http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11393 Sat, 24 Oct 2026 21:45:32 GMT 2026-10-24T21:45:32Z http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11919 The socio-cultural construction of identity : discursive practices in four autoethnographic stories by hyphenated-American writers Casanovas, María Gabriela This thesis examines the topic of the socio-cultural construction of identity in autoethnographic narratives written by four hyphenated-American authors: Julia Alvarez, Richard Blanco, Junot Díaz, and Achy Obejas. Through the analysis of selected texts by the aforementioned writers, the study explores the discursive strategies through which identity is constructed and negotiated within a diasporic setting. The theoretical framework is grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which explores the relationships between language use and the social and cultural contexts in which it occurs. Due to the qualitative nature of the project and its reliance on textual data, a case study approach is adopted as the most suitable methodology for this research. Given that the analysis focuses on language within autoethnographic narratives, it adopts an external interpretive lens drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin‘s notion of heteroglossia. Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11919 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11884 The discursive construction of institutional identity as place : an analysis of appraisal in the Instagram posts of leading American and British universities Munch, María Beatriz It is well known that the emergence and consolidation of new digital technologies have significantly shaped the social practices we are immersed in. These new digital environments have not only reconfigured interaction patterns (Parini, 2023; Parini and Giammatteo, 2018), but have also allowed for new ways of constructing and negotiating identity online. Instagram is a clear example of this. This platform allows users to get in touch with their friends and family as well as to decide how they wish to present themselves to their followers and other Instagram users. Identity construction on Instagram, however, is not confined to the use individuals make of the platform, since it also encompasses companies and other institutions, which make use of social media to reach wider audiences. It is against this background that this study sets out to analyse how universities discursively construct their institutional identities through the posts they share on Instagram. Universities do not present themselves as mere physical spaces that generate knowledge or that students go to in order to access education. Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11884 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11808 Digital DIY narratives : a multimodal analysis of discourse genre on Instagram accounts Tarantino, María Belén The pervasive presence of online platforms in society constitutes a highly fertile area for the exploration of linguistic phenomena. On visual platforms such as Instagram, users rely on the interconnectedness of image, text, and sound to construct meaning. From a social semiotics perspective, this study explores the multimodal construction of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) discourse. The research was conducted on a corpus of 300 posts from 10 DIY accounts. The visual, aural, and linguistic content of each post was examined applying Martinec and Salway’s framework (2005) to observe text-image relations, coupled with an in-depth analysis of generic features. Said analysis provided a deeper understanding of how modes are employed to construct meaning in DIY discourse. Findings revealed that the visual mode is of paramount importance, rendering text dependent for complete comprehension of content. Furthermore, although DIY discourse is, at its core, procedural, the narrative genre was found intertwined with procedure, arguably due to the nature of social platform use. This work contributes to a broader comprehension of online meaning-making, indicating that the interconnectedness of multimodal devices and platform affordances reshape DIY procedural discourse. Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11808 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11690 The assignment of nuclear accents in three different discourse genres : documentaries, TED Talks and interviews Zabala, Francisco This dissertation investigates nuclear accent placement across three spoken discourse genres in Standard Southern British English (documentaries, TED Talks, and interviews) with the aim of determining how canonical descriptions of tonicity operate in authentic communicative contexts. Drawing on a corpus of 5,494 intonation phrases (IPs) and grounded in the British tradition of intonation, the study examines (a) the extent to which the main trends in nucleus placement discussed in the literature appear in the corpus, (b) how these three discourse genres differ in tonicity, and (c) in what ways the deviations from the Last Lexical Item (LLI) Rule observed in the corpus are associated with genre-specific discourse practices. The findings reveal a strong overall dominance of the LLI Rule, yet they also demonstrate that departures occur in highly systematic ways conditioned by genre. Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://repositorio.ub.edu.ar/handle/123456789/11690 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z