Thread: nonmaterial

Hey lads. It's me again. Now I am wondering how could you translate this subtitle into spanish

"the nonmaterial base of discourse"

The context is the studies held in critical discourse analysis and critical applied linguistics. I get the idea, but I am still without a hint of how to put it in a natural way in spanish.

Here there is more context

It is a fragment that has this subtitle, in the section Ideology, Discourse, Truth and Power, from chapter IV "The politics of text" of the book Critical Applied Linguistics, by Alaistair Pennycook.

It talks about the objections Foucault posted to the cannon notions of ideology.
He critiques the common association of power with cominant groups, so that he problematizes the essentialist given conception of power, regarding langauge.
He refuses the stance created by critical modernism that, according to him, has obscured the way forward a plentiful development of critical applied linguistics.

The matter of concern is that the word nonmaterial base is not pronounced anymore, though explained.

Thanx
And Old

"base inmaterial" is not correct?

Good points you've reached over here, I sincerly appreciate your help. Vicente, I'm pretty sure it is not aimed to mean irrelevant, I understand the context, I don't know is what word to use...
What Pennycook (the author) aims is to show the base of discourse that is not drawn on a materialist view of power, language and social relations (e.g. Marx's stances regarding these all), so I think irrelevant ain't fits, but thanx for caring about this.

Andrés...Andrés...this kind of language

so I think irrelevant ain't fits, but thanx

doesn't fit this forum and much less the academic topic you are dealing with.

In regard to nonmaterial, you may have to translate it as:

la base del discurso no materialista/antimaterialista
la base discursiva no conforme con la visión materialista

As you know in Spanish, we need longer sentences to convey in full the meaning of the much shorter sentences in English.

Suerte!

Look what a nice discusson qe have reached over here. Doubtless I made a good decision when signing in in this forum. I am going to make myself clear: I think that the best option so far I aim to use is Cotty's last recommendation, because it is quite clear for me (and it'd be for you if you read the text) it refers to what A. Pennycook is talking about in this pàrt of his text. Nonetheless, for me it is important what Vicente, as a native speaker, is explaining to us over here; that was exactly what logically (by cognates) one would think nonmaterial could mean. Now, my concern is that probably Pennycook aimed to mean nonmaterialistic but by some reason he made up his mind for nonmaterial. I thought not this term could have such an underlying translation dilemma. Once again, thanks so much, mates.

And Old
PS: Cotty, thanks for the corrections about my unpolite english; it's just I love street english as much as I do the academic and polite one; it might well be an equal source of linguistic knowledge and scope.