El propósito principal de este artículo es presentar un modelo teórico-metodológico de estudios del discurso desde una perspectiva social e ideológica y precisar el papel de los recursos interpersonales del lenguaje para dar cuenta de la explicación de fenómenos sociales. De manera particular se describe y explica el potencial analítico que ofrece el sistema de valoración para los estudios del discurso. Con el objeto de dar cuenta de una manera comprehensiva de este sistema, se ilustra cada uno de los sub-sistemas (...) y categorías propuestas con ejemplos provenientes de un corpus oral y escrito sobre las prácticas discursivas de transmisión pedagógica de las memorias históricas de un pasado reciente de violación a los derechos humanos cometidos durante la dictadura civil-militar de Augusto Pinochet en Chile. (shrink)

In this article we explore the semantic category of graduation, specifically force, which builds the symbolic dimension of time in historical discourses. Our aim is to provide a more refined and extensive theoretical framework to analyse the symbolic construction of time in historical discourses – one that allows us to take into consideration how social, political and economic processes and events are represented and valued in historical discourses. We propose that this symbolic ‘scenification’ of time is constructed in the discourse (...) by a combination and accumulation of congruent and metaphorical lexico-grammatical resources. In this manner, meanings of quantification of time as duration and sequencing tend to be expressed in a more congruent way, whereas meanings of intensification of time as accelerating, deepening and expectation tend to be expressed in a more metaphorical manner by means of processes and nominalizations. The chronological dimension of time imbricates the symbolic dimension in a way that allows historians and sociologists to legitimate particular historical memories of the recent Chilean past. (shrink)

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. (shrink)