Approach to the perception of linguistic safety among students, teachers and university graduates

Abstract

The Labovian notion of linguistic insecurity (1966) has been extensively discussed as a subjective experience (Francard et al., 1993; Bretegnier y Ledegen, 2002; Meyerhoff, 2006; Preston, 2013; Hennecke and Varga, 2020, etc.), but it is also possible to consider an objective category to characterize professional contexts from a linguistic-communicative perspective (Mitchell, 2016; de- Matteis, 2020). This work systematizes the perceptions of students, graduates and university professors about the importance of their interactions for the safety of professional tasks as presented in the answers to a questionnaire implemented within the community of Universidad Nacional del Sur. The quali-quantitative analysis of the responses suggests that the highest levels of linguistic (Garrett, 2010) and communicative awareness about the relationship between communication and safety are registered in careers whose graduates will be able to work in socio-technical environments or in which communication is an essential part of professional performance.