Translation and comparative studies and studies of intercultural processes
The theories and practices of Spanish–Portuguese translation are addressed, and/or the linguistic and discursive functioning in the socio-historical formations related to these two languages is compared. Research is also conducted into the teaching and learning of translation of the Portuguese–Spanish language pair from a cognitive perspective and descriptive studies of Portuguese–Spanish translation based on corpora, involving literary texts and multimodal texts, such as comic books and songs.
- Project 1: Discourse and Political Confrontation in Contemporary Brazil and Argentina: Factors in an Unequal Relation upon Comparison
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Description: The objective of this project is to develop a theoretical-methodological interrogation of the comparability of a series of discourses in similar languages, Brazilian Portuguese and the different varieties of Argentine Spanish, focusing on the factors that play contradictory roles in this complex interrelation: linguistic functioning, social implementation of genres and other discursive groupings in each country, institutional materiality and the social position of the interlocuters, and discursive memory. This inquiry is carried out by comparing the corpora of contemporary discursive practices characterized by political conflict in the public sphere.
Professors: Adrián Pablo Fanjul (professor in charge) and María Teresa Celada.
- Project 2: Norms, Strategies, and Register in the Analysis of Translation Corpora and in Practical Translation Courses.
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Description: A systematization of analytical methodologies for application in descriptive studies of translation and their role as parameters for practical translation courses. The project is based on the proposals presented by Juliane House (1977, 1997, 2015) for the evaluation of translations, and those of Chesterman (1997, 2016) for describing the operations conducted in translations and composing conceptual instruments for translation courses.
Professors: Heloísa Pezza Cintrão (professor in charge) and Pablo Gasparini.
Studies of linguistic functioning, language acquisition, teaching and learning
From different theoretical perspectives, analysis and description of the functioning of the Spanish language; the processes of acquisition, teaching and learning of this language by speakers of Portuguese; the processes relating to the teaching of translation and the development of translator’s skills; research related to the description of the linguistic/discursive functioning of the Spanish language, as well as investigations devoted to the comparison of the functioning of that language with Brazilian Portuguese and studies on the methodologies and didactics of teaching/learning Spanish as a foreign language in the Brazilian context.
- Project 1: Verbal Courtesy in Spanish: New Pragmatic Approaches
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Description: This line of study proposes to continue studies of the manifestations of (dis)courtesy in verbal interactions in Spanish, based on various approaches to pragmatics (pragmalinguistics, socio-cultural pragmatics, and intercultural pragmatics). Its reflections on the different aspects of courtesy will be particularly focused on the formulations of speech acts related to orders and requests, which present the most productive aspects for analysis of the most relevant linguistic phenomena.
Professors: María Zulma Kulikowski (professor in charge) and Adrián Pablo Fanjul.
- Project 2 (begun in 2018): The Production of Meaning in a Variety of Discursive Practices with a Focus on the Discourses about Knowledge Production and Language.
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Description: This project aims to investigate the modes of production of meaning with a particular focus on the knowledge production discourse along with discourses about language(s) and the policies related to higher education and to other dimensions of social functioning. Discourses related to other practices may also be objects of study in the proposed line of analysis, especially those related to the realm of what is known as "political discourse."
Professors: María Teresa Celada (professor in charge) and Adrián Pablo Fanjul.
- Project 3: Language and Social Practices in the Teaching and Learning of Spanish in Brazil in a Variety of Contexts.
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Description: Based on the idea that language learning and teching practices function as the context for a process of inscription by the language subject in the order of functioning, in this case, of Spanish by subjects in the Brazilian context, the principal objective of the study is to examine the aspects and instruments related to these practices within their relationship with the above-mentioned process.
Professors: María Teresa Celada (professor is charge) and Adrián Pablo Fanjul.
- Project 4: Glottopolitical Gestures, Legislation, and Linguistic Rights
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Description: Considering that glottopolitics is concerned with the various types of effects that language and languages have on the public sphere, the goal of this project is to analyze the production processes and the effects of language legislation on the spaces of enunciation in which the Spanish language enters in contact and conflict with other languages. The project intends to shed light on the determinations that affect the relationship between languages in delimited spaces of enunciation based on the observation of legal and legislative textualities related to questions regarding the rights of linguistically-marginalized communities.
Professors: Fernanda dos Santos Castelano Rodrigues (professor in charge) and María Teresa Celada.
- Project 5 (begun in 2018): Nominalizations in the Non-native Production of Spanish as a Foreign Language by Students in Brazil
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Description: This project proposes to study nominalizations, particularly those of events/processes. Such nominalizations result from the transformation of a finite verb into a noun, which involves a consequent loss of tense, aspect, and mood and often occurs without an explicit trajector for the nominalized event or process. By relating this investigation to the acquisition/learning of Spanish by Brazilians, one of its objectives is to investigate if the nominalization of an event/process in non-native production is related to mechanisms that inhibit other constructions and/or to factors of a discursive nature. As justification, the project aims to provide important contributions to the study of the acquisition of the Spanish language by Brazilian students that can be incorporated into teaching and the production of didactic materials of Spanish as a Foreign Language.
Professors: Benivaldo José de Araújo Jr. (professor in charge) and Mônica Ferreira Mayrink O´Kuinghttons.
- Project 6: Theoretical and Methodological Trends in Spanish Language Instruction and Learning in Different Contexts
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Description: This project is comprised of studies on the development of students and teachers in various contexts of teaching and learning the Spanish language. It draws from different theoretical and methodological perspectives to foster greater understanding of the training processes of teachers and the learning processes of students, as well as discussions regarding evaluation processes, the production of didactic materials, the development of methodologies, the use of technology, and strategies and teaching practices employed in the contexts of in-person and distance learning.
Professors: Mônica Ferreira Mayrink O´Kuinghttons (professor in charge) and Benivaldo José de Araújo Jr.
- Project 7: Production and Comprehension of the Spanish Language in the Contexts of Formal Learning and Work
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Description: Drawing from various epistemological bases, this project examines the production and comprehension of the Spanish language in both the context of formal learning (in-person and distance) and work environments. In the case of formal learning, the focus will be describing and analyzing the processing (the moment in which students manipulate information from the foreign language) and the process (sequence of states or changes) of Brazilian students learning Spanish as a foreign language. When examining the context of the work environment, there will be a particular interest in describing and analyzing phenomena related to the linguistic contact between native Spanish speakers and native Portuguese speakers. The studies are conducted according to a comparative perspective concerned with Spanish and Portuguese.
Professors: Benivaldo José de Araújo Jr. (professor in charge) and Mônica Ferreira Mayrink O´Kuinghttons.
Forms and processes in Spanish literature
Studies of the processes of formation and consolidation of the various genres of Spanish literature from various theoretical and methodological perspectives. Research into the vast repertoire of two major study cores: the literature of 16th- and 17th-century Spain and contemporary Spanish literature. In both fields, studies are conducted into the discursive forms and significant problems of those periods, as well as contemplating the relations between Spain and Latin America.
- Project 1: Prose, Poetry, and Inter-Art Relationships in Modernity: Ibero-American Dialogues
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Description: This study examines the aesthetic and literary proposals of contemporary Ibero-American writers found in both prose and poetry and their possible relationships with other artistic forms (film, photography, and other visual arts) in order to appraise the status of literature and art in modernity in critical dialogue with the socio-historic and political processes of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Professors: Margareth dos Santos (professor in charge) and Valeria De Marco.
- Project 2: Relationships between State Violence and Literary and Cultural Production in the Ibero-American Context
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Description: This study is concerned with literary, cinematographic, graphic, and pictorial works affected by state violence, whether through the blacklisting of certain writers or artists, censorship of their work, or policies regarding the funding and dissemination of culture. The project examines both studies concerned with particular authors and those that adopt a comparative analysis regarding Ibero-American cultural production.
Professors: Valeria De Marco (professor in charge) and Margareth dos Santos.
- Project 3: Texts, Intertexts, and the Reception of Spanish Works of the 16th and 17th Centuries
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Description: This study is concerned with the different discursive forms that composed the Spanish prose, poetry, and theatrical works of the 16th and 17th centuries, their relation to the consolidation of literary genres, and their reception in Brazil.
Professors: Maria Augusta da Costa Vieira (professor in charge) and Margareth dos Santos.
Aesthetic problems and critical debates in Latin American literature
Studies of processes and literary and theoretical problems within the complex territorial, cultural and historical imaginaries of Latin-American literature. The focus of the research is on contemporary times, based on axes such as memory, archives, experimentation and reforms and challenges to the canon. Studies are also conducted into the writing of essays and on relations between literature and linguistic otherness. On the other hand, the reflections include the aesthetic problems relevant to this literature throughout its history.
- Project 1: Aesthetic Problems in Latin American Narratives
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Description: A study of Latin American literary manifestations of different representative genres and aesthetic movements (novels, novellas, short stories, and hybrid genres), employing innovative approaches involving intertextual appraisals and theoretical concepts that reevaluate Latin American literature in contexts with constantly mutating connotations.
Professors: Laura Janina Hosiasson (professor in charge) and Pablo Gasparini, Ana Cecilia Olmos.
- Project 2: Writing Policies in the Hispano-Caribbean Literature of the 20th and 21st Centuries
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Description: This research project seeks to analyze literary works and literary journals that propose ideo-aesthetic ruptures with institutional cultural policies.
Professors: Idalia Morejón Arnaiz (professor in charge) and Adriana Kanzepolsky
- Project 3: Discursive Spaces of the Self and the Other: Memory, Intimacy, Experience, and Archives.
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Description: This study examines the various modalities that writings centered around memory have accumulated, whether they concern one's own memory or that of the other. We discuss biographical memory as well as textual memory. The project investigates the intersection between the recuperation of lived experience, the spoken word, the written word, and their effacement.
Professors: Adriana Kanzepolsky (professor in charge) and Idalia Morejón Arnaiz.
- Project 4: Latin American Literature and Linguistic Alterity
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Description: This project proposes to examine Latin American literary productions based on considerations regarding the linguistic traditions, ruptures, and shifts inherent in the construction of a literary language. The goal of this examination is to inspire reflection on the relationship between literary production and processes related to the subjective and cultural phenomena of linguistic belonging/alterity.
Professors: Pablo Gasparini (professor in charge) and Ana Cecilia Olmos.
- Project 5: Liminal Writings and the Latin American Literary Community
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Description: This project aims to develop studies regarding writing practices that, by exploring indeterminate zones between the written word and life, narration and experience, creative imagination and the documentation of real life (chronicles, personal journals, essays, etc.), expand the limits of literature and propose community policies that allow one to imagine other ways of being in the world.
Professors: Ana Cecilia Olmos (professor in charge), Pablo Gasparini, and Laura Janina Hosiasson.
- Project 6: For a Linguistically Diverse Historiography of Latin American Literature
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Description: This project aims to investigate occurrences, textualities, and experiences that question the centrality of Spanish in the literary production of Latin America. To this end, it favors analyses of the linguistic heterogeneity constituent of Latin America, historical discussions about the character and reach of national languages and literatures in multilingual contexts, texts about the appropriation and contribution of immigrants, and studies concerned with border and exile literatures, among other phenomena that challenge the continuity between territory, language, and literature.
Professors: Pablo Gasparini (professor in charge) and Ana Cecilia Olmos.