El desarrollo de la identidad lingüística en una lengua adicional en contextos de no inmersión

Abstract

In recent years, language teaching methodologies has placed the student at the centre of the learning process, considering not only the development of linguistic and communicative competence, but also other more individualized aspects such as intercultural and existential competence. Within this trend, the interest in learners connecting with the target language and culture helping them to adopt this language as their own, what it is consider by the construction of identity in this new language. The main objective of this dissertation is to verify whether learners of additional languages (specifically Spanish) whose teaching process is done in contexts of non-linguistic immersion can build their identity connected to the target language and culture. With this purpose, we have done a descriptive investigation insofar as it is aimed at making exhaustive observations on the phenomenon of the construction of linguistic identity to establish its operation. At the same time, it is explanatory because it tries to unravel this phenomenon to understand it in its entirety and seeks to find answers to how it happens, trying to connect facts by identifying causal factors. Regarding the approach, it is a mixed type study (qualitative - quantitative) through the use of different methodological tools (digital survey, sociolinguistic interview and dossier). There has been the participation of 50 informants between the ages of 18 and 25, who identify with the male or female gender and whose level of language proficiency is A2 or B according to the CEFR. The research has been performed in five universities in three different countries (Belgium, Poland and Brazil). Regarding the framework or field of research, this study is located within the applied linguistics, in which different departments come together: sociolinguistics, sociopragmatics and language learning. To a lesser extent, but just as important, the study draws on aspects of social psychology and anthropology. By focusing on the analysis of the results obtained, it is worth noting the low level of effectiveness in the interactions in the target language, reaching only 50% of the total. These results are due to communicative problems (informants are not able to express what they need), pragmatic (their interactions do not conform to the social norm of the speech community) or emotional (informants are not able to express themselves according to their personality and identity even preferring not to communicate anything in the target language). Taking nationality into account, Brazilian are the ones that show the greatest identity development in Spanish, since 40% achieve their communicative and emotional objectives in 3 or 4 communicative situations in which we asked them to interact. In the case of the gender, it is women who obtain a higher rate of communicative achievement, reaching 53.6% overall effectiveness in their total interventions. Finally, observing the level of language proficiency, it is the level B informants who obtain the best results with 55.3% effectiveness in their interventions in Spanish. These results are far from being positive, which indicates that there is room for improvement and reflection on the part of the teaching communities in this area.