Resumen

YBARRA GUILLEN, Shirley S. The educational discourse in the public school of colonial Venezuela. Letras [online]. 2011, vol.53, n.85, pp.41-51. ISSN 0459-1283.

In recent years, a significant growth of language studies has been observed. Linguistics, as a scientific discipline, has been integrated into different areas of knowledge, offering theories and methodologies that can reveal, among other aspects, a social reality, power relationships and ideology. On this basis, a study is proposed which combines linguistics and history in other to achieve the following objectives: analyze the linguistic categories that construe the educational discourse in the Reglamento de las Escuelas de Educación Cristiana y Civil de la Ciudad de Caracas (1821) and determine the function fulfilled by the discursive categories. The method of analysis is the discourse-historical approach designed by Wodak (2003). It is possible to conclude that, on the on hand, the educational discourse in the document analyzed is constructed from a particular way of naming people, presenting arguments and hedging and intensifying utterances. On the other hand, a more specific view is made possible, revealing intentions, ideologies, and power relationships. Definitely, the pedagogical discourse construes a power relationship between those who manage the educational activity, who are not always educators, and those on who receive it as an imposition, who are no always the students.

Palabras clave : instruction in the colony; Venezuela; educational discourse; discourse analysis.