ANDREA CAROLINA MORALES REYES

XV FORO DEL LENGUAJE: 24, 25, 26 NOVIEMBRE DE 2020

Paulo Villadiego, “Estrategias discursivas en los letreros de los inmigrantes venezolanos en
Colombia, Valledupar como estudio de caso”
This an investigation that derivate from a bigger investigation about the migration of
Venezuelan people in Colombia. One of the items the investigator takes into account is how
Venezuelan people works and almost survive in Caribbean cities of Colombia. This study
analyse the discursive strategies in the signs they use to gain money. According to
Migración Colombia in our country there are 1.408.055 migrants from Venezuela. And
according to Acnur (2019) the 14% of the migrants have to beg only to survive.
Some questions the author use to guide his study are: How to characterize the discursive
forms that allow Venezuelan immigrants to exercise begging in Valledupar? How is the
identity of the interlocutors presented in these discursive forms? What are the strategies
employed by subjects?
Before everything, the author define discursive genre as a, “relatively stable
communication device made of statements that are framed in an area of social life” (Batjín,
1999). “Discursive genders are determined by imperative situations. Therefore, discursive
genders are situational genders” (Charaudeau, 2009). The author took the model of
Charaudeau as a guide to characterize the discursive genre. He start from two levels that are
SITUACIONAL and SEMIODISCURSIVO. The first is divided in identity, speakers,
purpose, topics and device. The second is divided in superstructure, speech strategies and
modes of speech organization.
Charaudeau (1995) propose three discursive strategies: Legitimation determined by the
subject's position of authority, Credibility that alludes to the subject's real position and
Catchment which consists of the ways in which the subject enters the interlocutor in the
emotional framework of the addressee.
The author studied 10 signs from 10 migrants. They were located in different parts of
Valledupar such as FRANCISCO EL HOMBRE CON CALLE 3, AVENIDA SIERRA
NEVADA CON FRANCISCO EL HOMBRE, DIAGONAL 7MA CON CALLE 30,
CALLE 21 CON CARRERA 16 and others. The author also took into account their age
(18-36), their genre (woman, men) and their precedence (Táchira, Barinas, Zulia).
In what comes of the SEMIODISCURSIVO level the author made a discursive plan to get
close at migrants. First, he uses the catchment strategy. Second, he talks about the
Venezuelan family situation. Third, he talks about God. Fourth, he allude to Venezuelan
migrant’s situation. Fifth, he talks about being unemployed and finally the author uses
courtesy.
The author gives some partial conclusions for this study. Besides all the characterization
made in the paragraphs before, it can be said the content of the message in the signs are
ANDREA CAROLINA MORALES REYES

made of recurrent speech that have four segments: greetings, identity-situation, beg and
closure. Also, there are seven strategies which allude to being a parent, the compassion,
allusion to God, migrants’ situation, courtesy forms, unemployment and breaking
stereotypes.
There’s something that need to be clarified about this investigation and it is the fact that the
author is still in the process of investigating the current economic situation of Venezuelan
in Colombia and how they use signs as a way of work. This only means that there´s still a
long way to get to classify all the discursive strategies they use in the placard. Actually, this
is an interesting and as a matter of fact it caught my curiosity because I’ve seen those signs
for a long time and I never thought the language of it could be studied in an academic way.