Nostalgia, entrepreneurship and redemption: discourse models about universities

Abstract

In this work we maintain that upon making the decision to support or reject certain policies on higher education, people tend to use archetypal ways of thinking that go beyond mere Cartesian rationality, also applying archetypal forms of understanding. Recent studies in a variety of disciplines support that in order to understand decision-making processes, attention must be paid to those aspects controlled consciously, as well as those that do not reflect Cartesian rationality models. This research uses the notion of “Prototypes” (Lakoff, 1987) and the perspective of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995a y 1995b) to identify and understand the conceptual category “university”, published in three influential newspapers in the United States of America during a period pf 26 years. More than 1000 editorials and opinion articles were analyzed and made it possible to identify three prototypes about universities: academic nostalgia (which still exists but is not predominant), educational entrepreneurship (prevails, in positive as in negative mentions), and redeeming educational consumerism(emerging trend).