Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The following study aims to explore Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and its shaping and re-shaping through exposure of authentic oral input. The study used podcasts as an EFL teaching strategy where learners were expected to confront their dispositions. For the purpose of this study, the mental illness issue was employed as a controversial topic. The research used a grounded theory approach and multi-case study design where three unstructured interviews were implemented in each case along the teaching process. Content analysis was applied and research generated categories emerged from the coding process.  The results reveal that the EFL learning process has the potential to become a subversive form of defying culturally dominant dispositions and to enhance the learners’ probabilities of re-shaping habitus as well as learning a foreign language. According to the findings of this study, the inclusion of authentic controversial podcasts as listening comprehension tasks, which challenge EFL students’ habitus, can become a successful strategy to modify their cultural dispositions along with learning English as a foreign language. 

Under the framework of social semiotics, the article analyzes the symbolic motif of the small rhea or ‘Patagonian ostrich’ expressed in the choyke purun, a Mapuche dance representing the behaviors of this species, non-existent in Araucanía. The mimetic performance shows the identification of the Mapuche with the motives of nature, but through a deterritorialized reference, alien to the context of enunciation. By analyzing various contextual chronotopes, we show the marks of transculturality in the evolution of this migrant symbolism, its movements, variants, transformations, and identity applications. The research method applied was the case study. The data show the antiquity, continuity, diversity, and increasing complexity of intercultural relationships engraved in the history of such a symbolic expression. Through both the linguistic and semiotic boundaries of the peoples of Patagonia, the choyke purun transits into modernity to settle down within the canon of Mapuche culture.

Este artículo estudia Instagram desde una perspectiva sociosemiótica. A partir del análisis de las funcionalidades que la plataforma ofrece a sus usuarios en relación a la proyección de la identidad personal, así como de las interacciones con otros usuarios que son posibles en la plataforma, se argumenta que los códigos que rigen la producción de sentido en Instagram promueven una “estetización del yo”, esto es, un proceso de estilización en el que el componente visual desempeña un rol central en la construcción y gestión de las identidades personales. Como resultado de dicha estetización, las interacciones en esta plataforma digital están mediadas por dichas construcciones semióticas, fuertemente estilizadas y regidas por la lógica de la mediatización.

En las artes audiovisuales, la presencia de cuerpos de animales no humanos (ANH) es frecuente, ya que ayuda a resaltar la humanidad y la naturaleza humana. Las ANH y su corporeidad se manifiestan en el arte audiovisual no tanto como ellos mismos, sino más bien como símbolos humanos, proyecciones, estereotipos, alegorías, tabúes, mitos y supersticiones. Después de discutir tales representaciones e ideas en general, proporcionando algunas ideas teóricas, el artículo analiza el largometraje de Wes Anderson Isle of Dogs (2018). La representación de los perros en la película ofrece alegorías de discriminación y prejuicio contra el “otro”, destacando aspectos fisiológicos a este respecto. Las características asociadas a la forma, los sentidos y canales de comunicación dan cuenta de la visión humana acerca del mundo natural y la tendencia de instrumentalizarlo todo. Por último, el nivel de hibridación desde la perspectiva del rodaje ayuda a ilustrar la irracionalidad de esta discriminación.

Brandalism or subvertising refers to the advertising discourse that adopts anti-consumerism positions to make a social critique. Considering the context of social protest during the pandemic, we investigate the discursive forms of brandalism through the digital platform Facebook. Therefore, this article analyzes the interactions of political consumers in relation to the themes of brandalism of the Malditos Publicistas account on Facebook (@Malditospublicistas) in the context of the protests against the government of Manuel Merino during 2020, in Peru. Based on the case study from a sociosemiotic perspective, we identified thematic axes comprised in the ethical-political relationship of the brandalist discourse, as well as digital interactions that we categorized as "lurkers", "spectators", "activists" and "publishers". The results indicate a greater participation of lurkers and publishers reactive to ethical discourses than activists who favor the political agency of the discourse.

This investigation describes traces of the subconscious in the speeches of Eduardo Frei Montalva, which allows us to understand the historical process of the cold war, as well as the period of the military dictatorship in Chile. Two of the speeches were dissected, due to the functioning pole in which they were enunciated.So as Levi Strauss states, there exists some closeness between the myth and the political cosmovision, a structure that contains an implication symbolic and imaginary from the point of a psychoanalytical view. The analysis was made through a semantical investigation (defined as symbolic identification) as pulsional (defined as imaginary identification) of text in sound form, which put in evidence that to the speaker the space of the body is foreclosed in the case of the dictatorship and the cold war, the Party is the arbitral figure that would change the state of things.

This article analyzes, from a semiotic perspective, the posters made in the framework of the Chilean student and feminist movement of May 2018. The methodology of the study is constructed from categories of semiology to identify the aspects proper to the visual composition and the symbolic aspect of the protest pieces. From the analysis of an intentional sample of posters deployed during marches and protests in public space, we decode key aspects and their relationship with the context. The results reveal the constitution of a new movement within the framework of post-materialist values, which go beyond the economistic demands, typical of 20th century movements. In the Chilean case, the feminist movement develops a "visuality of the private" which, in addition, resonates in broad sectors of society. 

Sciences and humanities has “fake” at the core of their work.  Nevertheless, new digital technologies are dramatically shifting the landscape. Some of the most haunting phenomena of contemporary societies, such as post-truth, fake news, conspiracy theories and deep fake, are rooted in the interplays between traditional fantasies and new simulacra. Conventional frameworks about truth and falsehood, fact and fiction, are increasingly not enough to address new hybrids coined by digital media. We need an unprecedented collaboration in order to better understand the perpetual changing role of falsehood in contemporary societies. This article discusses the semiotic epidemiology of culture as a new framework in order to study falsehood or fake in contemporary digital societies. 

Javier de Lucas, Javier Bauluz, Daniela Pastrana, Juan José Téllez y Nicolás Castellano. (2019). Fronteras. Madrid (España): Editorial Hispalibros SL. 156 páginas. ISBN: 9 8-84-17993-18-4