Graduating political crisis and violence in the discourse of history: The role of Spanish suffixes

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of the Spanish derivative morphology potential for graduating attitudinal meanings regarding the expression of political crisis and of contested meanings of human rights violations in the discourse of recent Chilean History. This study is framed in the typological principles of Systemic Functional Linguistics and in the appraisal system, particularly in the sub-system of graduation. The analysis demonstrates on one hand the productive role of the suffixes -ada and -azo when graduating attitudinal meanings regarding the expression of social and political crisis in the discourse of history. These suffixes can graduate at the rank of the morpheme, word and group and also be involved in an inter-stratal tension that is functioning as an experiential grammatical metaphor that works in combination with a lexical metaphor intensifying time and events in an incongruent manner. On the other hand, the analysis shows that when dealing with traumatic and argued meanings of state terror, extreme degree suffixes -ísimo/a/s play a critical role in the intensification of qualities and in the quantification as amount and extent in a congruent manner. Spanish suffixes can graduate by sub-modification in the lower rank of a word structure instead of at the group structure contributing to the building of constellation of patterns of evoked and inscribed interpersonal meanings in the discourse.

Historical explanations in the Rettig Report: The role of interpersonal grammatical metaphors

“…In applying the analytical tools described in this section, we also follow SFL’s top-down analytical approach, which considers higher levels of meanings as the starting point and the analysis of their realization in the lexicogrammar, under the premises that the relationship between these two strata is dynamically tensioned by resources such as grammatical metaphors, and that lexicogrammatical selections are discursively motivated, according to the specific genre and field in which the semiotic process is taking place. As discourse analysts interested in the representation of processes, events, and social actors involved in historical explanations about a problematic past in Chilean society (Oteíza, 2018, in press; Oteíza et al, 2021; Oteíza and Castro, 2019; Oteíza and Castro, in press; Oteíza and Pinuer, 2019), we aim to demonstrate that lexicogrammatical selections such as modality, ranging from congruent to more metaphoric realizations, actively participate in the positionings negotiated in the text regarding the validity of the historical interpretations proposed and the authors’ role as a voice that legitimizes itself through a variety of prosodically interconnected resources.…”

“…Several studies have addressed the historicization and recontextualization of memories regarding a traumatic past of dictatorships and human rights violations in Latin America through official documents such as textbooks (Achugar, 2008, 2016; Oteíza, 2006, 2009a; Oteíza and Achugar, 2018; Oteíza and Castro, 2019) and official state reports (de Cock and Maturana, 2018; Oteíza, 2009b, 2016; Oteíza et al, 2021; Oteíza and Pinuer, 2010). These studies have considered diverse aspects of the construction of the past, taking into account the negotiation of ideational and interpersonal meanings in texts and their expression in different resources in the lexicogrammar.…”