News of a suicide: an evaluative linguistic analysis

Authors

  • Claudio Araya Seguel Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Abstract

This work explores how a case of suicide of a transgender person that occurred in 2019 is discursively constructed in Chilean cyber press texts. From a linguistically oriented discursive analysis, the prominent discursive entities in the texts and the textual voices that evaluate them are identified, in order to examine the social meanings associated with the case. The linguistic analysis is carried out through the evaluation system developed by Functional Systemic Linguistics and focuses on the co-occurrence of evaluative patterns. From this system, three journalistic notes are tracked from three edges associated with the event: the mother's testimony, the responsibility of the school and the judicial scope. Among the main results, there is a condemnation of the school, its authorities and attorneys, built through ethical evaluations from the voices of the mother and some representatives of trans organizations.

Keywords:

News, Suicide, Transgender people, Discourse Analysis, Appraisal System

Author Biography

Claudio Araya Seguel, Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Dr. en Lingüística. Académico e investigador del Departamento de Lingüística y Literatura de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Realiza docencia e investigación en la Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Actualmente dicta cursos en el área de los Estudios (críticos) del discurso, pragmalingüística y Estudios Multimodales. Ha investigado el tratamiento lingüístico de la diversidad sexual en el discurso mediático de ciberprensa. Actualmente investiga la construcción discursiva del proceso constitucional chileno en textos de ciberprensa chilena.