ARGUMENTATION AND POLITENESS STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCING CRITICAL LITERACY COMPETENCE IN C1/C2 STUDENTS OF SPANISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

ARGUMENTATION AND POLITENESS STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCING CRITICAL LITERACY COMPETENCE IN C1/C2 STUDENTS OF SPANISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Ivanović, Milena

This work, proceeding from Ivanovic (2015), focuses on the linguistic manifestations of argumentation and politeness in expressing different points of view and how they can be applied in teaching Spanish as a FL to advanced level students according to the CEFR (2001) which suggests the critical interpretation of texts in levels B2/C. For proving this proposal, columns published in two Spanish newspapers with different political orientation: progressive, El País (Carlos Boyero and Maruja Torres), and conservative, ABC (Antonio Burgos and Ignacio Camacho) were analyzed. Both the content and the strategies used by columnists have a persuasive goal and are considered materials that encourage students to think about social issues and trigger meaningful discussions. Previous studies have shown that, on the one hand, argumentation is a way of being polite because it justifies communicative goals and is a way of collaborating with the speaker, and, on the other hand, politeness can be considered as a tool for argumentation (Fuentes, 2009: 117, 125). It is supposed that (im)politeness is an argumentative technique that can add value and convince the speaker of something (Alcoba and Poch: 2006, 2010). Therefore, the aim of this paper is to approach Critical Literacy studies and develop critical literacy competence in C1/C2 students of Spanish as a FL focusing on argumentation and politeness strategies. In order to achieve that, as proposed in Goethals (2011), it is essential to enable students to identify different components of each text (text organization), to interpret its functional exponents and functions of certain strategies. In that sense, to adopt critical approach towards media discourse and to be able to interpret the underlying messages it is necessary to emphasize the importance of the following aspects to the B2/C students of Spanish as a FL: argumentation and politeness strategies used in columns and its significant exponents because it can allow us to show whether these manifestations of argumentation and politeness depend on ideology or rather on the personal style of each author.

Article
PeerReviewed

International Burch University

2015-07

2896