Registro, género discursivo y la enseñanza del español como segunda lengua

Abstract

This paper looks at language teaching and learning not as a process centered upon the individual learner but as an interaction between learners and language as social institution. Two theoretical notions are proposed for the systematic exploration of this interaction: ‘register’ and ‘genre’ They are briefly described and related respectively to the context of situation and the broader context of culture. They are then applied to specific examples taken from a North-American textbook for teaching elementary Spanish. The finding is that the controlled presentation of language form in this case has led to register simplification, and that genres are combined, recontextualized and framed in a manipulated rather than a natural form of communication. The framing creates a maximal distance between learner and speakers of the discourse presented, which points to the ideological stance behind language teaching.