| This dissertation investigates the notion of 'anticipatory discourse' which Scollon and Scollon (2000) define as the study of the ways in which discourse may be used to produce certain actions (or inactions) in the future. The analysis draws from audio- and video-taped data captured in the course of six months of ethnographic fieldwork in a Belgian vocational program preparing long-term unemployed for future work in manual trades. The data documents talk in, about and for the future in various workplace activities (meetings, construction work), representative of the plans, intentions and purposes of the participants. It also traces trajectories of actions, from their anticipation to their performance, allowing the researcher to examine the role of future-orientation and time in processes of recontextualization from discourse to action.; The study proposes a descriptive framework to map how future events are represented in discourse. It contributes to developing a taxonomy of stances speakers can express towards the future, reflecting their degree of knowledge about what the future may hold (from oracular to agnostic) and their degree of agency in shaping it in the desired way (from agentive to fatalistic). Through exploring linkages between anticipatory accounts and situated actions in the data, the analysis moreover establishes that while anticipatory discourses generally assign prospective meanings to future actions, they may also be a key resource individuals employ to generate or avoid producing specific actions. Finally, the analysis shows that when competing models of the future are at play, the future outcomes most likely to be produced are in part dependent on the power relations among participants and on their respective ability to promote, negotiate or impose their preferred view of it.; The study contributes to the understanding of future-oriented discourses and anticipatory behaviors. It shows the importance of studying anticipatory discourses in relation to actions to ground claims that discourse constitutes and shapes social realities. It thus also participates in clarifying the relationships between discourse and action as two modes of meaning production. Finally, the research shows the implications of enlarging the future for individuals whose hopes and plans are restricted by long-term unemployment. |
