1 Introduction
This edited volume stems from a panel entitled “Discourses from Latin America and the Caribbean: Current Concepts and Challenges”, which took place in the occasion of the 6th CADAAD (Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines) Conference in Italy, in September 2016. The panel aimed at initiating an extended conversation between young linguists and specialists in Latin American and Caribbean Studies willing to explore the recent developments and cross-cutting themes of discursive approaches beyond the Euro-American zone. In the same vein, this project brings together the latest research in the Latin American and Caribbean regions in one single volume, hoping to stimulate international debate and cross-fertilize the academic research agenda of Discourse Studies, Latin American Studies, and Caribbean Studies.
The Latin American and the Caribbean regions have traditionally been the focus of a wide variety of research due to their unique and rich particularities, able to challenge many conventional dogmas and methods across the Social Sciences. As Linguists, our view is grounded in the Bakhtinian notion that language is never neutral (Bakhtin, 1981) but emerges from sociocultural interaction and is motivated by power relations among different social groups. Ours is a multifaceted, integrated concern with the linguistic character of social and cultural processes and structures in the region, rather than with language use per se, let alone with language as an object for philological studies. In particular, Halliday’s (1978) conceptualization of language as a “social semiotic” and his attention for the strong and pervasive connections between linguistic and social structure inform our perspective on the contemporary social, political, economic and cultural issues of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Discourse, therefore, and its pervasive, dialectical relationship with society, represents the entry point to investigate the complex power dynamics of Latin America and the Caribbean. Discourse analysis can shed light on the complexities, struggles and contradictions of the region by integrating knowledge about historical sources and the social and political environment within which discourse as social practice is embedded. While linguistics has traditionally focused on the micro analysis of texts and interactions, social sciences has attended to the macro aspects of social practice and change. The contributions in this volume thus shun deliberately from any macro-conceptualization of such a culturally, linguistically and racially diverse area of the world, by focusing on the actual analysis of discourse as social semiosis in political, institutional and media discourses from Latin America and the Caribbean. They can be regarded as an attempt at bridging the existing theoretical and analytical gaps between the investigation of socio-political and linguistic aspects, finally interpreting one in light of the other.
Tackling the multifacetedness of social practice and change in an ethnically and culturally diverse region, the contributions in this volume reflect the current scholarly attention to communication as a multimodal phenomenon, where “meaning is realized in an interplay between different modes of signification such as language, image, and music” (Horsbøl, 2006, p. 149). The ongoing communicative shift from monomodality – where modes operated more often in isolation – to multimodality – characterized by a growing degree of mode integration (see Machin, 2013), has been accompanied by a growing awareness of the limitations of a logocentric approach to discourse (van Leeuwen, 2014). This volume showcases examples of a more integrated, transdisciplinary investigation of the role of various semiotic modes in the analysis of language and discourse.
2 Latin America: Contemporary Voices
Since the 1950s, Latin America has attracted a sheer amount of academic interest, resulting in the establishment of a vibrant academic field per se. “Latin American Studies” is now a diverse field, rich in different disciplines, theoretical and methodological approaches, and permeated by complex debates. Latin American Studies have evolved with the region itself. While at the beginning issues of development and dependency (Cardoso & Faletto, 2007) were the most salient foci of research, they have been now sided by others such as identity , dictatorship and transitions to democracy, postcolonialism, resistances, migration, inter-ethnic relationship, social movements, to name a few examples. Some of these core issues are covered by the contributions in this book, reflecting on the most recent socio-political developments in the region.
Latin America has seen the development of several political processes, such as dictatorships and armed uprisings during the 70s and 80s, and transitions to democracy and/or peace agreements during the 90s. Latin America has often been regarded as “the region with the most enduring and prevalent populist tradition” (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017, p. 27). More recently, a rich debate has taken place in social sciences over what some have called the “third wave” of populist governments (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017, p. 31), such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina under the Kirchners (2003–2015). Some prefer to call them a cycle of progressive governments (Modenesi, 2012) or postneoliberals (Sader, 2008). Labels aside, these governments have represented a turn to the left in Latin-American politics, encompassing a closer relationship with Cuba and a series of political and economic inward-looking reforms, more distant from the IMF policies.
These political changes have been institutionalized into different kinds of constituent processes. In this political and institutional sense, Latin America would be in what Gargarella (2013, p. ix) has called the fifth period of Latin American constitutionalism. This is a period from the end of the twentieth century to present days which has seen governments from countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia draft new constitutions via constituent assemblies. This phase in Latin American history would represent a change where “these reforms not only move toward a pluralist idea of national identity but also incorporate elements and forms of differentiated and multicultural citizenship” (Uprimny, 2011, p. 1590). These institutional processes, and their mutual relationship with socio-political changes at a national level, have attracted global attention. One of the most striking examples is the case of Bolivia and its first indigenous president, Evo Morales. The new constitution drafted during Morales’ government established Bolivia as a Plurinational State, in which the multiethnic reality of the country is recognized constitutionally. In a similar vein, Ecuador also connected its new constitution with its indigenous tradition. This has marked an unprecedented change in Latin American politics and institutions, giving an official place to a multiethnic reality, an anti-capitalist discourse based on the good living (Albó, 2011; Gudynas, 2011) and alternative ways of development.
Besides the institutional changes in some Latin-American countries, several social movements have emerged too. While Chile has not been part of this wave of institutional changes in Latin America, several social movements have emerged in the country since the 2011 student mass demonstrations, contributing to change the political landscape of the country over the past seven years. For example, four former student leaders gained a seat in parliament during the 2013 elections, becoming the youngest candidates to win a Parliamentary election in the country. Also, the emergence of the Frente Amplio during the 2017 elections appeared as a viable alternative to traditional politics in Chile , bringing comparisons to processes such as the Spanish Podemos (Montes, 2017). The Frente Amplio is composed by several parties and movements which either came to the fore or started during the social movements ’ demonstrations of 2011 and in the following years. Although emerging from different political and social backgrounds, their discourses align with a critique to neoliberalism, progressive stands and contesting the power distribution established during the 90s’ after the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship. In less than a year since its foundation, Frente Amplio have managed to increase their seats in parliament from three to twenty and surpass 20% of the votes in the 2017 presidential and parliamentary elections. This has foregrounded the causes of social movements to the front stage of Chilean politics and has seen the emergence of a wide myriad of discourses and contesting discourses which are challenging the status quo in a similar fashion as the progressive governments did a few years before.
Similarly, the Zapatista movement in Mexico is arguably one of the most recognized ...