Representación socio-discursiva de los actores implicados en el ataque a una joven ecuatoriana en un tren de cercanías de Barcelona: Estudio de caso

Abstract

This study is an account of the socio-discursive representation of the actors involved in a racial aggression which took place on a suburban train in Barcelona. The data includes two subcorpora from the Ecuadorian and Spanish press. The quantitative and qualitative analysis is based on the description of the actors present in the scene (aggressor, victim and witness). The results reveal that the press in both countries reconstructed the events through an analogous socio-discursive procedure which involved favouring the members of nationalities akin to each group of the written media; that is, attenuating the responsibility of the aggressor in the Spanish media and stressing the defenceless condition of the victim in the Ecuadorian texts, as shown by the denominations, characterisation and actions attributed to each side, which constitute the basic categories for this analysis. © 2011 PUCV, Chile.