What does ´critical¨ in Latin America mean? An overview of the Critical Discourse Studies in our region.

M.L. PARDO; M. SOICH

What is Critical in Language studies. Disclosing Social Inequalities and Injustice

Routledge

Lugar: New Delhi; Año: 2020;

In this paper, we have tried to account for the European influences that have shaped the history of CDA in Latin America. We have showed certain theoretical and methodological differences between currents that enrich CDA and make its own internal feedback possible ?such as the varying degrees of emphasis on sociological and/or linguistic analysis, or the decolonizing effort of many researchers to work together in creating our own theories and methods. We have also tried to examine what is understood by ?critical? in Discourse Studies in our countries today, presenting different sets of meanings that appear in relation with that term throughout the most recent academic works.Besides the theoretical and methodological debates that keep this linguistic field alive, there are surely many other differences among our researchers, but all of them are united by CDA?s ultimate goal: social change from a change in discourses. For the Latin American CDA community, these are changes that encourage critical thought, multidiscipline and moving out of the classroom into the field, into the transformative action that is enabled by words. In this sense, responding to their countries? intense history, made up of colonization, oppression and inequality, but also of multiple fights for freedom, Latin American researchers seek to embrace, in one single movement, thoughtful science and emancipatory action.