482063

2013
DAS24410.1177/0957926513482063Discourse & SocietyGarcia-Marrugo

Article

Discourse & Society

Whats in a name?The 24(4) 421445

The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0957926513482063
in the internal conflict in the das.sagepub.com

Colombian press

Alexandra Garca-Marrugo
Macquarie University, Australia; Universidad del Norte, Colombia

Abstract
This article examines the linguistic patterns associated with the forms of representation of Marxist
guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries, the main illegal actors in the internal Colombian conflict, on
the reporting in the Colombian press of their violent actions. The analysis is based on a 300,000+
word specialised corpus of hard news reports on the conflict from four major Colombian
newspapers. The analytical tools used are Van Leeuwens network for the representation of
social actors and an adaptation of Hasans cline of dynamism. In addition, the epistemic modality
of ownership of the crimes reported is examined. The results reveal remarkable differences in
the reporting of the actions of both groups.

Keywords
Differentiation, dynamism, guerrillas, hard news, linguistic patterns, paramilitaries

Introduction
This article examines the forms of representation of illegal actors in the internal conflict
in the Colombian press. With the second highest number of internally displaced people
in the world after Sudan, more fatal victims than all Latin American military dictator-
ships combined (Viera, 2009), and serious global ramifications such as the illicit drug
trade, it is clearly an issue worthy of attention. The results presented in this article are
part of a doctoral research project aimed at identifying linguistic patterns in the reporting
of violent actions committed by Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries in four

Corresponding author:
Alexandra Garca-Marrugo, Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109,
Australia.
Email: alexandra.garcia@students.mq.edu.au

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422 Discourse & Society 24(4)

major Colombian broadsheet papers. The purpose is to establish whether there is a cor-
relation between these patterns and the generalised perception of paramilitaries as self-
defence forces protecting the population from guerrilla attacks in the absence of the
State. Contrary to this perception, human rights violations records show that paramilitar-
ies are responsible for at least 75% of the killings in the conflict (Comisin Colombiana
de Juristas (CCJ), 2007).
Examining the media in order to attempt to find at least a partial explanation of this
disparity between public perception about the conflict and the statistical evidence seems
appropriate, especially considering the fact that a large majority of Colombians (up to
90% according to Ipsos/International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 2009) have
not experienced the conflict directly. Hence, it is fair to assume that their main source of
information about it is the mainstream media, whose portrayal of events, despite claims
of objectivity, does not consist of raw facts, but is rather an interpretation of events
from the perspective not of the journalist as an individual, but as a member of a dominant
institution with a particular set of beliefs and interests (Fowler, 1991). As Bell (1998: 64)
points out:

. . . the media are important social institutions. They are crucial presenters of culture, politics
and social life, shaping as well as reflecting how these are formed and expressed. Media
discourse is important both for what it reveals about a society and because it also itself
contributes to the character of society.

The inequalities, injustices and prejudices of a society are bound to be evident in the
medias construal of events and social actors. Members of the society sharing these val-
ues are likely to accept these as objective representations of reality because these inter-
pretations have been normalised in the everyday language used to construe them. For
instance, most Colombians seem to be blind to the oxymoronic nature of a headline such
as Otra masacre de las autodefensas (Another massacre by the self-defence forces).
Using the word self-defence, with its clear denotation of legality and inalienable rights,
to denominate a group that massacres helpless peasants on a regular basis is probably
inconceivable in other societies. Yet this collocation produced almost 10,000 Google hits
from Colombian pages. It is precisely because of the daily repetition of this type of lin-
guistic pattern in media texts that ideologies such as the legitimation of violence by one
of the armed groups in the conflict can be successfully assimilated and reproduced in
society (Fairclough, 1989: 54).
This study clearly falls within the scope of critical discourse analysis (CDA), a disci-
pline which, among other goals, aims to unpack the ideological content of socially rele-
vant texts through linguistic analysis. Aided by tools and concepts from corpus linguistics
(CL), this work is solidly grounded in systemic functional linguistics (SFL henceforth),
which, according to Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999: 139), is the linguistics theory
which has most in common with CDA and most to offer to CDA. This article focuses
mainly on the realisation of experiential meanings (Halliday, 1978), more specifically
the participants and processes associated with them. The specific analysis tools employed
are the concepts of differentiation and indifferentiation from Van Leeuwens (1996)

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Garca-Marrugo 423

network for the representation of social actors and an adaptation of Hasans (1985) cline
of dynamism.
Before delving into the theoretical concepts already briefly outlined, or their applica-
tion to the analysis of the reporting of the conflict, it is important to gain some under-
standing of the conflict itself and the complex network of political, economic and
territorial interests at stake; for discourse analysis is essentially historical: language
cannot be interpreted without understanding what is going on in a particular social and
political context (Fowler and Marshall, 1985: 5).
Rather than a report of statistics, the following section recounts one of the most tragic
attacks on the civilian population, the Bojay massacre. This event was selected not only
because it illustrates the role of all the legal and illegal actors in the conflict, but also
because it marked an historical break in the treatment of guerrillas and paramilitaries by
the State, the civilian population and even the international community. In addition to
providing a detailed context for the analysis, it explains the motivation for conducting
this research.

Context and motivation

On the disturbingly long list of war crimes committed in the internal Colombian conflict,
the Bojay massacre in the Choc province stands out not only because of its devastating
consequences, but also because it illustrates the complexity and level of degradation of
the conflict. In early May 2002, Colombians were shocked by the single most deadly
event in the history of the 40-year-old conflict: over a hundred people, mostly women
and children, had been killed by a homemade mortar launched on a rural church by the
leftist guerrilla Farc.1 The event was presented by the media as genocide, quoting the
then President of Colombia, Andrs Pastrana, who asked for international condemnation
of the insurgents. The tragedy not only made international headlines, but had serious
repercussions as well. The European Union relinquished its hopes for a negotiated solu-
tion to the conflict and decided to add Farc to their list of terrorist groups, which they had
refused to do even after this guerrillas inclusion in the US list released after the 9/11
attacks. This ended an era of Farcs diplomatic visits to the Europe, where members
presented themselves as Robin Hoods fighting for the rights of the oppressed classes
(Carroll and Brodzinsky, 2007).
Nationally, the attack made the possibility of re-negotiating for peace with guerrilla
groups inconceivable. For the past three years, the Farc had enjoyed a 42,000 km2 demili-
tarised area as part of the conditions for a peace process with the government. Yet this had
been used as a sanctuary for retreat following increasing attacks on the military and the
civilian population alike. The negotiations were unilaterally ended by the government in
February 2002 after the guerrillas hijacked a plane to kidnap a senator. Most of the presi-
dential candidates in the ballot to be held at the end of May of the same year had been
promising to start the peace process anew, this time with clear guidelines and the effective
supervision of international bodies such as the United Nations (UN) and the Organization
of American States (OAS), but the images of the broken Christ among the carnage in the
ruins of the Bojay church changed everything. The winner was Alvaro Uribe, who never
participated in the peace process and advocated for a get-tough military stand against the

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424 Discourse & Society 24(4)

guerrillas. At the same time, he started peace negotiations with the right-wing paramili-
tary, who had committed at least three times more murders than the guerrillas (CCJ, 2007),
and who also played a major role in the Bojay massacre.
Bojay is a humble riverside settlement in the province of Choc, a rainforest area in
mid-western Colombia bordering the Pacific Ocean and Panam. While 80% of its popu-
lation, mostly of African and indigenous descent, lives in poverty (Bonet, 2007), the
region is extremely rich in biodiversity; palm oil plantations; mineral resources such as
oil, gold and platinum; and a vast hydroelectric potential; all in the hands of multina-
tional corporations. In addition, its strategic location makes it a coveted target of illegal
armed groups for drug trafficking and weapon smuggling (Richani, 2005). With so many
economic interests at stake, the region is no stranger to violence; the massacre of 2002
was the deadly climax of a plot that had been developing since at least the late 1990s.
In May 1997, paramilitaries of the Peasant Self-defence Forces of Crdoba and Urab
(ACCU, Spanish acronym) murdered 22 civilians in different villages along the Atrato
River in the provinces of Choc and Antioquia. Their aim was to obtain information
about a guerrilla front which had ambushed a military patrol and kidnapped 10 soldiers.
They suspected the guerrillas were hiding in the area with the cooperation of the civilian
population. The murders were their way of announcing their control over the area and
warning of the consequences of aiding the guerrillas. The massacre continued, but the
death toll cannot be calculated since the paramilitaries not only threw the bodies in the
river, but forbade anyone to recover them and bury them. Unlike the widespread cover-
age of the 2002 massacre, these events barely reached a regional newspaper and gener-
ated no response from the office of the governor of the time, Alvaro Uribe (Ferrer and
Restrepo, 2010).
The paramilitaries continued to hold power over the area with the complicity of the
local authorities (Colombian Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights (OACNUDH), 2002) through the strict control of incoming fuel and food,
as well as massacres aimed at generating terror among the population and selective mur-
ders. Yet in 2000, Farc attacked the police station in Viga del Fuerte, located across the
river from Bojay, killing 21 officers some of whom were mutilated and nine civil-
ians, accused of cooperating with the paramilitaries. The event was qualified as barbaric,
and the military did not hesitate to question the validity of the peace negotiations in
progress with the government. The press and the media in general covered the aftermath
in detail, highlighting the brutality of the attack.
In late April 2002, the paramilitaries tried to regain control of the region. A group of
250 paramilitaries arrived in Viga del Fuerte by boat, suspiciously escaping detection by
three military posts in the river. Again, they announced a cleansing operation to rid the
area of guerrilla aides. The Red Cross, the UN and the Ombudsman repeatedly alerted
the government to the imminent tragedy, but were completely ignored. The guerrillas,
determined not to lose control of the area, attacked the paramilitaries, who were greatly
outnumbered. These fled across the river to Bojay, where people had sheltered in the
local church, the only cement structure in the village. The paramilitaries tried unsuccess-
fully to enter the church and continued to repel the attack from its surroundings. The
guerrillas launched several mortars, one of which landed in the altar of the church. The
survivors woke up in a pool of flesh, blood and debris. The difficulty in gathering scat-
tered body parts set the initial body count at 119, but this was later confirmed as 79. The

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Garca-Marrugo 425

army did not arrive in the area until four days later, when the image of a crying general
holding a bloodied baby shoe exploded in the consciousness of Colombians.
The Choc situation not only illustrates the complexity of the Colombian conflict, but
shows a distinct pattern of concealment and indifference towards paramilitary violence
and indignation and outrage at guerrilla actions. An initial version of the events pub-
lished in the press placed the paramilitaries in the area with the purpose of rescuing a
kidnapped governor (El Pas, 2002); later, the coverage completely omitted their role in
the tragedy, focusing on the guerrillas as those solely responsible. The UN report on the
events, however, disagreed, assigning most of the blame to the guerrillas, but also accus-
ing the paramilitaries of using civilians as a shield in the confrontation and the State for
failing to protect its citizens despite the repeated warnings. Yet in the minds of the public,
Farc were the only culprits.
This trend in public opinion is not limited to the case of the Bojay massacre, but to
the conflict in general. Two different polls showed that, to a significant percentage of
Colombians, paramilitaries were only minor agents in the conflict, defending areas aban-
doned by the State from guerrilla violence (Ipsos-Napolen Franco, 2007; Urtak, 2010).
Despite the 5000 killings committed during the peace negotiations with the paramilitar-
ies, there were no public outcries calling for an end to the dialogue. The peace commis-
sioners response to the denouncement of their violations of the truce by the UN and
human rights organisations was that the ceasefire is a metaphor that needs to be handled
with a lot of flexibility (Galln, 2011). The mitigation, concealment and legitimation of
paramilitary violence in the mainstream media suggested by preliminary studies (Garca,
2008, 2012; Pardo, 2005, 2007) may contribute to the perpetuation of a social model
where the fight against terrorism is used as an excuse to expand the economic and territo-
rial power of the ruling classes at the expense of the life, integrity and basic rights of the
common citizen.

Corpus and analytical framework

In the field of the social sciences, and particularly in CDA, it is widely accepted that
mass media and the apparatus of reaching out to collective minds gain a central role in
proliferating, topicalizing, de-topicalizing and creating knowings and/or beliefs
(KhosraviNik, 2009: 478), which has made media discourse a central object of study
within the discipline. This influence in society is largely, although not exclusively,
achieved through language. Media representations of events in the outside world are
necessarily encoded in language. As powerful as visual images are, they cannot be inter-
preted without the help of linguistic cues. This process of encoding and interpretation is
not the product of a single isolated individual, but one that involves and reflects the value
systems of a society. This has been referred to as the social construction of reality
(Berger and Luckman, 1967) or the construal of experience through meaning (Halliday
and Matthiessen, 1999). As Bennett (2003: 45) explains:

The objects of which language speaks are not real objects, external to language, but
conceptual objects located entirely within language. The word ox, according to Saussures
famous example, signifies not a real ox but the concept of an ox This is not to deny that there
exists a real world external to the signifying mantle which language casts on it. But it is to

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426 Discourse & Society 24(4)

maintain that our knowledge or appropriation of that world is always mediated through and
influenced by the organizing structure which language inevitably places between it and ourselves.

In the case of the reporting of the conflict, the layers of signifying mantles pile up
starting from the witnesses and/or authorities accounts of the events, the journalists
account based on that information and occasionally his/her own observations, and the
editors revisions to the journalists text. Hence, the final product is a hybrid displaying
to different degrees the interpretation of the events of the sources and the institution
providing the information to the public, which ultimately contributes to the establish-
ment of a socially shared set of beliefs on the issue being reported.
As already mentioned, these forms of interpreting the world or ideologies are not the
result of one text, let alone one lexico-grammatical feature such as agent deletion or pas-
sivisation. Instead, they are the result of a syndrome of patterns across an increasing
number of texts. Whorf (1956) explored the connections between language and cultural
behaviour, contrasting Hopi and Western European attitudes to time, space and matter
and how they are construed in language, concluding that:

They do not depend so much upon ANY ONE SYSTEM (e.g. tense, or nouns) within the
grammar as upon the ways of analyzing and reporting experience which have become fixed in
the language as integrated fashions of speaking and which cut across the typical grammatical
classifications, so that such a fashion may include lexical, morphological, syntactic, and
otherwise systemically diverse means coordinated in a certain frame of consistency. (p. 158)

If concepts that appear as common sense and uncontroversial as time and space are
understood by communities in the light of the language spoken as manifested by a net-
work of linguistic features, then it can be assumed that the interpretation of complex
social phenomena such as the Colombian conflict is also largely influenced by the way it
is described and talked about.
The concept of ideology manifested in a set of linguistic patterns or fashions of
speaking is taken up by several linguists including Hasan (1996: 148), who refers to a
configuration of patterns in rapport with each other to explain the genesis of attitudes
towards womens work. Butt (1983: 34, 1988) refers to a semantic drift as the kind of
meanings to which the readers attention is being drawn. Hence, in order to establish
that an ideology minimising paramilitary violence is being reproduced in the Colombian
press, it is necessary to uncover a consistent set of lexico-grammatical patterns
backgrounding their role in the conflict.
For this article, the focus will be on three aspects: how guerrillas and paramilitaries
are named; what participant roles are assigned to them; and how they are introduced (or
not) in descriptions of violence. To answer the first question, concepts from Van
Leeuwens (1996) system network for the representation of social actors will prove use-
ful. This author maps the options through which social actors are included in or excluded
from discourse. One of these options is the dichotomy differentiation versus indifferen-
tiation. The first term refers to a form of inclusion that explicitly differentiates an indi-
vidual social actor or group of social actors from a similar actor or group, creating the
difference between self and the other, or between us and them (p. 52). Hence,
indifferentiated forms make it impossible to distinguish between similar actors or groups,

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Garca-Marrugo 427

creating the potential for concealment of responsibility, over-generalisation and

mystification.
The analysis of participant roles is grounded in the concept of transitivity from an SFL
perspective; that is to say, on the type of process expressed with the participants in
this process, animate and inanimate, and with various attributes and circumstances of the
process and the participants (Halliday, 1967). To this end, Hasans (1985) concept of
dynamism will be applied. Dynamism is defined as the quality of being able to affect the
world around us, and of bringing change into the surrounding environment (p. 45). A
participant is said to have a more dynamic role depending on the type of process and the
impact of this process on other participants. Thus, a participant carrying out a material
process (e.g. run, cook) will be more dynamic than one carrying out a verbal process (e.g.
say, tell), for instance. Likewise, a participant acting on an animate entity will be more
dynamic than one acting on an inanimate one.
While the analysis of dynamism has the participants as a starting point, it is also nec-
essary to complement this perspective with the process. Thus, the most common pro-
cesses expressing violence asesinar (to murder) and matar (to kill) were examined to
determine what kind of participants (if any) were assigned to them.
In order to be able to make claims about the potential influence of the media in the
reproduction and dissemination of this particular ideology, the analysis of a few texts
will not suffice. It is necessary to build a specialised corpus, according to a list of criteria,
that will ensure appropriate representation for the phenomenon under study. The use of
specialised corpora is already a standard practice in discourse studies (see Baker, 2006;
Baker et al., 2008) and their analysis from a systemic functional perspective is gradually
gaining relevance (see Bednarek, 2010; Hunston and Thompson, 2006).
The corpus for this study consists of 554 news reports on violent acts committed
by either guerrillas or paramilitaries from the major newspapers of the four largest
Colombian cities: El Tiempo from Bogot; El Colombiano from Medelln; El Pas
from Cali; and El Heraldo from Barranquilla. The news reports were selected based
on the number of victims, their prominence, or their representativeness as members
of a particularly targeted social group (i.e. unionists, community leaders, journal-
ists). The reports were classified first according to the perpetrator of the violent act
(guerrillas or paramilitaries), and second according to the time period of the publi-
cation (19982002 or 20022006). In order to establish a limit to the number of
reports for each subcorpus, the concept of saturation (Teubert, 1999), or point of
diminishing returns (Matthiessen, 2006), was adopted. This point is reached once
the number of word types remains stable or shows little variation despite an increase
in the number of tokens. Matthiessen (2006: 108) suggests a limit for specialised
corpora of 15,000 words. The saturation measure based on the number of type and
tokens for these subcorpora was established between 15,000 and 20,000 words,
equivalent to 30 to 40 texts.
Each text was named with the initial of the newspaper where it was published (C for
El Colombiano, H for El Heraldo, P for El Pas and T for El Tiempo) followed by the
initial of the perpetrator (G for guerrillas or P for paramilitaries) and 1 or 2 depending on
whether the report was published in the first time period for analysis (19982002) or the
second (20022006). This three-character combination was followed by an underscore
and the date of publication in the year.month.day format and another underscore

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followed by a keyword such as the location of the event or the name of the victim. For
illustration purposes, the news report on the paramilitary massacre in El Salado
published in El Heraldo on 23 February 2001 was named HP1_2001.02.23_SALADO.
The following section explains the results of the analyses carried out.

Representation of the illegal actors in the Colombian

conflict
This section aims to answer the following question: How are the illegal actors in the
internal conflict represented in the Colombian press? Part of this representation consists
of how these are identified, named or referred to linguistically. As Hodge and Kress
(1979: 5) point out, Whatever has a name can become familiar, and is easier to classify
and remember. Only what has a name can be shared. Hence, the different names assigned
to the illegal actors are a significant factor in the publics perception of their role in the
conflict.
Using Van Leeuwens (1996) socio-semantic categories, it will be determined how
frequently guerrillas and paramilitaries are included in the discourse, and how explicit
this inclusion is. Furthermore, the level of dynamism (Hasan, 1985: 46) of specific forms
of inclusion will be examined. And finally, it will be established how frequently and in
what ways the illegal actors are included in relation to the social activities of murdering
and killing. In other words, the goal is to obtain a picture of how violent actors are
named in general, what type of activities they are assigned when referred to explicitly,
and whether they are excluded or included (and if so, how explicitly) when violence is
described.
It might be useful to start by defining the terms in question. The word guerrilla, liter-
ally translated as small war, originated in the 19th century in reference to the Spanish
resistance against Napoleon (Laqueur, 1975). It is defined by the Espasa-Calpe Spanish
Language Dictionary (2005) as:

1. a group of armed civilians not belonging to the regular army, who fight attacking the
enemy by surprise and in skirmishes, thanks to their knowledge of the terrain;
2. this warfare technique.

This definition separates guerrillas from official State armies; however, it does not
specify who the enemy are or what their motivation or goals might be. A look at a special-
ised dictionary may help clarify the term. Verri (1988) describes guerrilla warfare as used
in national liberation wars, as well as in non-international armed conflicts by dissident
armed forces or organised armed groups who act with aims to change by arms the States
constitutional order. Hence, the illegality of the group is inscribed in this definition.
The word paramilitary, on the other hand, was coined in 1935 in France to refer to
the fascist-leaning leagues rioting for the imposition of an authoritarian regime (Jenkins,
2006). While its origins denote clear far-right tendencies, the definitions offered by dif-
ferent dictionaries are void of such connotations, for instance civil organisation with
military-like structure or discipline (Espasa-Calpe, 2005). The Greek prefix para

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Garca-Marrugo 429

means both alongside, near, beside and against, contrary, but given other uses such as
paramedic or paralegal, it is more likely to be interpreted as the first. Furthermore, the
specialised definition clearly categorises it as an organisation with legal functions: organ
of a party in conflict that, incorporated to its armed forces, is in charge of keeping public
order (Verri, 1988).
Combining manual analysis with frequency lists obtained with the freeware Antconc
3.2.4 (Anthony, 2011), a list of synonyms, meronyms2 and superordinates3 of these two
terms was compiled. On the frequency list of each guerrilla subcorpus, the most common
lexical word was FARC (also Farc), the Spanish acronym for Armed Revolutionary
Forces of Colombia, with up to 70 instances per 10,000 words. Given that each text is
about 500 words long on average, this figure means that the word Farc statistically
appears three to four times per report.
The paramilitary subcorpora offer a more heterogeneous picture. In El Colombiano
(CP1 and CP2), the most frequent term is autodefensas (self-defence forces). The
word not only denotes legality, but also an inalienable right. While it could be argued
that this use stems from the groups self-proclamation as United Self-defence Forces
of Colombia (AUC, Spanish acronym), the Farc are never referred to as revolution-
aries, which has strong positive connotations. The acronym AUC (also Auc) is the
most common term in El Pas (PP1 and PP2), and paramilitares in El Heraldo (HP1
and HP2). In El Tiempo, in the first period (TP1) the most common term is autode-
fensas, and in the second period (TP2) it is paras (short for paramilitaries). None of
these terms rank as the most frequent lexical word in any of the subcorpora, and their
normalised (instances per 10,000 words) frequencies on average reach only 35
instances in the first period and 25 in the second, that is to say, between two and three
instances per text, approximately half the number of times the guerrillas are
mentioned.
In addition to these, around 50 different terms were found to refer to guerrillas and
paramilitaries. This is not counting the proper nouns referring to specific members of
these organisations. Based on Van Leeuwens (1996) network for the representation of
social actors, it was established that these terms could initially be classified into two
large groups: differentiated and indifferentiated terms. The criteria for differentiation
was whether or not the term indicated to which of the two types of illegal actors identi-
fied in the Colombian conflict the group or member belonged. For instance, in (1), the
term used hombres armados (armed men) could refer to either guerrillas or para-
militaries, while insurgentes (insurgents) in (2) clearly shows the affiliation of the
illegal actors.

(1) CG1_2001.07.19_GRANADA.txt
. . . hombres armados asesinaron a las hermanas Claudia, Nancy . . .

armed men murdered the sisters Claudia, Nancy

(2) CG1_1999.06.10_PLOMO.txt
. . . de los cilindros cargados con explosivos que los insurgentes lanzaron en su arremetida.

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430 Discourse & Society 24(4)

of the explosive loaded cylinders that the insurgents launched in their attack.
The differentiated terms were further sub-classified into generic and specific. The
differentiated generic category covers terms that apply to all the different groups of the
same ideology. For instance, paras (short for paramilitaries) and autodefensas (self-
defence groups) apply to members of any paramilitary organisation, but AUC and ACCU
refer to particular groups. The first are differentiated generic terms, and the latter,
differentiated specific, as seen in examples (3) and (4).

(3) HP1_1998.10.26_ROSARIO.txt
Paras matan a 20 en Bolvar.

Paras kill 20 in Bolvar.

(4) HP1_2000.02.24_LASIERRA.txt
Entre tanto, las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC, en carta abierta al Director del CTI,
Pablo Elas . . .
Meanwhile, the United Self-defence Forces of Colombia, AUC, in an open letter to the CTI
director, Pablo Elas

As their military structure suggests, each guerrilla or paramilitary organisation is

divided into smaller units that operate in assigned territorial areas. These are called
bloques (blocs) covering large regions of the country, subdivided into frentes (fronts) or
comandos (commands) which control smaller areas and carry out military attacks. While
all terms apply to both types of organisation, bloc is more frequently associated with
paramilitary groups, and front with guerrillas. Since these terms denote parts of the
larger organisation, they were grouped under the heading meronyms. In the reporting
of the events of the conflict, the specific unit responsible for the attack may or may not
be specified in the text, as seen in (5) and (6).

(5) PG1_2000.09.18_CORREDOR.txt
Ya hace un mes en un ataque del 13 Frente de las Farc, los subversivos destruyeron el cuartel . . .
A month ago, in an attack of Farcs 13 Front, the subversives destroyed the headquarters

(6) PP1_2000.07.22_TIMBA.txt
. . . fuertemente armados y pertenecientes, segn testigos, al bloque Farallones de las Autodefensas
Unidas de Colombia . . .
heavily armed and belonging, according to witnesses, to the Rocky Peaks bloc of the United
Self-defence Forces of Colombia

This level of specificity in the reporting depends largely on the information provided
by official military forces, and, once established, it adds to the level of certainty of the
knowledge about those responsible for the event, or its epistemic modality (see Bednarek,
2006) or status (Hunston, 2011). In other words, once a particular military unit has been

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Garca-Marrugo 431

pinpointed as responsible for an attack, it is hard for the reader to question the veracity
of that statement even when evidence is rarely provided for the claim. The use of
meronyms contrasts greatly with the choice of differentiated generic forms collocating
with expressions indicating low certainty such as presuntos (alleged) or al parecer
(apparently), as in (7).

(7) PP2_2003.01.22_NORTEAMERICANOS.txt
. . . luego de ser atacados el fin de semana por presuntos paramilitares colombianos.
after being attacked on the weekend by alleged Colombian paramilitaries.

Some of the members of these groups, typically their leaders, reach notoriety because
of their actions and/or their contacts with the media. Hence, their names and aliases
appear so frequently that it is possible to mention them without indicating their
affiliation, as in (8).

(8) TG2_2003.05.06_ECHEVERRI.txt
. . . Llam matones a Marulanda y Jojoy y reiter que no faltar firmeza en la lucha. . .
(the President) called Marulanda and Jojoy killers, and reiterated that strength in the
struggle

Less frequently, individual members of these organisations are mentioned in reports

because of their participation in a specific event where either witnesses reports or their
capture or killing has made their identification possible, as in (9). The names and aliases
of the illegal actors were categorised as forms of nomination.

(9) TG1_2001.10.02_CACICA2.txt
Los testigos aseguran que l y Amaury son los responsables de la muerte de la ex ministra. . .
Witnesses state that he and Amaury are the ones responsible for the former ministers death

Hence, five categories for the representation of illegal actors in the Colombian con-
flict were identified. These are: indifferentiated, not distinguishing between groups of
opposing ideologies; differentiated generic, an umbrella term for all groups of the same
ideology; differentiated specific, referring to specific organisations; meronyms, indicat-
ing subgroups of these organisations; and nominated forms, or names of specific indi-
viduals. Figure 1 illustrates the different forms of representation. Appendix 1 contains all
forms of representation found in the corpus.
The questions now are, first, how frequently each of these categories is used, and
second, whether there are any patterns in the assignment of participant roles to these
different forms of representation.
In order to answer the first question, each of the terms found for each of the five cat-
egories were searched in the corpus; concordance lines were extracted and the number of
instances per newspaper recorded and normalised. Figures 2 to 5 show the results per

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432 Discourse & Society 24(4)

Illegal actors in the

Indifferentiated internal Colombian conflict

Differentiated
generic Guerilla Paramilitaries

Differentiated
ELN FARC EPL AUC ACCU
specific

Bloc Bloc

Meronyms Front Command

Tirofijo Castao

Nominated Mono jojoy

Figure 1. Forms of representation of illegal Actors in the Colombian conflict.

G1

Indifferentiated

Differentiated generic

Differentiated specific

Meronyms

Nominated

0 25 50 75 100

El Colombiano El Heraldo El Pas El Tiempo

Figure 2. Representation of guerrillas 19982002.

category for each of the newspapers. To facilitate comparisons, the results were grouped
by perpetrator and period.

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Garca-Marrugo 433

P1

Indifferentiated

Differentiated generic

Differentiated specific

Meronyms

Nominated

0 25 50 75 100
El Colombiano El Heraldo El Pas El Tiempo

Figure 3. Representation of paramilitaries 19982002.

G2

Indifferentiated

Differentiated generic

Differentiated specific

Meronyms

Nominated

0 25 50 75 100
El Colombiano El Heraldo El Pas El Tiempo

Figure 4. Representation of guerrillas 20022006.

In line with the first findings regarding the frequency of the terms guerrilla and
paramilitaries, the frequency of guerrilla terms exceeds that of the paramilitaries in
every newspaper by 27% in the first period and by 38% in the second period, on average.
With respect to similarities in the distribution among the five distinct categories, it is
observable that nominated forms and meronyms are much less frequently used for both
groups than other forms of representation. However, notice that in the guerrilla subcor-
pora, meronyms are used about twice as often as in the paramilitary subcorpora in both
periods. This suggests a higher level of specificity in the reporting of guerrilla actions.

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434 Discourse & Society 24(4)

P2

Indifferentiated

Differentiated generic

Differentiated specific

Meronyms

Nominated

0 25 50 75 100
El Colombiano El Heraldo El Pas El Tiempo

Figure 5. Representation of paramilitaries 20022006.

The most remarkable difference is the contrast between the frequency of indifferenti-
ated and differentiated specific forms by perpetrator, reaching extremely significant lev-
els in all newspapers in both periods. That is to say, in the reporting of guerrilla actions,
authorship is assigned explicitly, whereas in that of paramilitary actions, responsibility is
attributed to armed groups or similar expressions that may refer to any of the groups in
the conflict, thus obscuring their visibility.
Furthermore, differentiated generic forms in the paramilitary subcorpora collocate
more frequently with expressions denoting low certainty such as al parecer (seem-
ingly), supuestos (alleged) and presuntamente (presumably), which cast a doubt over
responsibility for the crimes committed. Before calculating the frequencies of these
collocations, it was necessary to examine the concordance lines to establish whether
what was being qualified as uncertain was authorship, the event itself or any other
aspect of the report. Figure 6 summarises the results for every newspaper contrasting
the two periods.
The graph shows that the frequency of low certainty expressions collocating with
forms of representation of illegal actors in the conflict is higher in every newspaper and
period in the paramilitary subcorpora. The newspaper with the highest frequency of this
kind of expression is El Pas, which showed a proportional number of differentiated
forms. Thus, in addition to a preference for indifferentiated forms of representation, the
degree of certainty in the reporting of paramilitary actions is diminished by the higher
frequency of the type of modal expressions mentioned above, as seen in examples (10)
and (11).

(10) CP1_2001.08.16_AMALFI.txt
En Amalfi, el ataque de los supuestos Auc dej seis vctimas.

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Garca-Marrugo 435

Epistemic modality
CG
CP
HG
HP
PG
PP
TG
TP

0 5 10 15 20
19982002 20022006

Figure 6. Frequency of low certainty expressions collocating with differentiated forms of

representation.

In Amalfi, the attack of the alleged Auc left six victims.

(11) TP1_2000.01.19_ESTADOSUNIDOS.txt
. . . personas fueron asesinada por un grupo armado, presuntamente paramilitar

people were murdered by an armed group, presumably a paramilitary one

Up to this point, a pattern of vagueness versus explicitness in the reporting of para-

military actions contrasted with that of the guerrillas has been established, based on the
high frequency of indifferentiated forms of representation and differentiated forms
collocating with expressions of low certainty.
The next step is to determine what participant roles the differentiated forms of repre-
sentation are assigned. In other words, when illegal actors are named explicitly, what
type of actions do they carry out? And who or what do they act upon? For this purpose,
the linguistic tool selected is an adaptation of Hasans cline of dynamism (1985: 46). The
criteria for establishing a higher level of dynamism were three: the type of process car-
ried out (material vs other); the type of goal impacted on (human vs other); and the more
delicate material process type (elaborating vs other). Unlike in Hasans original cline, it
was considered necessary to establish the human versus non-human criteria rather than
using animate versus inanimate, in order to differentiate between killing humans and
killing cattle, for instance. In the same line, a more delicate distinction of process type
was required to distinguish between different kinds of material processes. Material trans-
formative processes, as the name suggests, realise a transformation in an already existing
participant (as opposed to material creative ones). These are classified according to the
outcome of the process the type of change effected on the participant. Thus (material
transformative) elaborating processes indicate changes in the physical features of the
participant. For example, to kill indicates a physical change in state (from alive to
dead). Most processes of violence in the corpus (i.e. shoot, burn, mutilate, decapitate,
massacre) belong to this type and are considered to be more dynamic than extending or

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436 Discourse & Society 24(4)

Actor
C1
C2
H1
H2
P1
P2
T1
T2

0 20 40 60 80 100
Guerilla Paramilitaries

Figure 7. Differentiated forms in the participant role of Actor.

enhancing ones indicating changes in possession (e.g. stealing, kidnapping) or location

(displacing) respectively (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004).
The sample for analysis was selected randomly from each subcorpus by extracting
the top 50 concordance lines for the most frequent differentiated forms (e.g. Farc,
guerrilla, Auc, autodefensas (self-defence groups)) in alphabetical order. From these,
lines with participants in grammatical metaphors or not as the head of the nominal
group were eliminated. The final samples for each subcorpus were between 40 and 50
concordance lines, for a total of 692 lines analysed. Figures 7 to 9 show the percent-
ages of each type of participant role for guerrillas and paramilitaries for each
newspaper and period.
Figure 7 shows that guerrillas are assigned the participant role of Actor more fre-
quently than the paramilitaries in every newspaper and period, and that the percentile gap
is statistically significant in the second period, indicating a higher level of dynamism for
the guerrillas, as seen in examples (12) and (13).

(12) HG1_2000.03.28_VIGIADELFUERTE.txt
. . . Viga del Fuerte, que fue destruido por el grupo guerrillero de las Farc durante un cruento
ataque . . .

Viga del Fuerte, which was destroyed by the Farc guerrilla group during a cruel attack

(13) HP2_2005.02.28_APARTADO.txt
Las Auc declararon en diciembre de 2002 un cese al fuego
The Auc declared a ceasefire in December of 2002

A higher level of dynamism was determined by identifying participants acting on a

Human Goal, as illustrated in Figure 8. In this case, only in two of the subcorpora (CP1

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Garca-Marrugo 437

Actor + Human Goal

C1
C2
H1
H2
P1
P2
T1
T2

0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Guerilla Paramilitaries

Figure 8. Differentiated forms in the participant role of Actor with a Human Goal.

Actor + Elaborating Processes + Human Goal

C1
C2
H1
H2
P1
P2
T1
T2

0 20 40
Guerilla Paramilitaries

Figure 9. Differentiated forms in the participant role of Actor in an elaborating process with a
Human Goal.

and PP1) did the paramilitaries reach a higher level of dynamism than the guerrillas,
maintaining the trend established in the first analysis, as seen in examples (14) and (15).

(14) PG2_2003.01.27_ARAUCA.txt
. . . en hechos en los cuales al parecer la guerrilla secuestr a tres hermanos para que ellos
condujeran. . .
in events in which the guerrilla apparently kidnapped three brothers so that they drove

(15) PP2_2002.09.04_BARRAGAN2.txt
De acuerdo con los habitantes de la regin, las autodefensas se han dedicado a asaltar las
chivas que circulan. . .

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438 Discourse & Society 24(4)

According to the inhabitants of the region, the self-defence forces have devoted themselves to
robbing the kids that circulate

Given the seriousness of the violence reported, it is not sufficient to establish how
often participants act on humans, but what kind of actions victims are subjected to as
well. These range from displacement and robbery to torture and massacre. Hence, a more
delicate distinction of material process type was employed, contrasting elaborating pro-
cesses (i.e. wound, torture, kill) with extending (i.e. rob, kidnap) and enhancing (i.e.
throw out, take away) processes. Figure 9 shows the results.
Again, samples from the guerrilla subcorpora show a higher percentage of partici-
pants in the role of Actor in an elaborating process with a human goal. The only excep-
tions are the HP1 and PP1 subcorpora. While in the previous analysis (Actor + Human
Goal), El Colombiano (CP1) showed a higher percentage of this type of structure in the
paramilitary corpus, from the more delicate classification it can be deduced that most of
the actions inflicted on the victims were of the extending or enhancing type, as illustrated
by example (16).

(16) CP1_2000.05.02_SANPABLO.txt
All, las Auc, con lista en mano, bajaron quince personas.
There, the Auc, with a list in hand, took down fifteen people (from the bus).

Whereas El Heraldo and El Pas present more cases of Actor + Elaborating Process +
Human Goal in the first period in the paramilitary subcorpora, the trend is reversed in the
second period. To summarise, in general the guerrillas are presented as killing people
more often than the paramilitaries, despite statistics revealing the opposite.
This result poses the question of whether paramilitary violence is being reported at
all. With at least a 4:1 ratio of paramilitary to guerrilla victims, how can the subversives
be attributed most of the killings? The frequency lists reveal that in fact the lexical items
asesinar (to murder) and matar (to kill) appear more frequently in every paramilitary
subcorpus. This contrast calls for a detailed analysis of the clause configurations used to
express violence, more specifically murdering and killing.
As a first step, all concordance lines for the lemmas asesinar (to murder) and matar
(to kill) were extracted from the corpus. From these lists, forms in nominal groups (i.e.
asesinato: murder, asesino: murderer, los asesinados: the murdered) were discarded.
Then the Agent was identified in each of the concordances, and grouped into differenti-
ated or indifferentiated forms. Whenever the Agent was ellipsed, a common feature in
Spanish, the co-text was searched for the referent and coded accordingly. Non-agentive
forms such as passive voice or third-person plural (see Garca, 2013) were labelled as
implicit. Examples (17) to (20) illustrate this classification.

(17) Differentiated
HG1_2000.01.24_TENERIFE.txt
. . . Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, Farc, asesinaron a seis campesinos en
incursiones registradas. . .

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Garca-Marrugo 439

Implicit or indifferentiated forms

C1
C2
H1
H2
P1
P2
T1
T2

0 25 50 75 100

Guerilla Paramilitaries

Figure 10. Percentage of implicit indifferentiated forms realising the Agent in clauses of killing
and murdering.

Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, Farc, murdered six peasants in incursions

recorded

(18) Indifferentiated
CP2_2003.12.01_MEDELLIN.txt
. . . luego de que hombres armados ingresaron al sector y asesinaron a cinco personas.

after armed men entered the area and murdered five people.

(19) Implicit non-agentive receptive voice

PP1_1999.01.12_LAHORMIGA. txt
Posteriormente, al menos 20 campesinos fueron asesinados en el casero de El Tigre en el
departamento del. . .

Afterwards, at least 20 peasants were murdered in the hamlet of El Tigre in the department of

(20) Implicit third-person plural

TP2_2004.05.23_WAYUU.txt
Nos estn matando a todos y lo que le pedimos al Gobierno es que no. . .
(They) are killing us all and what we ask from the government is that

Since indifferentiated forms do not allow the reader to identify the group responsible
for the crimes, these and implicit forms were grouped together and contrasted with the
differentiated forms. Figure 10 shows the percentage of implicit or indifferentiated Agent
in clauses where the process is murdering or killing.

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440 Discourse & Society 24(4)

Not only are implicit and indifferentiated forms more frequent in each of the paramili-
tary subcorpora, the contrast with the guerrilla subcorpora is also statistically significant
in each case, with the exception of El Heraldo in the second period. This means that in
up to 88% of instances of the reporting of killings and murders, the paramilitaries are
either completely excluded from the clause or referred to in indifferentiated forms such
as armed men or the armed group. While they may be mentioned explicitly elsewhere
in the text, they are often not directly linked to the activity of killing.

Conclusions
The analysis shows remarkable differences between the reporting of guerrilla and para-
military actions. The contrast can be characterised as one of explicitness versus vague-
ness, with the trend increasing in the second period under examination. While guerrillas
are frequently referred to in differentiated terms that allow for the identification of those
responsible for the attacks, in the paramilitary reports indifferentiated forms are more
frequently selected. In addition, paramilitary differentiated forms collocate more fre-
quently with expressions denoting low certainty, casting doubt over the authorship of the
crimes.
The examination of participant roles assigned to the differentiated forms reveals that
guerrillas are in general construed as more dynamic, or capable of affecting the world,
than the paramilitaries. That is to say, guerrilla forms of representation more frequently
collocate with material processes, often of the elaborating kind (i.e. killing, wounding)
affecting humans. Focusing on this type of process, more specifically asesinar (to mur-
der) and matar (to kill), the analysis reveals that in the paramilitary reports, these collo-
cate significantly more frequently with either indifferentiated (e.g. armed men) or
implicit forms, again concealing the identity of the criminals.
These are only some of the linguistic patterns present in the reporting of the Colombian
conflict that construe a semiotic space where paramilitaries are minor agents of violence
in contrast to the guerrillas. Other patterns to explore include the construal of death and
killing, evaluative language and textual organisation.
The mystification of the paramilitary role in the conflict may have contributed to a
lenient attitude from civilian and military authorities, as well as the population in gen-
eral, that has remained indifferently unmoved in the face of the genocide and forced exile
imposed on the most vulnerable. As Whorf (1956: 148) points out, people act about situ-
ations in ways which are like the ways they talk about them. Thus, one step towards the
solution of the Colombian conflict is to change the way it is framed in language, assign-
ing responsibility where it is due, identifying the motivations behind every act of
violence and acknowledging the suffering of all victims.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.

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Garca-Marrugo 441

Notes
1. The reconstruction of these events is based on UN (OACNUDH) and Historic Memory Group
reports (Grupo de Memoria Histrica, 2010; OACNUDH, 2002).
2. A meronym denotes a constituent part or member of something, for instance finger is a mero-
nym of hand.
3. A superordinate denotes a superior order or category within a system of classification, for
example flower is the superordinate for rose.

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24 Discourse &
Discourse & Society
Society 24(4)
24(4)

Appendix 1.
Appendix 1. Forms
Forms of
of representation
representation found
found in
in the
the corpus.
corpus.

GUERRILLA PARAMILITARIES
INDIFFERENTIATED
hombres - men
hombres armados - armed men
encapuchados - hooded men
atacante(s) - attacker(s)
invasores - invaders
agresor(es) - aggressor(s)
asesino(s) - murderer(s)
criminal(es)- criminal(s)
pistoleros - gunmen
sicario(s) - hitman (men)
grupo(s) armado(s) - armed group(s)
combatientes - combatants
bandidos - bandit(s)
terrorista(s) - terrorist(s)
DIFFERENTIATED GENERIC
guerrilla - guerrilla (mass noun) grupos de autodefensa- self defence groups
guerriller@(s) - guerrilla(s), (male or female) autodefensas - self defence (groups/forces)
insurgente(s) - insurgents paramilitares - paramilitaries
subversiv@(s) - subversives (male or female) paras - (short for paramilitaries)
paramilitarismo - paramilitarism
subversin - subversion (mass noun) grupos de limpieza social - social cleansing groups
rebelde(s) - rebel(s) grupos de extrema derecha - extreme right groups
sedicioso(s) - seditious (as noun) grupos de justicia privada - private justice groups
alzados en armas - those up in arms grupos de delincuencia organizada - organised
crime groups
grupo anti-insurgente - anti insurgent group

DIFFERENTIATED SPECIFIC

Ejrcito Popular de Liberacin- EPL Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia - AUC

Popular Liberation Army
Ejrcito de Liberacin Nacional - ELN
National Liberation Army
Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia Autodefensas del Casanare/Magdalena Medio/ Sur del
- Ejrcito del Pueblo - FARC-EP
Colombias Armed Revolutionary Forces -
Peoples Army
United Self-defence Forces of Colombia
Autodefensas Campesinas de Crdoba y Urab -
ACCU
Peasant Self-defence forces of Cridoba and Urab
Cesar
Self defence forces of Casanare/ Middle Magdalena/South
Cesar

MERONYMS
secretariado - secretariat Estado Mayor - Major State
Estado Mayor Central - Major Central State Bloque - Bloc

Bloque - Bloc Comando Armado - Armed Command

Frente - Front
Columna - Column

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Garca-Marrugo
Garca-Marrugo 25 445

GUERRILLA PARAMILITARIES
NOMINATED
Manuel Marulanda alias Tirofijo - aka Carlos Castao
Sureshot Vicente Castao
Mono Jojoy Salvatore Mancuso
Ral Reyes Rodrigo Tovar Pupo alias Jorge 40
Grannobles Rodrigo Peluffo alias Cadena - aka Chain
El Negro Acacio Freddy Rendn El Alemn
Karina Uber Bnquez Martnez, alias Juancho
Csar
Amaury

Author biography
Author biography
Alexandra Garca-Marrugo is an MQRES scholar pursuing a PhD in Linguistics at Macquarie
Alexandra
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functional linguistics, language typology and the development of critical reading skills.

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