Communication and Affectivity in the being and Pedagogical Doing of the Teacher of the Communication Career

Diachronic Periphery of the Concept of Communicative Competence

Here are the times when the fundamental concepts of the generative theory of language and the different ways of understanding the process of linguistic interaction in communities are debated in North America and in other parts of the world: communication ethnography, sociolinguistics, text linguistics, textual grammar, and other related definitions. The Chomskian proposals relating to the theoretical double helix called by Linguistic Competence and Action allowed us to glimpse a multitude of new ideas -or, at least, relatively little studied- both in the approach and in the epistemic conception. The above-mentioned disciplines account for a wealth of discoveries surrounding the nature of interactional relationships in societies that last today continue to provide discoveries, analytical perspectives and highly pertinent insights into revealing little by little the mysteries of communication exchange in the man.

The judgment provided by Hymes [12] around the definition of Communicative Competence and its relationship with knowledge «when speaking, when not, and how to speak, with what, when, where, in what way» incorporates a higher level of understanding until this moment is understood as linguistic competence [13] to stipulate that communicative competence does not only define the capacity to form grammatically appropriate utterances, which was accepted as a dogma of faith by Chomskian generativism, but also the need that the tales uttered were socially pertinent.

The incorporation of the sociocultural into the theoretical definition of the concept -depleted in its opportunity of the Chomskian idea of ​linguistic competence- is what allows the development of a theory of the use of language, until this moment forgotten throughout the developed structuralist linguistic format At that moment, however, Saussure was occupied with his analysis fundamentally by theoretical interests necessary for the consolidation of linguistics as a science.

Leaving us somewhat apart from central linguistic visions, the initial Chomskian idea of ​competence has developed into a polysemic construct once its radius of influence has transcended the initial confines of appearance. There are currently even competency models to configure the set of skills, conduct, behaviors (knowing how to be, knowing how to do, and knowing how to live together, planned by UNESCO) necessary in society and in the school today.

Organizational and Communicational Aspects: Communicative Competence in Organizations

What could be said here around studies on management within organizations (Fayol, Taylor, Mayo, Maslow, Drucker, Burnham, Bertalanffy and Weber as the most conspicuous representatives) could be redundant or, on the contrary, tangentially outline them the most outstanding ideas of each of them because they are innumerable and long-standing in their descriptions and functional analyses. Ultimately, we would be satisfied with sustaining that its points of epistemological support speak from the structurally organizational level of every institution, up to the formulation of normative protocols and general laws of universal application at the level of socio-institutional actions. We would emphasize that in each of these management paradigms, a description of how is missing and this factor depends on human performance, the most important element and basis of any institutional management, especially an educational one such as a university, our center of interest. Martínez, et al. [14] maintain that the institutions that govern education (specifically universities) are highly permeated by ad hoc policies, with which the social demands that they overcome oblige a constant reevaluation of management support as an irreplaceable resource of administrative actions within them. Everyone is aware that the closure of high formative interests required by society in terms of education, training and growth must be efficiently responded to by universities. As can be seen, social needs encompass multiple dimensions and the university offers teaching, research and extension as fundamental missions. Of them, teaching constitutes the node of greater attention, in comparison with the rest.

Tedesco [15] paints a quasi-apocalyptic panorama for today’s man: the pressing uncertainty for the future in a world as contingent and insecure as the current one, the labor options offered by the technological and computational multiverse, and the always ancestral and omnipresent inherent problems Even human nature presents a dizzying, uncertain and, at times, unknown scenario; These uncertainties derive in part precisely from the unpredictability of a world that offers opportunities or jobs in the traditional way: the supply is increasingly cut and the demands are escalating. Faced with this, the belief is that the world of knowledge is the world of education, of know-how, of deep systematic training. This is the knowledge offered openly, and to be an active participant in this epistemic cosmos, man has the right and the obligation to encourage, strengthen and strengthen his talents aimed at building a personal, professional and, for the same time, social life project What a gift for personal and collective benefits.

Today, if we are taking a step towards a world of work that has been unthinkable for a long time: a click on our personal computers is enough to have within reach all of a huge number of labor technologies that have given “free access” to other types of skills and abilities, These are not so much about having or knowing as about being [16]: they are called soft skills or competencies. Heckman, et al. [17, 18] speak of encompassing skills of, at least, the key functional dimensions: interpersonal and social (soft skills) on top of which ones repose communicative skills.

The soft skills are abilities that enhance the capacity to solve problems of socio-communicative interaction, strengthen group or collective work, favor expeditious and open communication, are inclined towards effective and authentic attitudes in the face of untimely organizational/ managerial conflicts, and enable the insurgency of creativity or interpersonal intelligence to resolve them [19]. It is also translated into nodal resources to promote responsibility, and commitment to what is done, for which the same institution is created and achieved.

Essentially, they also constitute highly pertinent communicative skills to respond to the demands of the institutional context (where academic, political and managerial coexist) in a contingent world [20], vertiginously globalized, daily undergoing transformation, but arising from individuals whose soft skills contribute to strengthening organizational dynamics in university institutions. Faced with the great complexity of today’s world, the university academic dynamics required of the individual are increasingly more rigorous, as well as the imperative urgency of an education aimed at training, developing and consolidating skills with which men can establish links of coexistence in societies are becoming more complex every day, according to Morin [20]. Part of these competencies correspond to the structure of the technological episteme and all its logical-symbolic paraphernalia, but they also include the use of language and the different options it offers to act in different social groups.

Professional training, especially teacher training, must consider these skills and their close connection with knowledge (knowledge); el saber hacer (skills); y el knowing how to be (values ​and attitudes), [16]. In this way, judgments such as relationships with their peers, intracommunity communicative development, consideration of the value of interactional processes in education, the formation of a competent communicator supported as a journey through professional training, they are guided by basis for mastering communicative competence, essential to respond to current demands and educational policies. In this sense, León [21, 22] expressed that:

In the educational sphere, competence refers to a certain capacity of actors in the educational process defined and measured in terms of performance in a given context, and in terms of knowledge and skills in the abstract; That is to say, competence is the integration between knowledge, knowing how to do, knowing how to be and knowing how to live together.

Of the innumerable definitions of the term competence -from which they are subject to revised linguistic theories, to those enunciated by renowned psychologists and educators, among them McClelland [23], Sánchez [24], the RAE (s/f), Batista, et al. [25] León [21], Mulder [26] and other less important researchers - it is only worth insisting on the polysemic character of the terminus. It is sometimes impossible to agree on a single valid definition or, at least, if it partially coincides, and each of these definitions has an emphasis on some aspect of it: for some it is capacity, for others it is a skill or set of skills, for others imply performance, some more insist on its actitudinal or socio- affective character: All a globalizing epistemic gap in terms of a highly complex structure of qualities attributable to the individual, well for knowledge or knowledge, for skills and experiences in it, or for actions and values.

Habermas, Communicative Competence and Affectivity in the Teacher-Student Relationship

Contemporary linguistic theories - and by extension the pedagogical field of recent years - indicate that linguistic competence revolves around the idea of ​grammatical adequacy, syntactic-semantic correspondence, and other notions relating to the systematics of language, and This is why they have worked hard to build a whole language teaching didactics. However, the notions introduced by Habermas [27] around his theory of communicative action, the purpose of which would seek to resolve questions related to the appropriate conditions to provide understanding between speakers, must be considered: what should we communicate?, how should I communicate? communication?, What point does the communication take into account the cosmovision of my interlocutor?, Is there congruence of points of view between speakers? Questions from this tenor would be incorporated into some of the proper aspects of any communicative competence from which intersubjectivity is propitiated or favored.

The theory of communicative action proposed by Habermas [27] is useful for understanding humanistic natural teaching-learning processes centered on learning to be and learning to live together. Its plans are centered on communicative rationality, a notion that seeks understanding mediated through words.

It approaches communication from a phenomenological vision that shifts towards a cognitive-instrumental vision with a nominalist and mentalist approach. Such a phenomenological perspective seeks comprehension and understanding between social actors and, in addition to being a social theory, tries to explain the complex of relationships woven into society. Therefore, this theory is relevant to establish analogies with the communicative interactions developed in university academic contexts to develop teaching-learning processes.

The aulic world is one of extreme complexity: in the confluence of the world of life of each social actor; the social world is the normative one, with all its guidelines, dispositions and precepts, and the objective world. In interactional circumstances where so many worldviews converge, it is difficult not to find conflicts; In other words, every communicative act has the option of generating disagreements or disagreements of varying nature and for multiple reasons. It corresponds to the language user to appeal to argumentation (and Habermas as it happens) to give reasons that promote intersubjective consensus. Therefore, the argument represents the instrument to achieve communicative agreement. Arguments are resources that give validity to linguistic statements. It will be the pertinence of each argument in the given discursive context that measures the communicative strength of the same. Linguistic statements that have the strength required by conditions: that have validity and that express truth. Each utterance implicitly carries deep knowledge shared intersubjectively within a communication community.

Now, in teaching-learning processes there are two fundamental actors to establish intersubjective teaching- learning processes: teachers and students. Very frequently and in the Ecuadorian university educational context, the teacher assumes a leading role in the process and the student assumes a passive role of receiver of information: this is the cognitive-instrumental rationality mentioned in previous paragraphs, which is put into practice underlining this mere transmission of information where little matters is the establishment of bridges of intersubjectivity and mutual understanding. As can be seen, this rationality contradicts constructivist learning theories that highlight the leading role of students and the construction and generation of knowledge.

In the educational field, the communicative rationality of teachers and students is vital for the generation, transmission and transformation of knowledge. The teacher in his pedagogical process must promote dialogical meetings that seek to connect with the student. It is through this dialectical epistemic model [28] how spaces for discussion, argumentation and construction of knowledge are generated.

In these scenarios, teachers manifest or communicate something about the world (the objective world alluded to) and, in addition, communicate their own experiences of interpretation and reinterpretation of these realities (the subjective world of life). When really intersubjective processes occur, students can have access to interpretations or subjectivities, which is what Habermas refers to with the encounter and construction of knowledge: both the objective content and the subjective load allow them to reinforce the understanding that the teacher seeks. In this scenario, the teacher intends to achieve student confidence in the content transmitted through discussion, critical analysis and complex thinking. When such confidence is not achieved, the teaching-learning process is affected.

The subject is in which it must be understood that in all these interactional processes they are at the action of (the most) subjectivities; of convulsive private microcosms shaped by personal conflicts, perhaps heavy existential burdens, perhaps also colored with certain dosis of small triumphs and everyday joys; It is not the son of computational ingenios that interact with electronic messages, mediated by cold logic that is microchipped and preformatted to give responses that are equally cold and lacking in human flavor. This is clear:

every speaker emits his linguistic utterances (recovered in truth, the way he is established in the Habermasian objective world, or with greater or lesser airs of veracity according to the subjective world of the utterance) all under the predictable parameters of the normative (social) context ), but underlining this enunciation there is a whole charge or perlocutive intentionality that commits the speaker to what he says and that supposes the conviction or persuasion of the interlocutor. It is here, in this exchange of statements loaded with emotional, affective, or volitional profiles from which it is possible to speak of a humanist natural education, from which affectivity has a preponderant role in the construction of learning to be or learning to live together, so necessary in a world increasingly submerged in the dehumanizing vortex of these dizzying days today.

Educational and Affective: A Necessary Duo

Never before have studies and investigations around affectivity reached a privileged place, a question that becomes the center of discussions in the academic context. Pachilla [29] states that: “an “affective turn” or “affective turn” has been spoken of in philosophy, social sciences and, in general, in what is commonly called “cultural studies”. Recently, this turn has also reached thinking around Latin American culture”.

The affective turn comes to displace the prevailing rationalism in the positivist currents of a mentalist nature that cosify the human being by giving way to the subjectivity of being, its consciousness and its meanings. This vision is closest to postpositivism and cultural studies connected with affections such as ethnomethodology, phenomenology, ethnography of communications, for example.

The germ of this turn that centers its attention on the affective goes back to philosophers such as Heidegger (concerned with anguish and boredom, for example) and Bergson. In this regard, Escudero [30] states that: “…from the hand of the irruption of phenomenology a rehabilitation of the affective and corporal component of human existence is produced”, putting the scope of affectivity and emotionality of being occupied a secondary place in the history of philosophical studies.

The concern for studying the world of everyday life, the actions of social actors and their processes of intersubjectivity in the construction of their worlds of life gives a turn that directs the gaze at the subjectivity of being and their emotions and feelings. All interactional and communicative processes that are established between members of a speaking community or their actions in the surrounding environment are communicative, strategic or teleological are not limited to a semantic logic that responds exclusively to the dimension of propositional meanings; They are, moreover, the result of the processing of our emotions and emotions. Sostiene García [31] that: “Affectivity is not reducible to the cognitive element and is not merely the pigmentation of an interpretation.

In all the scenarios in which the life and experience of the social actor are developed and developed, affectivity and emotion are present in the simple sense of being human; which is an inherent condition of being, as it constitutes “the set of actions that imply the bond between oneself and another person through emotions, affections and mental states, which validate their character of being social and enable knowledge de quienes le rodean” [32]. This is why affection is also understood as the bond between subjects, full of spirit, feeling and emotion, which relates significant experiences in the formation of social networks; In this sense, every human contact implicitly carries a dose of affection that originates from its social nature [32].

When talking about educational scenarios, particularly those in which there are aulic communicative processes, affectivity becomes a vital preponderance that puts motivation, empathetic communication, trust and respect generating intersubjective relationships loaded with affection and tolerance. These affective bonds guarantee the quality of the enseñanza-aprendizaje process and the learning that is truly significant by encompassing emotional life through the use of words, in the epistemic space provided by Habermasian intersubjectitivity.

The teacher-student affective relationships affect both the student and the teacher. Firstly, because the emotional disorder generated by relationships of rejection, lack of empathy and demotivation on the part of their pupils makes them anxious in their pedagogical approach, being little assertive in their didactic decision-making; to seconds, because it is the degree of trust, empathy and emotional bonds that a teacher motivates and drives understanding and establishing agreements that favorably benefit their learning and academic achievements.

In this Sense, Tarabay [33] Explains that

The students assigned the teacher their participation during the class, to promote the class. An aspect of the professional quality raised refers to the friendly attitude that has been observed in their teachers for more than a year. It does not seem convenient for the teacher to maintain affective neutrality towards his students in his teaching performance. Teachers should take into consideration the opportunity to cultivate an open and supportive disposition towards students without that meaning falling into companionship or camaraderie.

What Tarabay referred to alludes to the communicative aspect as a teacher-student emotional bridge factor. The friendly attitude of the teacher awakens in his disciple the confidence and respect necessary to provide intersubjective and dialogical connections of production and transformation of knowledge. Here the communicative action plays a vital role, because it is through it that it is reflected and generates critical thinking of argumentation and reflections on reality.

What is intended with this approach to affection in university settings as those offered in the Communication career of the National University of Chimborazo is calling for attention to an indisputable element that is always minimized in academic discussions: every process of communicative interaction is charged of emotionality, of open or undermined affectivity towards the interlocutor, and that these interactions that we carry out daily in university classes are somewhat more supportive, empathetic and full of respect towards the speaker. At the end of the day, it is the teacher-student interdependence that makes us lose our social status as a species.

Before that, we asked ourselves: How is communication and affectivity in the teaching process of the communication career at the National University of Chimborazo? Before this qualitative premise, the investigation has the purpose of interpreting communication and affectivity in teachers of the Communication career at the National University of Chimborazo since its Pedagogical beginning.