Verónica Márquez (Becas Chile)

Thesis title: The Country I never went back: A critical discourse analysis of Chilean bilingual exiled children in the U.K

Biography

Background

Veronica Marquez is a PhD student of Hispanic Studies at the University of Edinburgh and a winner of the Becas Chile scholarship. Her study approaches the inquiry into Chilean language heritage from the discipline of Applied Linguistics and the notion of discourse analysis. Her interest is to explore the exiled children’s discourses in the UK to find out their dual identity and the Chilean dictatorship’s effects on them after 50 years of the civil-military coup. She was an exiled child born in Switzerland in 1981 and moved in 1994 “back” to her parents’ country, Chile, where she lived until she moved to Edinburgh to pursue her PhD. In Chile, she was an EFL lecturer at the Pontifical Catholic University. Master’s in Applied Linguistics in EFL and Master's in Spanish as a Second Language.

Research summary

Applied linguist specialising in language, identity, and evaluation in bilingual contexts. My research examines heritage Spanish speakers in the UK using corpus-assisted discourse analysis, integrating critical discourse analysis, positive discourse analysis, and appraisal theory with corpus linguistic methods. I focus on how linguistic identity and ideology are constructed in multilingual social actors. 

Current research interests

My research explores the recent memory of the social group of politically exiled children who fled Chile during the civic-military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and never returned, despite the return to democracy in 1990, thus staying in the UK. I approach through a corpus analysis under the theoretical framework of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies of Critical Discursive Analysis, Pragmatics, and Critical Discourse Analysis, informed by Appraisal, to understand that language is intergenerationally transmitted, and that evaluations of speech in context allow us to comprehend the construction of identity within Latin American culture in the UK.

Past research interests

I was interested in researching Spoken Language in adult EFL Learners in Chile using an action research strategy in the EFL classroom. Students often feel they are learning artificial communication rather than natural communication. To improve students’ oral performance, in this research project, students read short stories from around the globe, analysed them critically, and then held a classroom discussion about social issues. This was done for two reasons: to raise students’ cultural awareness and to provide a platform for them to reflect on their personal memories, stories, and experiences. In parallel, the add-on strategy was taught using conjunctions to improve natural conversation. Later, their use of conjunctions was measured using clausal units in students’ conversation transcripts to determine the effect in their natural speech.

Project activity

With the support of the UoE Student Experience Grant, and in collaboration with the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures and the School of Health in Social Science, this initiative seeks to strengthen a student research community around Latin American feminist and decolonial thought, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and collective learning. The workshop is grounded in a central premise: knowledge is not only a theoretical exercise, but an embodied, situated, and relational practice. Across four sessions, we will connect close readings of Latin American, communitarian, and decolonial feminist texts with embroidery.

Current project grants

Student Experience Grant 2025/2026

Past project grants

Student Experience Grant 2024/2025
SGSAH Research Showcase 2023

Conference details

Márquez, V. (2025). The country I never went back to: International Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference 2025. Glasgow  

Márquez, V. (2025). El país al que nunca regresé: un análisis crítico del discurso de los niños chilenos bilingües exiliados en el Reino Unido. SIS: Bristol.

Márquez, V. (2025). El país al que nunca regresé: un análisis crítico del discurso de los niños chilenos bilingües exiliados en el Reino Unido. CEISAL: Paris.

Márquez, V. (2024). Your Return was my Exile: A Critical Discourse Approach to the Art of Resistance. Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) Annual Conference, Amsterdam.

Márquez, V. (2023). The Country I Never Went Back to: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Chilean Bilingual Exiled Children in the U.K. 'Resistance, Rights and Refuge: Britain and Chile 50 Years After the Chilean Coup' Conference at LSE in London, October 2023.

Márquez, V. & Ramírez, Y. (2023). To Cut with the Land but not with the Memory. Discourse Analysis Approach to Narrative of Memory in the Recent Political Exiled Children from Chile. Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) Annual Conference 2023. Queen’s University: Belfast

Márquez, V. (2021). Cortar con la Tierra pero no con la Memoria: Análisis del discurso de los relatos de memoria reciente de hijos de exiliados políticos chilenos. Taller “Exilios Latinoamericanos”. En el Marco del Seminario Permanente Exilios políticos: represión, derechos humanos y memorias. Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales (UNSAM) y Departamento de Humanidades de la Universidad Nacional del Sur.  Argentina.

Marquez, V. (2021) Natural Speech in the Globalized Era: Reading and Telling Stories in the EFL Classroom. Conference STORIES 2021. The University of Oxford: U.K.

Marquez, V. (2021). Natural Speech in the Globalized Era: Reading and Telling Stories in the EFL Classroom. 4th RICELT Biannual Conference. Chile.

Papers delivered

Márquez, V. (in-press work). de ningún lugar, todas, ningún lugar, ni de acá ni de allá: An Appraisal and Deixis analysis of Chilean Exiled Children. Contribution to special edition Languages in Global Contexts 2026, dedicated to Systemic Functional Linguistics in a Globalising World (part II)

Márquez, V. (2025). My PhD Research is Me: An Identitarian Journey as an Exiled/Returned Daughter Researching Exiled Children’s Narratives

https://doi.org/10.21827/mistral.4.42945

Márquez Moreno, V. (2024). Language practices and processes among Latin Americans in Europe: Rosina Márquez Reiter and Adriana Patiño-Santos. London and New York, Routledge, 2023, 264 pp., ISBN 9780367673000. Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 11(2), 231–232. https://doi.org/10.1080/23247797.2024.2421673

Márquez Moreno, V., & Ramírez Fuentes, Y. (2023). Cortar con la Tierra, pero no con la memoria. Análisis del discurso de los relatos de memoria reciente de hijos de exiliados políticos chilenos. Discurso & Sociedad, 17(1), 161–189. https://doi.org/10.14198/dissoc.17.1.7

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