, video o digital–, su potencial expresivo y sus posibilidades de circulación.
Pero más allá de estos grandes lineamientos, la producción documental de estos años también está atravesada por otro tipo de transiciones, desplazamientos entre narrativas y corrimientos en el espacio, a través del retorno de cineastas exiliados y la articulación de distintos horizontes mediáticos y modalidades de trabajo situadas entre la industria y la producción “artesanal”, y entre el cine, el video y la televisión.
El estudio de las transiciones como categoría cultural y estética no ha tenido un peso equiparable al que este concepto posee en el marco de las ciencias políticas. Sin embargo, la confluencia de desplazamientos políticos, culturales y tecnológicos en el documental ha dejado distintas marcas en las obras que permiten pensar en una estética de las transiciones.
Pero más allá de estos grandes lineamientos, la producción documental de estos años también está atravesada por otro tipo de transiciones, desplazamientos entre narrativas y corrimientos en el espacio, a través del retorno de cineastas exiliados y la articulación de distintos horizontes mediáticos y modalidades de trabajo situadas entre la industria y la producción “artesanal”, y entre el cine, el video y la televisión.
El estudio de las transiciones como categoría cultural y estética no ha tenido un peso equiparable al que este concepto posee en el marco de las ciencias políticas. Sin embargo, la confluencia de desplazamientos políticos, culturales y tecnológicos en el documental ha dejado distintas marcas en las obras que permiten pensar en una estética de las transiciones.
Research Interests: Documentary (Film Studies), Cinema, Documentary Film, Latin American Cinema, Cinema Studies, and 15 moreMilitary Dictatorship, Testimonio, América Latina, Cine Político, Documental Político, Political cinema, Dictatorship and Transition in the Southern Cone, Carlos Echeverría, Miguel Littín, Ignacio Agüero, Jorge Denti, Jeanine Meerapfel, Raúl Ruiz, Mario Handler, and Michael Chanan
Daniel Renfrew's Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay (2018) is a masterful undertaking on the anthropology of disaster and its everydayness. An ethnographic portrayal that is prismatic in its attention, the book... more
Daniel Renfrew's Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay (2018) is a masterful undertaking on the anthropology of disaster and its everydayness. An ethnographic portrayal that is prismatic in its attention, the book combines numerous elements-place, civic performance, history, political economy-to bear on the lead poisoning epidemic in Montevideo, Uruguay at the turn of the 21 st century. The epidemic disproportionally affected