The materialization of the linguistic policies of the UNLu in official documents: analysis of the documentary corpus

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to report the results of the analysis of a corpus of documents from an investigation carried out by the Center for Research, Teaching and Extension in Foreign Languages (CIDELE in Spanish) of the National University of Luján (UNLu), Linguistic policies of the UNLu: relationships between linguistic capital, linguistic repertoire and linguistic actions, and representations of its actors. In general terms, the reference project sought to contribute to knowledge and to establish relationships between linguistic policies, institutional linguistic capital, the linguistic repertoires of the actors, their linguistic representations and the linguistic planning actions that are launched in the UNLu. To achieve the objectives, two corpora were
constituted, one documentary and another of verbalizations. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on the first. The data collected was first obtained during an exploratory stage on the UNLu website during which the search and identification of the official documentation that could be included in the project corpus was carried out. The next stage, the construction of the data collection elements, consisted in the elaboration of the model file for each specimen of the documentation surveyed. Thus, an extended corpus made up of official documents was constituted in relation to language policy decisions and actions, which, given its scope, was reduced to provisions and resolutions. The analysis of the documentary corpus, made up of these genres of texts (collected between 1987 and 2021), showed, broadly speaking, that the UNLu is a scarcely multilingual field, both in relation to its capital and the repertoires of its actors, due to, among other factors, the lack of a comprehensive institutional language policy. In this sense, it would be essential that, when linguistic policy actions are carried out, the agents involved take into account not only the needs posed by a globalized world but also the institutional mission and vision that allow the elaboration of a coherent, consensual and explicit project regarding languages within the university. It is time to question the implicit linguistic policies and the disjointed linguistic actions that are being developed; discuss them and build consensus that support decision-making in this area, consciously and in accordance with the new scenarios, with the participation of each of the linguistic agents and multilingual speakers who circulate our university.