Temporality in Ethnography of Discourse: Untangling Discursive Knots Related to English Language Teaching at a Public University in Uruguay

Social scientists rarely address temporal issues explicitly, neither when defining a methodology nor when detailing results; nonetheless, aspects concerning it are an intrinsic part of social processes as the existence of subjects occurs within a plurality of times. Thus, when carrying out research to describe the aims and process of teaching English as a foreign language at a public university in Uruguay, a methodology was chosen that would enable capturing the historicity of this object of study. An ethnography of discourse in educational contexts was carried out considering JÄGER's (2003) methodological approach as it entails the development of a dispositive to analyze the complexity of historical, multilayered and contextualized discourses. In my research, I delineated aims focused on three discursive knots that happen simultaneously, at different cross-institutional levels, articulating the teaching of English: 1. The political/university knot (macro level), 2. the knowledge/know-how knot (meso level), and 3. the teaching knot (micro level). The identification of discursive threads by using different research tools (document analysis, semi-structured interviews, surveys, and classroom observations) enabled the study of diachronic and synchronic aspects concerning English teaching and knowledge. In this article, I detail methodological aspects concerning temporality while describing the research process.