Number 7

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Presentation — Language as a Link: Contemporary Reflections on Inclusion, Culture and Interculturality in the Hispanic World

In this September 2024 edition of Glosas, we encounter reflections from various academic perspectives that explore the role of language as the central axis of social and cultural reality in the Spanish-speaking world.

Aporophobia: towards its linguistic study in Spanish

Rachele Maria Fioritti

In this article we consider the need to study aporophobia in the Hispanic context from a linguistic perspective. Aporophobia, defined as the rejection of the poor, can be observed in Spain mainly against immigrants and refugees, and in Latin America against Indigenous, Afro-descendant and migrant populations. With this contribution, the academic community is called upon to direct its future research towards the understanding of aporophobia from the linguistic sciences, thus adding to the efforts for the eradication of this social pathology in the Spanish-speaking world. Considering the intrinsic relationship between language and social perception/construction, we emphasize here the importance of conducting future studies that demonstrate whether and how aporophobia manifests itself linguistically in the Spanish language, of analyzing the linguistic strategies and terms used in everyday speech, in the media and in social networks to define people with limited economic resources. To this end, based on recent linguistic studies on aporophobia in the English-speaking context, we present a methodological proposal to investigate aporophobic discourse in Spanish on social media.

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Promoting interculturality through workshops in Higher Education

Eduardo España Palop + Lola López-Navas + Héctor Hernández Gassó

There is a growing awareness of the importance of knowledge of and respect for the culture of the other in foreign language learning. In this line, we present the results of an intercultural workshop in which the teacher’s role is that of a cultural mediator, as Moreno and Atienza defend. Intercultural exchanges provide an excellent opportunity for students to reflect on and systematize various aspects of the language-culture relationship. From this exchange, students discussed their cultural and linguistic similarities and differences and how these affected various elements of communication.

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Literary Canon and Spanish as a Second Language Teaching

Iván A. Sanchís Pedregosa

This article addresses, from a theoretical perspective, how the Hispanic literary canon impacts the teaching of Spanish as a second language. The issue of text selection along with the editorial presentation they offer generates a series of tensions between didactics and the adaptation of the conventional canon to Spanish classes, which merits reflection. It also examines the matter of teaching literature versus teaching language through its literature as part of the dialectic traditionally existing on this subject, creating the trend of two teaching styles regarding the use of literature as authentic material. Finally, it reflects on the literary competence of teachers themselves and how this can affect its performance in students of Spanish as a foreign language class. This study is primarily based on conclusions from previous studies on Spanish teaching in the United States and on the corpus of literary works used for didactic purposes gathered in the Observatory of the Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures at Harvard University as a teaching resource.

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