The “Revolutionary War” in the coup argumentative-rhetorical memories of Argentina since 1983

Abstract

One of the most fruitful tools that Discourse Analysis has given to the study of ideologies is the analysis of the discursive memories, which is defined by Jean-Jacques Courtine as the return of previously issued statements to a present discursive. In this frame, some studies have taken the argumentative dimension of the discursive memories, that is, the argumentative-rhetorical memories which display the discursive strategies used to argue the adhesion to a presented thesis. This work will adopt this notion in order to analyze the coup discourses of Argentine rights since the return of democracy in 1983 and especially the use of the concept of “war” to refer to the situation since the emergence of guerrilla organizations. The corpus is mainly composed by the last works of three authors that represent these tendencies: Ramón Díaz Bessone, Osiris Villegas and Enrique Díaz Araujo.