School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics
Autumn Research Seminar Series
Deconstructing Galtieri: A Study of Print Media Discourse on Argentina’s Last Dictator, from 1982-1983
Wednesday 16th November 2016
2pm-4pm
Venue: MC2-005
Muireann Prendergast
If print media as forms of “social practice” (Fairclough and Wodak 1997) and “ideological brokers” (Blommaert 1999) are central to discursive formations of nation and identity (Richardson el al 2008), what happens to these representations when media are weakened by state control and censorship?
The 1982-1983 period marked the end of one of the most brutal dictatorships in history, Argentina’s Dirty War, and a difficult period of transition from dictatorship to democracy following its defeat in the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War. Using the theoretical lens of Critical Discourse Analysis and a mixed methodological framework combining qualitative principles of the Discourse-Historical Approach (Reisigl & Wodak 2009) with a quantitative Corpus-Assisted Discourse (CADS) analysis, this paper explores discourses on nation and identity in relation to print media representations of Argentina’s last dictator, Leopoldo Galtieri, during the country’s period of crisis.
Changing discourses on Galtieri are traced over the course of the year (1982-1983), from heroism and constructive nationalism (Wodak et al 1999), to anti-nationalism and finally his exclusion from discourse through destructive macro-strategies (Wodak et al 1999, p.33). To understand this linguistic deconstruction (Derrida 1976) of Galtieri, Wodak’s (1996) “disorders of discourse” and Hall’s (1995) theory of the “sociological subject” are proposed
If print media as forms of “social practice” (Fairclough and Wodak 1997) and “ideological brokers” (Blommaert 1999) are central to discursive formations of nation and identity (Richardson el al 2008), what happens to these representations when media are weakened by state control and censorship?
The 1982-1983 period marked the end of one of the most brutal dictatorships in history, Argentina’s Dirty War, and a difficult period of transition from dictatorship to democracy following its defeat in the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War. Using the theoretical lens of Critical Discourse Analysis and a mixed methodological framework combining qualitative principles of the Discourse-Historical Approach (Reisigl & Wodak 2009) with a quantitative Corpus-Assisted Discourse (CADS) analysis, this paper explores discourses on nation and identity in relation to print media representations of Argentina’s last dictator, Leopoldo Galtieri, during the country’s period of crisis.
Changing discourses on Galtieri are traced over the course of the year (1982-1983), from heroism and constructive nationalism (Wodak et al 1999), to anti-nationalism and finally his exclusion from discourse through destructive macro-strategies (Wodak et al 1999, p.33). To understand this linguistic deconstruction (Derrida 1976) of Galtieri, Wodak’s (1996) “disorders of discourse” and Hall’s (1995) theory of the “sociological subject” are proposed
