Thesis abstract:

«p»The proposed research project aims to examine the social-semiotic practices in Tagalog-based drug-rehabilitation institutions employing the Therapeutic Community (TC) approach. Specifically, it will describe the social-semiotic resources (i.e., genre, stages, phases, register, discourse semantics, lexicogrammar, prosodic phonology, paralanguage features) construed in counselling and mediated-group interactions and interpret them based on the contexts of the Philippines’ uptake of psychosocial interventions relating to drug addiction and socio-economic and socio-political climate. It will draw from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as a framework of analysis. It will expand on the SFL studies on narrative counselling (Muntigl, 2004), Youth Justice Conferencing (Martin & Zappavigna, 2018; Martin et al., 2009; Zappavigna & Martin, 2014), and the SFL descriptions of Tagalog (Martin, 1983, 1988, 1995, 1996, 2004; Martin & Cruz, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022). The study will also address the linguistic aspect of practical studies on TC practices that is currently under-researched in Philippine psychotherapy field (e.g., Hechanova et al., 2018; Calleja et al., 2020; Allado et al., 2019). To achieve the research aim, the project will collect linguistic data, analyse them using the SFL approaches, and collect ethnographic data to map the social context and use the data for interpretation. The proposed research will contribute to the studies on psychotherapy in a non-European and non-Anglo-centric context and can extend the existing SFL descriptions of Tagalog. The results can be a viable resource for developing research-based training materials for drug addiction interventions in Tagalog. Moreover, the methodology can be used as a primary foundation to influence and improve the psychosocial practices for drug dependence in Asia.«/p»