(March 2011)
Fernando Francisco Castaños Zuno was born in Mexico City on June 26th, 1951. He has a first degree in physics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), an M.Sc. degree in applied linguistics from the University of Edinburgh and a Ph.D. degree in education from the University of London. He has been awarded various distinctions in Mexico and other countries.
Castaños has worked as an academic since 1976 at three Mexican higher education and research institutions, first the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), Xochimilco, then the National Council for Science and Technology (CONACyT), and afterwards the UNAM. At present he holds a post as a senior researcher at the Social Sciences Institute (IIS) of this university. Here, he conducts research on the nature of discourse and on deliberative democracy. Ha has been a visiting scholar at the UAM, Azcapotzalco, the University of Montreal and the School of Hispanic-American Studies in Seville. During the academic year 2007-2008, he held the chair of Studies on Contemporary Mexico at the University of Montreal.
Fernando Castaños has been a teacher in UNAM’s postgraduate programmes in linguistics and social sciences, as well as in Mora Institute’s postgraduate programme in political sociology. He has given 52 degree courses and participated in various introduction and in-service programmes. He has supervised 33 first degree, masters and doctorate dissertations. At present, he is supervising three doctorate dissertations.
Fernando Castaños has been an invited speaker at academic institutions in México, Costa Rica, the United States, Canada, Spain, Great Britain, Italy and China. He has delivered more than 160 papers in a variety of colloquia and congresses. He will be a plenary speaker at the 11th International Congress of the Latin American Association of Discourse Studies, to be held in Belo Horizonte in November 2011. As an author, co-author or editor, he has published 14 books and 55 articles or chapters.
Castaños has been the head of several entities and programmes, including UNAM’s Foreign Language Centre (CELE). He has also held more than 60 honorary posts in different institutional coordination bodies, editorial boards, academic associations, civil organizations and evaluation committees. At present, he is a co-director of the journal Discurso: teoría y análisis. He is also a member of the Anglo Mexican Foundation’s board.
Thematic fields
From the beginning of his academic life, Fernando Castaños has been interested in understanding how the use of language moves and commits human beings. He has investigated the micro dynamics of meaning features that are triggered when Shakespeare deliberately uses one pronoun instead of another. He has also studied the macro dynamics of meaning aggregates that arise when deliberation becomes part of a country’s decision-making processes.
Castaños has researched scientific discourse, classroom interaction and social and political culture. He has studied text corpora, performed qualitative analyses of interactions, carried out quantitative analyses of surveys and undertaken theoretical reflections.
Among his recent writings, two book chapters, one published and one to be published, as well as a research report can be mentioned: La deliberación: origen de la obligación moral de cumplir la ley (Deliberation: origin of the moral obligation to obey the law); Complejidad pronominal (Pronoun complexity); Evaluación de la competencia comunicativa en inglés de pilotos aviadores (Evaluating air pilots’ communicative competence in English).
Fernando Castaños is now concentrating on the formulation of ontological, epistemological, theoretical and methodological principles that can constitute the axis of a science of discourse.
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