ALT sample

Contrary to the CON sample, the ALT one seems to align with the students’ understanding of the educational conflict, as represented in Figure 6.4.

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Positions Self as Defendants – Duty to protect educations and social rights

Positions Government – Duty to protect and ensure people’s rights

Expands Position of Self – Right to protest Speech acts: Directives

(Social demands)

Storyline: good vs evil (i.e. David vs Goliath). Neoliberalism is evil and detrimental to people and benefits the political and economic elite.

Figure 6.4: Students’ position in the political conflict

By including the voice of the students, the sample of the alternative press frames the story in terms of good vs evil, which immediately legitimizes the actors seeking justice (i.e. the students). This fight for justice is simultaneously framed in terms of a clear disadvantage for the hero, reminiscent of the biblical story of David and Goliath. The students are represented as having the duty to defend public education from a neoliberal system that has restricted social rights, almost to the point of disappearance. Their fight is framed in terms of their Constitutional right to protest, which needs to be ensured by the authorities. However, from their point of view, this right is being neglected and limited due to the government’s own political agenda (right-wing coalition), and is thus often compared to Pinochet’s dictatorship. This comparison serves to legitimize their actions by appealing to democratic values, allegedly absent due to political negligence.

The conflict becomes clearer when analysing the position of the government and the authorities, even though it corresponds to the minority of the motive constructions in this sample (Figure 6.5):

157

Positions Self as Authority – Duty to protect society and enforce the law

Positions Students – Duty to obey

Expands Position of Self – Duty to maintain the current political/economic system

Speech acts: Representatives & Declaratives (exercising authority)

Storyline: social order. The current system is democratic and cannot be threatened by a minority

Positions Government as Authority – Duty to protect and ensure people’s rights

Positions Students – Right to demand reforms undertaken during the dictatorship

Expands Position of Government – Duty to democratize the political/economic system Speech acts:

Representatives & Declaratives (exercising authority)

Storyline: Post-dictatorial society. The current system is illegitimate and the political power has the duty to reform it by listening to the people. Figure 6.5: Government’s position in the political conflict

There is an attempt (however undermined by the attributions of motive and the editorial line of the news report) to a positive self-representation by appealing to the social order and its status as a democratically elected government. The government’s actions are justified in terms of their authority and the way things should be and any attempt to disrupt this order is represented as deviant behaviour. However, as the motive categories explored in the previous sections suggest, there is a clear tendency to negatively frame the attributions of motive to the government by highlighting their political affiliation and similarities to Pinochet’s regime. From the alternative press’ point of view, the government is positioned as follow:

158 There is an overall negative representation of the government based on their inability to comply with their duties, which is suppressed for political gain and conflict of interests. This is why their actions are justified by referring to their objective to cause fear in society or by plainly ignoring the students’ demands so as to maintain social order. Although these motives are achieved through a myriad of different actions and strategies, emotions and conflict of interests do come to the fore as justifications for these actions, becoming commonplaces in this sample. Simultaneously, they tend to draw knowledge and constructions from other discourses, mainly from legal, democratic, moral and (left- wing) populist discourses in order to convey motive. This becomes particularly

significant for the news genre, in which brevity is key and sometimes, motives or meaningful actions can be taken for granted or expressed through deictic relations.

The rights and duties attributed to the students and the government helps understand why the educational conflict is far from being resolved. There are not only ideological struggles that arise from complex relations with our recent past, but there is also a pervasive asymmetrical relationship between the actors involved. Far from being weak, students appropriate social causes as their duty, in order to live up to the historical influence student collectives have exercised in the country since its origins. Their past victories and their determination to eliminate the vestiges of Pinochet’s dictatorship are undermined because of their age, appealing that their contribution to society is abiding by the duties of their role. The government portrays them as abandoning their socially appointed duties and challenging the authorities, regarding them as negligent social actors. In line with right-wing discourses, the government and the favouring mainstream media highlight the narrative of law and order and social obedience as the only way people contribute to keeping the country running smoothly.

4 Summary

Contrary to the analysis of grammatical features in Ch. 5, the topic and positioning analyses did show more differences between the sub-corpora analysed. In terms of similarities, it is important to mention that students’ motives were indeed included in the mainstream press. In fact, almost all categories were found in both sub-corpora (except for one). However, it is the differences that show how motive is used to legitimize and

159 delegitimize the actors’ actions. For instance, while the students were represented as demanding reforms in the CON sample, these reforms were not explained nor described as opposed to the actions undertaken by the government to solve the conflict. On the other hand, the ALT sample negatively portrays the government as protecting a socio-political model set up during the dictatorship, which makes it undemocratic. The students’

demands are framed into a good vs evil narrative, in which they have to defeat the

normalized aftermath of an oppressive and unequal system. More importantly, the fact the motives of these actors can be understood in terms of their rights and duties shows the extent to which the inclusion of motive can legitimize and delegitimize certain actions. Finally, emotions came to the fore once again as motive triggers in the coverage of the student movement. Hence, the analysis provided in this chapter serves as further proof that social practices can be sparked by emotional reactions that have an effect on how actors and actions are legitimized.

The analysis shows that both a grammatical and lexical approach are crucial when understanding motive. However, the sample analysed might be regarded as limited in relation to the size of the corpus. Therefore, the following chapter serves as a final triangulation of the analysis of the news data set as it explores the whole corpus for motive categories rather than focusing on a smaller sample.

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Chapter 7. Accessing motives through corpus