Oral Communication, Higher Education, and Neoliberalism: A Warning Note

Brañez Medina R.; Zavala V. · Revista Internacional de Linguistica Iberoamericana (2025)

Resumen

In this century, we are witnessing a growing interest in incorporating oral communication skills into the design of university writing programs with the aim of developing and enhancing students’ socialization skills in both their academic and professional lives (Cameron 2002). In this paper, using an ethnographic approach, we discuss a set of oral communication practices and the representations constructed around them by students and teachers in a writing course at a private university in Lima, Peru. Specifically, we address the genre of oral presentation of academic essays based on four interrelated practices: capturing the audience’s attention, communicating in the shortest time possible, adhering to regulated formats, and embodying the presentation. Based on this case study, we argue that the growing implementation of these language practices can be explained by the broader context of the neoliberalization of higher education, which conceives of language as a capital good and from which oral practices are guided by commodified logics (Gray/Block 2002). This phenomenon questions the very construct of “academic language” (and what is considered “academic”) and is linked to the formation of new student subjectivities and new audiences in late capitalism.

Instituciones: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú