Discursive construction of the English language policy implemented in Chile (2003-2010)

Abstract

This thesis aims at critically reviewing the type of discourses employed by the Centre-Left Coalition educational authorities to devise the English language policy launched by the former Minister of Education Sergio Bitar in 2003. This investigation also aims at
exploring the discursive strategies used by those authorities to persuade Chileans to
become Spanish-English bilingual citizens. I will observe how command of English is
understood by the authorities by focusing on the text they employ to link language
proficiency with economic development; globalisation; information, technology and
knowledge society; and equality as it is worded within the language policy documents.

I have employed a critical perspective to discourse analysis, i.e. CDA. This methodology
will allow me to examine the microstructures of the language policy texts and relate them
to the contextual macrostructures of contemporary Chile that trigger the composition of
such texts. Thus, I will explore not only the historical, but also the contextual features of
the language policy discourses which, in turn, makes embedded ideologies hidden in the
discourse emerge and, hence, expose the goals that stake-holders may have had at the
moment of policy creation and implementation.

The critical analysis of the policy discourse has revealed some interesting patterns
employed by the policy makers to devise the policy and to inculcate foreign language
implementation in the Chilean educational system. For instance, the instrumentalisation of English, the commodification of the foreign language and the neoliberal reasoning
embedded in those processes. This ideology is the result of 40 years’ exposure to an
economic, political and cultural hegemonic common-sense arguments which has shaped
the Chilean citizen reasoning and behaviour.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Darren Paffey: orcid.org/0000-0003-2709-8012

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