Reported Speech and Ideological Positions: The Social Distribution of Knowledge and Power in Media Discourse

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to analyze the representations in circulation about the social actors that participated in the education-related conflict which took place in Buenos Aires, in September of 2017. We analyze the positions adopted by two of the main newspapers in Argentina, La Nación and Página/12. In order to perform this analysis, we consider reported speech as a discursive mechanism employed by newspapers to establish the ideological framework within which they inscribe the topics they address. Thus, reported speech constitutes a privileged resource to analyze the ideological positionings taken up by these newspapers. We aim at contributing to the analysis of reported speech as a mechanism that regulates which interpretations are possible for a given text through the hierarchization and legitimization of the different voices and stances that a newspaper incorporates.

KEYWORDS:
Reported speech; Ideology; Social actors; Educational practices; Media discourse

RESUMO

Neste artigo, analisamos as representações que foram postas em circulação sobre os atores sociais envolvidos no conflito educativo que teve lugar na Cidade de Buenos Aires, em setembro de 2017. Para isso, questionamos os posicionamentos manifestados nos principais jornais argentinos, La Nación e Página/12. Partimos da ideia de que o discurso relatado constitui um mecanismo discursivo a partir do qual os jornais configuram o marco ideológico no qual se inscrevem a partir das problemáticas que abordam, resultando em um espaço privilegiado de acesso a seus posicionamentos sobre esses temas. Dessa maneira, propomos fornecer ferramentas para analisar o discurso relatado como um mecanismo que regula as possíveis interpretações de um texto através da hierarquia e legitimação de diferentes vozes e posições que ele incorpora.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Discurso relatado; Ideologia; Atores sociais; Práticas educativas; Discurso midiático

RESUMEN

En este artículo, analizamos las representaciones que se pusieron en circulación sobre los actores sociales involucrados en el conflicto educativo que tuvo lugar en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, en septiembre de 2017. Para ello, indagamos en los posicionamientos manifestados por dos de los principales diarios argentinos, La Nación y Página/12. Partimos de la idea de que el discurso referido constituye un mecanismo discursivo a partir del cual los diarios configuran el marco ideológico en el que inscriben las problemáticas que abordan, por lo que resulta un espacio privilegiado para acceder a sus posicionamientos sobre esos temas. De esta manera, nos proponemos aportar herramientas para analizar el discurso referido en tanto mecanismo que regula las interpretaciones posibles de un texto a través de la jerarquización y legitimación de las diferentes voces y posturas que incorpora.

PALABRAS CLAVE:
Discurso referido; Ideología; Actores sociales; Prácticas educativas; Discurso mediático

Introduction

In the City of Buenos Aires, from the end of August until the end of September in 2017, there occurred a series of protests organized by high school students with the aim of showing their disagreement with the government of the City of Buenos Aires over the education reform that the latter wanted to introduce, named Secundaria del Futuro (High School of the Future).¹ The principal reason for the students’ discontent was connected to the internships that last-year, high school students would have had to do in companies or NGOs (non-governmental organizations). The protests were staged in more than twenty public schools and were mainly held as sit-ins, which entails the students staying in an educational establishment until their demands are met.

The matter was reported on by the mass media, particularly by newspapers, which published different pieces, such as reports or articles,² interviews and editorials, on a daily basis, from the day when the first sit-in began in one school on August 29 until the last one was discontinued on September 25. This type of conflict tends to take up a lot of space on the media public agenda, because it challenges the established order and, therefore, the mass media feel they must help put an interpretation on what is happening in order to explain it (TREW, 1979; ZULLO, 2015). This interpretation includes a theory about the events providing a specific ideological framework, within a broader conception of the world, which contributes to their understanding.

In the present article, we are interested in analyzing the representations in circulation while the conflict lasted about the social actors involved in it. To this end, we examine the positions on the matter taken up by La Nación and Página/12, two of the major newspapers in the country, characterized as maintaining editorial stances completely different from each other (DVOSKIN, 2016). We have decided to focus on journalists’ reports, and thus, we chose, out of the total pieces published by each newspaper, six articles evenly distributed between the two: on the one hand, we analyzed the reports published by La Nación on September 9, 12 and 22; on the other hand, we looked into the articles featured in Página/12 also on September 9,12 and 22.

Our research is based on the idea that one of the mostly exploited resources in newspapers to both establish their positionings on the social issues they address and classify the social actors involved in them is connected to the choice they make of the voices and stances they report and the mechanisms they employ to this end (TREW, 1979). Therefore, we aim at examining reported speech inasmuch as it is a discursive mechanism through which newspapers evidence and reproduce specific representations about the world.

1 Theoretical Framework and Methodology for Analysis

Reported speech has been explored from different approaches in the field of Linguistics and Discourse Analysis,³ which has led to its characterization in accordance with syntactic criteria (MALDONADO, 1999) and also along semantic-pragmatic lines (VERSCHUEREN, 1980; CALDAS-COULTHARD, 1992).

We frame our research following Zoppi-Fontana’s (1986) work, with respect to which reported speech constitutes a privileged resource to access the ideological positioning of a text. According to the author, in every act of reporting, two enunciation instances are established, through which the speaker of the reporting text makes an interpretation of both the reported statement and the speaker to whom responsibility is attributed. This interpretation is made apparent through the two constitutive operations of this resource: decontextualization, which consists in the selection and extraction of specific statements from the original text that contains them; and recontextualization, which entails the inclusion of those statements in a new text that frames them.

In line with Zoppi-Fontana, between both enunciation instances there are established structural, representational and communicative relations, which are developed in the text through formal and functional features. We follow her proposal by focusing our study on the analysis of functional features, which are those that give access to, regarding the enunciation dimension, the distance that the text speaker keeps with the reported speaker, and, with respect to the statement dimension, the attitude that the speaker adopts concerning the stance maintained: “The type of information they [functional features] provide is the one that best enables the interpretation, of the original statement and discourse, made by the reporting speaker and implied in the reported speech” (1986, p.104).⁴

In addition, in this work, we also employ Pérez’s (2003) proposal for the analysis of reported speech. Pérez makes a distinction between the speaker and the enunciators. Even when these categories are connected to Ducrot’s (1984) polyphonic enunciation theory, we consider it necessary for our analysis to profit from the reformulation that Pérez makes of such notions, for she conceives of the speaker as the discursive subject to whom the first person marks that do not appear in the reported speech refer and to whom responsibility is attributed regarding the production of the text as a unit. The enunciator, in turn, is presented not only as that to whom a specific enunciation act is assigned, but also, apart from that enunciative interaction dimension, it may be identified as a socio-historical actor.

The analysis of reported speech takes on crucial importance in journalistic reports, given that this is a genre type in which events are reported as per what the speaker has mostly heard from others. This latter feature turns journalists’ speech into indirect speech, while journalistic discourse becomes a genre in which different ways of reproducing the words of others converge (REYES, 1993).

In this article, we analyze reported speech through the identification of which actors are constituted as enunciators in the texts in focus; in addition, we also look at how these subjects are named, how frequently they appear and what types of verbs and stylistic procedures are employed to bring their stances to the fore. Each one of these elements that make up reported speech may give way to a plethora of different meanings, which, in some cases, are contradictory, making it impossible to unveil them if we consider them in isolation. Therefore, we carry out the analysis of how these meanings work in a particular text, due to the fact that only by addressing them as in unison, are we able to determine the effects generated by the use of reported speech.

At a first moment of our research, therefore, we examine which actors are constituted as enunciators in the texts under analysis, and we do so by identifying verbs that point to a prior enunciation act. To this end, we follow the classification put forward by Pérez (2003, p.59) regarding this verb type, which she characterizes considering its capacity to express movements in the responsibility attributed for the speech act:

There can be recognized as speech act verbs those verbs which refer to a verbal act or introduce the discourse of others, independently of syntactic criteria or previous definitions of this lexical class. That is, there have been selected all those which appear as expression of the modality of the movement in the speech act responsibility.⁵

Thus, we distance ourselves from proposals that have characterized this verb class following syntactic criteria, such as by looking at their argument structure or the reported speech style that they admit (MALDONADO, 1999). Instead, we adopt a theoretical approach that focuses on the semantic-pragmatic properties of verbs, given that what we are interested in analyzing is the representations that are in circulation from their concrete use in historically situated statements.

Pérez classifies this verb class according to two criteria. In the first place, she determines which aspect of the enunciation scene the verbs highlight, that is, whether or not they put, in the foreground, the referential function (the state of affairs in the world), the expressive function (the speaker’s attitude with respect to what they say), or the conative function (orientation toward the addressee). Although the three functions are always present in every speech act, some verbs underscore the propositional content they refer to (as is the case with decir - say),⁶ while others center on the enunciator (such as opinar - state/give an opinion) and others stress the relationship with the addressee (as in ordenar - order).

In the second place, the author adds a second criterion which consists in considering the degree of [+/- power] and [+/- knowledge] that is accorded to the enunciator. These values emerge from paying attention to the propositional content and the illocutionary force of the verbs, even when these values change in accordance with the specific use of the verbs in concrete utterances. In fact, this second criterion allows for the differentiation of verbs such as rogar - beg - and ordenar - order -, which converge in the sense that both put the addressee to whom the speech act is directed in the foreground, but they also diverge with respect to the degree of power that is conferred to whom said act is attributed. This criterion is extremely productive to examine the social distribution of power and knowledge based on revealing which actors appear as agents of which types of speech act.

Once the enunciators are identified, we produce a quantitative analysis of their appearance in the texts and of the linguistic forms employed to name them.

At a second moment of the analysis, we examine the verb types employed to bring to the fore the different enunciators in the texts under scrutiny and the stylistic procedures from which the enunciators’ respective stances may be accessed. Considering that the verb type classification proposed aims, primarily, at recognizing a previous enunciation act, independently of the object (the content referred to) or the addressee being obligatory arguments or not, we consider five types of procedures that permit the incorporation into the texts of the discourse of others: direct speech, indirect speech, mixed style, narrative speech and reportative nominalization (PALAZÓN, 2008). Although the assessment they give way to depends on their effective use in each particular text (DVOSKIN & ZUKERFELD, 2017), among the various procedures, we can identify different degrees of acknowledgment of the voices of others and of the different content types expressed in each reported text, spanning from a supposed literal reproduction to a complete omission.

Direct speech reproduces the words of others maintaining the deictic system of the reported enunciator. Between the two enunciations, the reporting one and the reported one, the limits of the reported speech are clearly marked by the use of inverted commas, a dash or introductory verbs that signal the presence of a different enunciation. Direct speech tends to be presented as an accurate reflection of the original text; therefore, the responsibility for the statement and, with it, the assessment made on it, belong to the reported speaker (REYES, 1993):

“Los alumnos no van a trabajar,” aseguró [la Ministra de Educación] Acuña. (P12, 6/9/17)⁷

“The students are not working,” declared [the Minister of Education,\ Acuña.

Indirect speech, in contrast, is presented as a version that the speaker offers about the reported text (GARCÍA NEGRONI & TORDESILLAS, 2001); thus, it tends to indicate, in a more explicit manner, an assessment about the reported words, which assigns the speaker an increased responsibility for what is said. Between both texts, there are not clear boundaries; on the contrary, there occurs a fusion of the voices at stake, which, on many occasions, can give way to ambiguity regarding which is the specific source of what is stated:

Voceros del ministerio señalaron que entre la cartera y los estudiantes el diálogo es permanente. (LN, 9/9/17)

Ministry spokespeople pointed out that there is constant dialog between the administration and the students.

Mixed style, in turn, combines the characteristics of direct and indirect speech (Reyes, 1993), given that it usually employs inverted commas as a mark of fidelity with the original text, but, in general, the deictic system considers the reporting text as reference:

Las autoridades porteñas afirmaron que el documento “carece de toda validez y entidad legal.” (LN, 12/9/17)

City of Buenos Aires Authorities stated that the document “lacks any validity and legal status.”

Narrative speech and reportative nominalization, on the other hand, different from the procedures referred to before, are characterized by the fact that the statement to which they refer is presented totally from the speaker’s perspective; therefore, neither permits recovering the original words of the reported text (GENETTE, 1989). Narrative speech includes the discourse of others in the speech act of the speaker who refers, thus, the verb employed to introduce the viewpoint of others condensates the speaker’s interpretation about the illocutionary act it points to. The discourse of others is presented, in this way, as an action, and as such, it evidences the verbal act or communicative event in a global manner:

Alumnos y docentes rechazan los cambios que impulsa el gobierno porteño. (6/9/17)

Students and teachers reject the changes that the government of the City of Buenos Aires is attempting to introduce.

Lastly, in reportative nominalization, the introductory verb is nominalized, which entails that reported speech is presented as a preexisting fact, therefore, unconnected to the responsibility of the reporting text speaker (GENETTE, 1989):

La protesta [de los estudiantes] comenzó el 29 del mes pasado. (LN, 12/9/17)

The [students’] protest began on the 29^th of last month.

The comprehensive analysis of the different elements that make up concrete uses of reported speech in a specific text allows us to address the multiplicity of relations that the speaker establishes with the diversity of narrators that they bring to the spotlight. More or less closeness creates a hierarchy within the heteroglossic space, a phenomenon which legitimizes some voices and positionings to the detriment of others. Therefore, the speaker configures the ideological frame within which the problem is understood and establishes its positioning with respect to the conflict.

2 Analysis

In this section, we carry out the analysis of the six texts that make up our corpus. As we mentioned in the previous section, such analysis consists in identifying the social actors that are created as enunciators in one and the other newspaper. Moreover, we also examine the ways in which these enunciators are named, and we determine, as well, how frequently they appear and by means of which verbs and stylistic procedures their stances are incorporated in the text.

2.1 La Nación: the Polarized Conflict

The texts that we analyze from La Nación were published on September 9, 12 and 22. In the following chart, we present the data obtained in the analysis:

As it can be seen in Chart 1 above, in La Nación articles, five social actors are constituted as enunciators: students, public officers, the students’ legal counselor (Gustavo Moreno), parents and teachers. Apart from this multiplicity of voices, there stands out the higher frequency of appearance of public officers’ and students’ respective stances against those of the rest of the actors included in the scene. In turn, public officers and students also differ from the rest in the way in which they are classified, since they are named individually and collectively, while the rest of actors either appear in an individual manner, as in the case of legal counsellor Gustavo Moreno, or as belonging to a homogeneous collective, as is evidenced in the case of parents and teachers.

Chart 1
Enunciators, designations, frequency of appearance, verbs and stylistic procedures in La Nación.

Enunciators	Designation resources	FA8	Introductory verbs	SP9
Public officers	El Gobierno; el Ministerio de Educación; voceros del Ministerio de Educación; autoridades porteñas; el mandatario local; la ministra de Educación de la ciudad, Soledad Acuña The Government; the Ministry of Education; spokespeople from the Ministry of Education; City of Buenos Aires authorities; the local functionary; the City of Buenos AiresMinister of Education, Soledad Acuña	20	aclarar (make clear) afirmar, (state), agregar (add) (3), asegurar (declare), desestimar (reject), señalar (point out) (3), señalar10(accuse) indicar (indicate) (2), justificar (justify), remarcar (remark), proponer (propose) (2), prometer (promise), rechazar (reject) (2)	DS: 6 IS: 4 MS: 7 NS: 3
Students	Abril Viladrich, estudiante de sexto año del colegio Nacional Buenos Aires; el presidente del Centro de Estudiantes del Normal 2 Mariano Acosta, Agustín Prieto; Manuel Ovando del Centro de Estudiantes del Lenguas Vivas; los alumnos; los estudiantes; algunos centros de estudiantes Abril Viladrich, sixth year student of Nacional de Buenos Aires school; Normal 2 Mariano Acosta Student Union President, Agustín Prieto; Manuel Ovando from Lenguas Vivas Student Union; the students11; some student unions	18	afirmar (state), considerar (reflect) (2), decir (say) (3), manifestar (express), protestar (protest) (2), rechazar (reject) (6), señalar (point out) (2), sostener (uphold)	DS: 5 MS: 3 NS: 6 RN: 4
Legal counselor G. Moreno	el asesor tutelar Gustavo Morenolegal counselor Gustavo Moreno	7	citar (quote), denunciar (denounce), dialogar (enter into dialog), finalizar (finish saying), intimar (require), precisar (state clearly), señalar (point out)	DS: 4 IS: 1 NS: 1 RN: 1
Parent	Padres Parents	1	rechazar (reject)	NS
Teachers	Docentes Teachers	1	rechazar (reject)	NS

When it comes to public officers, we find that this actor is named in the texts by means of metonymic forms, such as “the Government” or “the Ministry of Education”; also, there are used plural designation resources with no specific reference, as in “Ministry of Education spokespeople” or “City of Buenos Aires authorities”; moreover, there are individualizations that point to people identified by their position and/or name, for example in the case of “the local functionary [Rodríguez Larreta]” or the City of Buenos Aires Minister of Education, Soledad Acuña.”

Similarly, the students are also named in a variety of ways. In fact. They are classified in an individual manner, by means of their name and position, as in “Abril Viladrich, sixth year student of Nacional de Buenos Aires school,” “Normal 2 Mariano Acosta Student Union President, Agustín Prieto” and “Manuel Ovando from Lenguas Vivas Student Union.” They are also presented as a homogeneous collective, evidenced in the use of “the students,” while impersonalizations are also employed, such as “some student unions.”

The next actor with the second highest frequency of appearance is Gustavo Moreno, who is identified by his position as the students’ legal counselor. This actor is mentioned only in the article from September 12, due to the formal complaint he filed after the actions carried out by the Ministry of Education when the sit-ins began.

Last, parents and teachers appear once, in the text of September 22, and both actors are classified as a homogeneous collective.

The higher frequency of appearance of public officers and students, together with the fact that they are named individually and collectively, accords them an evident leading role in the articles published on the schools sit-ins. However, the resources that the speaker employs to bring their respective stances to the fore are different, a phenomenon which evidences different attitudes regarding the positionings the speaker adopts and a different classification of these enunciators.

In Chart 1, we can see that out of the total verbs employed to lay out public officers’ and students’ respective stances, only three of these are used for both: afirmar (state), rechazar (reject) and señalar (point out) (the last one meaning describir / describe), which entails a positive assessment of the person who is responsible for the speech act due to their knowledge about the matter, therefore, there occurs a characterization of them with the feature [+ knowledge] (DVOSKIN & ZUKERFELD, 2017). In the rest of the cases, the verbs used are different. In the following chart, we present the classification of the verb types that appear in La Nación articles and that express movement in the speaker’s responsibility:

In the case of students, their stances are included in La Nación through verbs that do not establish any type of assessment regarding their truth or falsity (KERBRAT-ORECCHIONI, 1980). The use of verbs, such as decir (say), manifestar (announce), protestar (protest), sostener (uphold) or considerar (consider), allows the speaker to include the students’ positioning without committing to their viewpoint, given that there occurs an indication of a stance whose responsibility is placed entirely on the students. As it is apparent in Chart 2, the use of such verbs does not entail a classification neither of this actor’s knowledge about the matter nor of their power to decide.

Chart 2
Verb Types in La Nación.

Expressive Function [K/P]12	Referential Function [K/P]	Conative Function [K/P]
afirmar (state)	agregar (add)	aclarar [+K] (make clear)
asegurar (declare)	citar (quote)	desestimar [+P] (reject)
considerar (reflect)	decir (say)	indicar [+K] (indicate)
denunciar (denounce)	finalizar (finish saying)	intimar [+P] (require)
justificar (justify)	precisar [+K] (state clearly)	proponer [+P] (propose)
manifestar (express)	remarcar (remark)	prometer [+P] (promise)
protestar [-P] (protest)		señalar (acusar) (accuse)
rechazar (reject)		señalar [+K] (point out)
sostener (uphold)

• 1. “One of the things that worry us the most is that [because of the reform] fifth year is to distribute its time between the habitual class attendance and work internships in multinationals that make students enter a job flexibilization mechanism,” reflected [Agustín Prieto].¹³ (LN, 9/9/17)

• 2. [The students] expressed themselves outside the Ministry of Education [Los estudiantes] se manifestaron frente al Ministerio de Educación.¹⁴ (LN, 22/9/17)

In example 1 and 2, we can identify a specific feature that is systematically repeated in La Nación texts: when direct speech and mixed style are employed, which are procedures that presuppose the literal reproduction of the reported content, the students are represented individually. In contrast, when the students are presented as a collective, narrative speech or reportative nominalization are used, which block the recovery of the enunciator’s original words, and instead, the introduced stance is presented entirely from the speaker’s perspective (PALAZÓN, 2008). That is, the students’ positioning is only established when these are individualized, but when they are introduced as an organized collective, their voice is hidden in the guise of an action, which does not permit to advance the arguments that their demand is based on nor is it possible to indicate the addressee to whom their enunciation was directed:

• 3. The students reject the education reform.¹⁵ (LN, 9/9/17)

• 4. The students’ protest started on the 29 of last month.¹⁶ (12/9/17)

Both rechazar (reject) and protestar (protestar) are verbs that bring the enunciator to the fore. The use of narrative speech or reportative nominalization in cases 3 and 4, respectively, gives way to omitting the arguments concerning the rejection and the protest while the addressee of such actions is also erased. As a consequence, what the newspaper highlights is the disruption or transgression of the actions carried out by the students, not the reasons why they began in the first place. As an effect, the students are presented, as a group, only as agents of actions that defy the social order, which, in turn, is a representation that classifies them as guilty.

Different is the representation produced about public officers. The employment of verbs such as aclarar (make clear) or indicar (indicate) to bring into the spotlight their viewpoint puts this actor in a knowledgeable position, which, in turn, legitimizes their stance about the issue:

• 5. From the City of Buenos Aires Ministry of Education, [they] stated: “We are busier trying to get the kids to finish the school sit-ins than thinking about sanctions. But we are looking into the matter.”¹⁷ (LN, 12/9/17)

Moreover, we also find verbs such as proponer (propose) and prometer (promise), which, like the verbs referred to before, allow to appear on stage the addressee to whom the speech act is directed, but, different from the verbs previously mentioned, proponer and prometer evidence the feature [+power], and thus, they present the actor responsible for these actions as a figure with the capacity to decide and to act accordingly, which are qualities that put them in a position of authority:

• 6. City of Buenos Aires public officers promise, in addition, to administratively enquire into Moreno’s complaint.¹⁸ (LN, 12/9/17)

In addition, different from what happens with the students, the use of direct speech or mixed style is not necessarily accompanied by an individual speaker, as can be seen in example 5, in which we find the noun phrase “the City of Buenos Aires Ministry of Education,” which encompasses a group of people.

Another difference that we notice in connection to the way in which the stances of one and the other actor are presented is that, in the case of public officers, indirect speech is employed, as is evident in example 6 or in the following one:

• 7. Ministry spokespeople pointed out that there is direct dialog between the administration and the students.¹⁹ (9/9/17)

This resource blurs the limits between the reporting text and the reported entity, thus it gives way to a deeper involvement on the part of the speaker regarding the stance they bring to the fore. The use of this resource, together with the verb señalar (point out), which credits the enunciator with knowledge about the matter, produces the speaker’s backing of the stance maintained, a phenomenon that brings both speakers in close proximity.

The legitimation granted to public officers’ positioning in the articles from La Nación, both because of their knowledge about the issue and their authority to decide and to act, classifies this social actor as that which knows and can restore the order that the students disobeyed in the schools.

The sharp polarization of the conflict between public officers and students effectively silences the stances taken up by teachers and parents, who are also members of the education community, and therefore, are relegated to a marginal position.

2.2 Página/12

The articles selected from Página/12 were published on September 6, 9 and 22. In the following chart, we present the data obtained in the analysis:

In the texts published by Página/12, there are seven social actors constituted as enunciators: teachers, students, public officers, parents, school deans, a judge whose identity is not revealed and Alejandro Amor, the City Defender.

In Chart 3, we can observe that, different from what happens in La Nación, in this newspaper the stance with the highest frequency of appearance is that of teachers’ (48), which accords this actor a leading role in the conflict. The voice of students, in turn, although it is included considerably less than that of the teachers, is the second most frequent (20), while the public officers’ stance is brought to the fore twelve times. The rest of the actors’ participation amounts to almost nil, with their position being included only in the text of September 9.

Chart 3
Enunciators, designations, frequency of appearance, verbs and stylistic procedures in Página/12.

Enunciators	Designation resources	FA	Introductory verbs	SP
Teachers	Docentes; gremios docentes; Eduardo López, secretario general de la Unión de Trabajadores de la Educación; López; el gremio; Angélica Graciano, secretaria pedagógica de UTE; los docentes; Graciano; docentes de distintas escuelas piloto; Patricia Conway, profesora de la Escuela Normal Superior 6; La docente [Conway]; Conway; Bárbara Orbuch, docente; la docente [Orbuch]; una profesora de la Escuela Comercial 34 de 3.   Teachers; teacher unions; Edgardo López, Secretary General of Education Workers Union (UTE by its initials in Spanish); López; the union; Angélica Graciano, UTE Pedagogical Secretary; the teachers; Graciano; teachers of various pilot schools; Patricia Conway, Normal Superior 6 school teacher; the teacher [Conway]; Conway; Bárbara Orbuch, teacher; the teacher [Orbuch]; A teacher of Escuela Comercial 34 de 3.	48	aclarar (make clear), afirmar (state), agregar (add) (2), añadir (say further), apuntar (indicate), concluir (conclude), contar (tell) (7), criticar (criticize) (3), cuestionar (question) (2), decir (say) (2), describir (describe), dialogar (enter into dialog), explicar (explain) (3), expresar (express), indicar (indicate), manifestar (express), denunciar (denounce), mostrarse en desacuerdo (be in disagreement), opinar (give an opinion), oponerse (oppose), preguntar (ask), rechazar (reject) (4), repudiar (repudiate) (3), recordar (remind) (2), señalar (point out) (2), sostener (uphold) (2), ver (see)20	DS: 18 IS: 9 MS:6 NS: 10 RN: 5
Students	Alumnos; estudiantes; Miles de estudiantes porteños; Federico Echaüe, presidente del Centro de Estudiantes del Normal 1; Santiago Legaro, del Colegio Nicolás Avellaneda; Iñaki García Ribas, del Colegio Nacional Buenos Aires; Antonela Giuso, de la Escuela de Bellas Artes Manuel Belgrano.   Students; Thousands of students from the City of Buenos Aires; Federico Echaüe, Normal 1 Student Union President; Santiago Legaro, from Nicolás Avellaneda school; Iñaki García Ribas, from Nacional de Buenos Aires school; Antonela Giuso, from Manual Belgrado Fine Arts school.	20	advertir (warn), afirmar (state) (2), agregar (add), considerar (consider), contar (tell) (3), criticar (criticize), decir (say), expresar (express), preguntar (ask), protestar (protest), rechazar (reject), mostrarse en desacuerdo (be in disagreement), ratificar (ratify), reclamar (demand) (2), sostener (uphold)	DS: 5 IS: 4 MS:3 NS: 3 RN: 5
Public officers	La escuela del futuro; la reforma; El Ministerio; Acuña; la Secundaria del Futuro; representantes del Ministerio de Educación de la Ciudad; el Ministerio de Educación porteño, encabezado por Soledad Acuña; un documento; el documento; los representantes del Ministerio; funcionarios   The school of the future; the reform; the Ministry; Acuña; the High School of the Future; City of Buenos Aires Ministry of Education representatives; the City of Buenos Aires Ministry of Education headed by Soledad Acuña; one document; the document; the Ministry representatives; public officers;	12	asegurar (declare) (2), apuntar (indicate), contestar (reply), explicar (explain), informar (inform), insistir (insist), negar (deny), proponer (propose) (2), responder (respond)	DS: 2 IS: 5 MS:2 NS: 3
Deans	Rectores   Deans	3	criticar (criticize), expresar (express), manifestar (express)	NS: 2 RN: 1
Alejandro Amor, the City Defender21	Alejandro Amor, el Defensor de la Ciudad   Alejandro Amor, the City Defender	2	comprometerse (commit to), proponer (propose)	NS: 2
Parents	Padres   Parents	2	oponerse (oppose), repudiar (repudiate)	NS: 2
One judge	La Justicia   the Law	1	ordenar (order)	IS: 1

Moreover, the way in which the different actors are named is also different, considering that teachers, students and public officers are classified individually and collectively, while parents and deans only appear as a collective; in addition, the City Defender is individualized with his name and position and the presence of the judge is metonymically inferred by means of the phrase la Justicia (the Law).

This way, different from what happens in La Nación, Página/12 does not present the conflict as a confrontation between two social actors; instead, room is made particularly for teachers’ stance, and, on a secondary plane, students’ and public officers’ respective positionings are included.

In Chart 3, we can see that, on many occasions, the verbs employed to include the voices of the three main actors coincide. In the following chart, we present the classification of the verb types that put into the spotlight the different enunciators’ respective stances:

If we focus on the teachers and the students, we find that, in both cases, their stances are expressed through such verbs as rechazar (reject), criticar (criticize) or mostrarse en desacuerdo (be in disagreement), which bring to the fore the measure proposed by the government and positions both actors as opponents.

However, this role as opponent is qualified when we analyze the rest of the verbs that introduce their stance in the texts. In the case of students, their voice is represented through such verbs as reclamar (demand) and protestar (protest), which, as can be seen in Chart 4, focus on the enunciator’s positioning and show the feature [-power]. Such a feature blocks this actor from resolving the matter on its own. In addition, the students’ voice is introduced by means of reportative nominalizations, which make processes resemble more a material action than a verbal act:

Chart 4
Verb types in Página/12

Expressive Function [K/P]	Referential Function [K/P]	Conative Function [K/P]
afirmar (state)	agregar (add)	aclarar [+S] (make clear)
comprometerse (commit to)	añadir (say further)	advertir (warn)
concluir (conclude)	contar (tell)	apuntar [+S] (indicate)
considerar (consider)	decir (say)	contestar (reply)
criticar (criticize)	describir [+S] (describe)	dialogar (enter into dialog)
cuestionar (question)		explicar [+S] (explain)
expresar (express)		indicar [+S] (indicate)
insistir (insistir)		informar [+S] (informar)
manifestar (express)		intimar [+P] (require)
mostrar desacuerdo (be in disagreement)		negar (deny)
opinar (give an opinion)		ordenar [+P] (order)
oponerse (oppose)		plantear (raise an issue/pose a question)
protestar [-P] (protest)		preguntar (ask)
ratificar (ratify)		proponer [+P] (propose)
rechazar (reject)		responder (respond)
reclamar [-P] (demand)		señalar [S+] (point out)
recordar (remind)
repudiar (repudiate)
sostener (uphold)
ver (see)

• 8. The students’ demand grew during the week.²² (P12, 9/9/17).

Moreover, the students’ stance is also introduced through the verb sostener (uphold) that, similarly to considerar (consider), does not make any sort of assessment on the speaker’s part regarding the knowledge about the matter that the enunciator has. Therefore, there emerges as yet another opinion among all other possible opinions:

• 9. Santiago Legaro, from Nicolás Avellaneda school, considered that “it was a political act, just a facade. Most could not speak.”²³ (9/9/17)

The teachers’ stance, in contrast, is introduced by means of verbs such as opinar, (give an opinion), concluir (conclude), recordar (remind)²⁴ or manifestar (express). Although these verbs do not entail an assessment about the knowledge that the actor responsible for the speech act has, in most of the cases analyzed, they introduce direct speech, which allows for teachers’ voice to be “heard” in the text in a detailed manner:

• 10. “We are not against doing joint tasks with the world of work, but we must do so without missing classes,” López [Secretary General of Education Workers Union (UTE by its initials in Spanish)] gave his opinion.²⁵ (6/9/17)

• 11. “Such a structural reform deserves an in-depth discussion, at least an Education Congress. But here nothing has been debated; a reform was proposed and it will be put into practice in a few months without even them knowing how to do so,” a teacher concluded.²⁶ (9/9/17)

At the same time, differently from what happens with the students, teachers’ position is also taken up by means of verbs with the feature [+ knowledge], such as explicar (explain), describer (describe), aclarar (make clear), apuntar (indicate), señalar (point out) o indicar (indicate), which stress to whom the enunciation act is addressed. The use of this verb type puts teachers in a knowledgeable position, and consequently, legitimizes their stance adopted on the matter:

• 12. “Overnight, we learned that we would be a pilot school for the reform. We got this news as a decision already made, without any room for debate,” explained the [34 de 3 Escuela Comercial] teacher.²⁷ (9/9/17)

Moreover, the position maintained by City of Buenos Aires public officers is presented as a response to the criticism expressed. The use of such verbs as contestar (reply), responder (respond) o negar (deny) to introduce their voice into the texts shows their stance by bringing the addressee to the fore:

• 13. [City of Buenos Aires Minister] Acuña denied that the educational internships proposed for the fifth year entail a form of labor precarization in disguise. (6/9/17)

Minister Acuña’s denial, in example 13, presupposes a previous discourse attributed to those who oppose the reform and to which it responds. In turn, other verbs are employed, such as informar (inform) or insistir (insist), which also highlight the addressee, but are different from the previous ones in that they assess the actor responsible for these speech acts with the feature [+ knowledge]:

• 14. From the Ministry [they] informed that the new high school modality will be applied as from the next academic year. (6/9/17)

In both examples, 13 and 14, there appears the use of indirect speech, a resource that predominates in Página/12 to bring to the fore the voice of public officers, something that is the opposite to what happens with teachers and students, whose positionings are expressed mainly through direct speech. Indirect speech prevents the recovery of the original words uttered by the reported speaker; thus, there is no element in their discourse which is not fused together with the speaker’s perspective.

This way, we see that although in the articles from Página/12 a certain kind of knowledge about the matter is also accorded to public officers, they mostly appear responding to teachers’ criticism, thus losing discursive initiative (RAITER, 1999).

It is the inclusion of teachers’ stance in Página/12 that gives way to the topics that are discussed and the legitimized position from which this discussion is held. The knowledgeable role assigned to this social actor puts teachers in an authorized position to address the matter and their power enables them to act and resolve the issue brought about by the reform introduced by the City of Buenos Aires Ministry of Education.

The students, in turn, are the ones who put forward their demand and organize their protests, but, like in La Nación, do not possess any knowledge about the subject nor are they in a position to act, even when the conflict was made visible thanks to their organization to hold the sit-ins in the schools.

Conclusions

In this article, we formulated two interrelated objectives. On the one hand, we were interested in analyzing the representations, in circulation in the newspapers La Nación and Página/12, about the social actors involved in the sit-ins staged in high schools in the City of Buenos Aires in September of 2017. On the other hand, we sought to contribute elements for the analysis of reported speech as a way to access the ideological positioning of a text.

By examining the articles published about this topic, we were able to determine that each newspaper configures a specific ideological framework with which the events are interpreted. In the case of La Nación, the conflict is construed as a confrontation between two social actors: the students, classified as the ones who provoked the institutional disorder, and the public officers from the City of Buenos Aires Ministry, established as the actor responsible for reinstating the normal functioning in schools. The conflict polarization relegates to a secondary position the rest of the actors involved, such as parents and teachers, who also make up the education community, but who are taken off the scene created by the newspaper.

Página/12, in contrast, puts teachers in the center of the stage, as they play a leading role in the conflict. Even when teachers are presented, together with students, as opponents to the reform proposed by the Ministry of Education, the former differ from the latter in the knowledgeable position they are accorded, which turns them into a legitimized voice. While some knowledge is also attributed to public officers, these respond to criticism and questionings, making the discussion revolve around the axes put forth by teachers.

By analyzing reported speech, we have been able to mark out the positionings that the newspapers take up regarding the school sit-ins, in addition to establishing the representations that the newspapers put in circulation about the different social actors involved. To this end, it was necessary to analyze, in unison, the various aspects making up reported speech, such as the mechanisms employed to name the actors established as enunciators, the verbs that introduce their stances and the stylistic procedures employed to report their respective discourse in the texts. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to determine the effect that the introduction of reported speech brings about, since one aspect of this resource may contribute to producing different, and even opposite, meanings, thus running the risk of performing circular or irrelevant analyses.

We consider it advantageous for language and discourse studies to continue this line of research that looks into the ways that the employment of reported speech entails a mechanism permitting specific interpretations on texts and, in parallel fashion, blocking others. This may constitute a way to approach the social circulation of meanings and their unequal distribution in society.

Pursuing a close study of the verbs that introduce the discourse of others could be a possible path in this direction. Recognizing the variety of semantic nuances that cuts through this heterogenous class of verbs could be useful to identify the subtle shades present in the different modes used to incorporate alternative voices to that of the speaker, which could work as evidence of ideological positionings.

• Translated by Natalia Gómez Calvillo - [e-mail]
• 1
  According to the City of Buenos Aires government webpage (https://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/educacion/secundaria-del-futuro), the goal of this reform was to implement “a high school that adapts itself not only to technological advances but also to the new formats there exist in teaching and learning processes and to society’s future demands.”
• 2
  We employ the terms “article” and “report” interchangeably in the present work.
• 3
  For a thorough account of these studies, please refer to Gallucci (2016) and Repede (2018).
• 4
  In the original: “El tipo de información que proveen [los rasgos funcionales] es el que mejor posibilita inferir la interpretación del enunciado y del discurso originales realizada por el hablante citante e implícita en la cita.”
• 5
  In the original: “Se reconocen como verbos de actos de habla aquellos que refieren un acto verbal o que introducen discurso ajeno, independientemente de criterios sintácticos o de definiciones previas de esta clase léxica. Es decir, se han seleccionado todos aquellos que aparecen como expresión de la modalidad de movimiento en la responsabilidad del acto de habla.”
• 6
  We have decided to leave all examples from the corpus in their original language due to the impossibility to translate them without losing a semantic nuance that is relevant to the objective we have declared in the present article.
• 7
  In the examples from our corpus, we have included, in parentheses, the date of publication and the newspaper from which we took them. We have employed “LN” for La Nación and “P12” for Página/12.
• 8
  Frequency of appearance.
• 9
  Stylistic procedures.
• 10
  When it means acusar.
• 11
  In the Spanish corpus, we find the terms “estudiantes” and “alumnos” for the designation of this collective; however, such distinction cannot be made in English, for both forms are translated as “students.”
• 12
  Knowledge/Power.
• 13
  In the original: ‘“Una de las cosas que más nos preocupan es que [por la reforma] quinto año divide su tiempo entre la cursada habitual y prácticas laborales en multinacionales que ponen a los estudiantes en mecanismos de flexibilización laboral’, consideró [Agustín Prieto].”
• 14
  In the original: “[Los estudiantes] se manifestaron frente al Ministerio de Educación.”
• 15
  In the original: “[Los estudiantes] rechazan la reforma educativa.”
• 16
  In the original: “La protesta [de los estudiantes] comenzó el 29 del mes pasado.”
• 17
  In the original: “Desde el Ministerio de Educación porteño aclararon: ‘Estamos más ocupados en que los chicos levanten las tomas de los colegios que en ir por las sanciones. Pero estamos investigando.’”
• 18
  In the original: “[Los funcionarios porteños] Prometen, además, que investigarán administrativamente la denuncia de Moreno.”
• 19
  In the original: “Voceros del ministerio señalaron que entre la cartera y los estudiantes el diálogo es permanente.”
• 20
  When it means considerar (consider).
• 21
  The position is called, in Spanish, “Defensor del Pueblo de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires” (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Amor).
• 22
  In the original: “El reclamo por parte de los alumnos creció a lo largo de la semana.”
• 23
  In the original: “Santiago Legaro, del Colegio Nicolás Avellaneda, consideró que ‘fue un acto político para la foto. La mayoría no pudo hablar.’”
• 24
  When it points to a speech act and not to a thinking activity.
• 25
  In the original: “No estamos en contra de articular con el mundo del trabajo pero hay que hacerlo sin perder un segundo de clase,” opinó [el secretario general de la Unión de Trabajadores de la Educación] López.”
• 26
  In the original: ‘“Una reforma tan estructural merece una discusión profunda, un congreso educativo por lo menos. Pero acá no se debatió nada, nos bajaron una reforma que se va a aplicar en unos meses y ni ellos saben como,’ concluyó la docente.”
• 27
  In the original: “De un día para el otro nos enteramos que íbamos a ser una escuela piloto para la reforma. Nos la bajaron como algo ya resuelto, sin lugar para discutir nada,” explicó la docente [de la Escuela Comercial 34 de 3].”
• 28
  In the original: “[La ministra de educación porteña] Acuña negó que las prácticas educativas propuestas para quinto año alienten una precarización laboral encubierta.”
• 29
  In the original: “Desde el Ministerio informaron que la nueva modalidad para la secundaria se aplicará a partir del próximo ciclo lectivo.”

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 Dec 2020
• Date of issue
  Oct-Dec 2020

History

• Received
  07 May 2020
• Accepted
  15 Sept 2020