Construction of the experience (ideational meaning)

This part of the analysis proposes to investigate how the military discourse con- structs the socio-historical reality and how it presents the social actors in relation to their participation in the events of the last dictatorship. These meanings are inves- tigated in lexico-grammar and rhetorical aspects of the texts, specifically, by way of transitivity and mode (Halliday 1994), overlexification (Halliday 1978; Fowler et al. 1979), argumentation (Van Eemeren et al. 1997), and discursive strategies (Wo- dak 1997, 2000). In this way one can see how certain aspects of the discourse show the options of the agents that construct them – in this case the Uruguayan military officers. The marking of agency through the selection of predicates or syntactic constructions such as the passive voice; the lexical selection and strategies of

฀ What We Remember

positive self-presentation or negative presentation of others, the arguments and rhetoric favorable or unfavorable utilized to present the social actors, represent specific characteristics of the discourse that express the institutional ideology. 11

This analysis identifies the types of verbal processes used in the five selected texts to describe actions and the type of participant to which these actions are attributed. Table 3 shows a summary of the process type selected in each of the texts. The majority of the texts select material verbs that express an action, creation, or event. For example:

(3) the said law has reactivated the attack against the Armed Forces…

(April-May 1987) 12 (4) At the end of May before last, the Consejo Arbitral del Sindicato Médico,

resolved to expulse Tte. Cnel. (SSM) Dr. Nelson Marabotto….

(April-May 1987) 13

Table 3. Representation and agency (Transitivity)

Type of process Material

Relational

Mental

Verbal Existential N

Text 1 14 2 3 1 0 20 January-February 1987

Text 2 11 14 5 4 0 34 April-May 1987

Text 3 20 4 9 2 0 35 April 1989

Text 4 26 18 2 0 0 46 January-April 1996

Text 5 9 8 2 0 1 20 May-July 1996

11. It is necessary to clarify here that discourse is not the only process of expression and repro- duction of memory or institutional ideology.

12. “la ley referida ha reactivado el ataque a las fuerzas armadas…” (abril-mayo 1986) 13. “A fines de mayo próximo pasado, el Consejo Arbitral del Sindicato Médico, resolvió expulsar

al Tte. Cnel. (SSM) Dr. Nelson Marabotto…” (abril-mayo 1987).

Chapter 4. Analysis of editorials of a military magazine, El Soldado (1986–1996) 

Material processes require a participant as an actor or agent of the action they represent. In spite of having selected primarily material process that require an agent, these texts utilize linguistic resources that signal impersonality (e.g.: passive reflexive, passive voice, nominalizations, etc.) in order to avoid directly naming the agent. For example:

(5) Nowadays we are attacked, we are offended, we are incriminated in events already resolved.

(May-July 1996) 14

(6) In effect our Armed Forces, victorious in the struggle against the unpatri-

otic forces of the Marxist subversion were accused of supposed Human Rights violations…

(April 1989) 15 (7) The ethics of the National commission and its impartiality, will continue

to be questioned… (April-May 1987) 16 The use of these linguistic resources permits the dilution of responsibility for the

historical events represented in the texts. Table 4 presents a detailed description of participant choices with material verbs in all texts.

The use of transformations, passivization and nominalization, permit the ob- jectivization and lexification of actions in order to convert them into impersonal participants. In this manner the authors of the texts avoid direct reference to social actors. The effect of this type of text on the institutional audience is the reaffirma- tion of the assumed roles in the grand institutional narrative of the dictatorship. The military officers have the role of defenders of the fatherland and the institutions while the Others, absent participants in the text, have the role of enemies of the fatherland and democracy. By not directly mentioning the agents in the narrative the texts reaffirm the institution’s official version. The authors take it for granted that the reader already knows which actors are responsible for the events.

14. “Hoy en día se nos ataca, se nos pretende ofender se nos incriminan hechos ya laudados” (mayo-julio 1996).

15. “En efecto nuestras FF.AA. victoriosas en la lucha librada contra las fuerzas apátridas de la subversión marxista fueron acusadas de supuestas violaciones a los DD.HH. …” (April 1989)

16. La ética de la comisión Nacional y su ecuanimidad, seguirán siendo cuestionadas “ (abril- mayo 1987).

฀ What We Remember

Table 4. Participants (actor/agent) selected with material verbs

Participants

Inclusive we

They Impersonal N

(the Armed

(+ audience)

Forces)

Text 1 1 0 1 12 14 January-February

(opposition) 1987

Text 2 4 0 3 5 11 April-May

(opposition) 1987

Text 3 2 0 1 17 30 April 1989 Text 4

5 2 4 15 26 January-April

(fallen heroes) 1996

Text 5 1 0 1 7 9 May-July

(opposition) 1996

Although the historical events are described for the most part without directing the reader’s attention to the responsibilities for them, this does not mean that responsibility is not attributed in the texts. Indeed there are specific examples in which the Others are blamed for aggressions towards the armed institution. For example in text 2 (April-May 1987) the enemies of the Armed Forces are mentioned directly,

(8) The ethics of the National Commission [National Commission of Medical Ethics] previously mentioned and its impartiality will continue to be questioned as long as the murderers of the laborer Pascasio Báez are not brought to justice. Pascasio Báez was killed by a doctor and a medical student with an overdose of sodium thiopental, by the orders of the Com- mander of the Tupamaros Movement of National Liberation of the period (21-Dec-1971), who now has public professional activity in our society.

(April-May 1987) 17

17. “La ética de la Comisión Nacional [comisión nacional de ética médica] referida y su ecuanimidad, seguirán siendo cuestionadas hasta tanto no juzguen a los asesinos del peón Pascasio Báez muerto por un médico y un estudiante de medicina, mediante una sobredosis de Pentotal, por or- den del Comandante del Movimiento de Liberación Nacional Tupamaros de la época (21-Dic-1971) y que tiene ahora pública actuación profesional en nuestra sociedad” (abril-mayo 1987).

Chapter 4. Analysis of editorials of a military magazine, El Soldado (1986–1996) 

The Other social actors are the referents of institutional communication in an ex- plicit or implicit manner.

The conversation directed to others [members of the institution] can be obliquely directed, in a wider social context, to the other social actors and in this way, be relevant not only semantically but also pragmatically… One can speak about the others as part of the group that is being spoken to or one can indirectly refer to them.

(van Dijk 1999: 283) 18 The military officers as authors of this social memory assign roles to the other

participants in the events and evaluate their actions directly or indirectly.

The attitudes of the group with respect to its referents, the Others, can be seen in the lexical selection that is used to name the social actors present in the texts. Once the participants are identified, they are classified by a process of overlexification. This process represents the use of a large number of synonymous or almost- synonymous terms. Overlexification points to the areas of intense concern of the producer of a text (Trew 1979).

In text 1 (January-February 1987), the authors give priority to the terms referring to the Armed Forces, for example: retired military officers, military institutions, military officers, military institution, etc. This lexical selection coincides with the aim of vindicating military action during the dictatorship. Emphasis is placed on recuperating the bravery of the heroic deed of the Armed Forces in the war that the Constitutional Power would declare and that would commit the Armed Forces to face the conspiracy against the Fatherland. The institution’s traditional argu-

ment 19 is taken up again. This traditional argument emphasizes the professional- ism and exploits of the military officers and their service to the fatherland and its institutions within the framework of legality.

Text 2 (April-May 1987) shows an almost equal number of terms referring to the Armed Forces and to the subversives. This finding could be explained as a result of the institution’s interest in responding to the open judicial investigations against the Armed Forces through the realization of direct accusations to its enemies.

In text 3 (April 1989), synonymous or almost synonymous terms appear that refer to four participant social actors in the referendum for the repeal of the Law

18. “La conversación dirigida a otros [miembros de la institución] puede estar oblicuamente dirigida, en un contexto social más amplio, a los otros actores sociales y de esta manera, ser relevante no

tan sólo semánticamente sino también pragmáticamente .[ ] Se puede hablar sobre los otros como parte del grupo que se tiene en la mira o indirectamente referirse a ellos” (van Dijk 1999: 283).

19. See the texts produced by the Armed Forces during the 1970s in which the perspective of the institution with reference to the events that led to the coup d’état are presented. Testimonio de una nación agredida and Las Fuerzas Armadas al Pueblo Oriental are clear examples of this type of argumentation in which the labor of the institution in the anti-subversive struggle is exhalted.

฀ What We Remember

of Expiry (green vote members, the Armed Forces, yellow vote members, and the people/nation). These terms are almost equal in number. This lexical selection could be related to the necessity of directly criticizing the opposition at the same time as focusing attention on the Armed Force’s own message in favor of the main- tenance of the law.

In text 4 (January-April 1996), terms referring to the Institution and its allies return to proliferate, in this case the fallen heroes or victims of the sedition. The authors return to citing the institutional narrative’s most symbolic date, April 14th, to re-inscribe the institution’s human losses in the collective memory and to dem- onstrate in this way that the institution’s role in this period was one of soldiers/ warriors that gave their lives for the defense of the institutions. The authors refer to the enemy indirectly, and in this way the text’s emphasis remains on the victimiza- tion of the comrades, on demonstrating the losses of the military institution.

Text 5 (May-July 1996) is characterized by a return to the use of terms referring to the military institution. For example: servants of the Fatherland, we, etc. The authors make almost no direct reference to any social actor, instead the reference is impersonal and general. The government and the sovereign are mentioned as allies but the Others are not mentioned, not even by way of euphemisms or synonyms. The fact the authors do not name the Others also reiterates the politics of non-recognition of a problem and is at the same time a strategy of attack or defense. In this way then the institution’s members are exhorted to maintain silence in response to public demands, such as those made by Senator Rafael Michelini and some organisms of the press that called for the investigation into the fate of the citizens who disappeared during the dictatorship.

As the socio-political context changes the references to social actors through direct lexical selection or by way of synonyms becomes less and less frequent. Ref- erences to social actors move from being direct references to the participants to being abstractions. This shift is realized by way of the nominalization and imper- sonalization of the participants. The Other is substituted by categorizations ac- cording to the institution’s evaluation of the Other as good or bad, for example: subversives, enemies. The Other is also substituted for characteristics related to its ideology or its profession, such as Marxists, doctor, commander.

Construction of the experience (ideational meaning)