Is your English good or bad? : Social representations towards Alexis Sánchez's use of English in his first interview in that language: theoretical and methodological implications on teaching English as a foreign language

Abstract

Conceiving language and languages as cultural systems, being the main focus of the linguistic anthropological perspective, this study intends to apply this approach in order to understand language teaching as a determined cultural system. Chileans Social Representations towards Alexis Sanchez’s use of English in his first interview in that language will be characterized and its possible theoretical and methodological implications in English teaching. Through empirical and qualitative research, focus groups and personal interviews were applied to English university professors, English university students, and university students of science. Based on the thick description metaphor by the anthropologist C. Geertz, the preliminary results show the existence of a serie of cultural models related to a) native speaker ideal, b) speaking English well and poorly, c) the existence of different levels of English d) good or bad communication depending on fluency, grammar, syntax, e) the concept of error, and how all these categories reflect the reality of English teaching. These results suggest that the social actors involved in English teaching and learning, express those social representations based on an ideal of communication and an ideal of English language, which at the same time, influences the way of teaching English as a foreign language in Chile.