El País Editorials from a Dialogical Perspective

ABSTRACT

In this work, we analyzed utterances belonging to the editorial genre, produced in Spanish and published by the newspaper El País in its digital edition, during February 2020. We aim to describe this genre just as it manifests in the aforementioned newspaper and to reflect upon the dialogue between the newspaper and the assumed reader. To conduct the analysis, we draw from the dialogical perspective of language, especially from the works of Bakhtin and Vološinov, from which we highlight the concepts of speech genres and architectonic form. Besides the oscillation in the dialogue established between the newspaper and the assumed reader, at times regular, at times occasional, the result reveals an architectonic form based on the assessment of the presence of reading among the participants of the discursive interaction and the importance of using common, frequent and understandable lexical resources to guarantee the dissemination of the newspaper on a worldwide scale.

KEYWORDS:
Architectonics; Dialogue; Journalistic Sphere; Editorial; El País

RESUMO

Neste trabalho, analisamos enunciados pertencentes ao gênero editorial produzidos em língua espanhola e publicados pelo jornal El País, em sua edição digital, durante o mês de fevereiro de 2020. Objetivamos descrever esse gênero tal como ele se manifesta no referido periódico e refletir sobre o diálogo estabelecido entre o jornal e o leitor presumido. Para a realização da análise, fundamentamo-nos na perspectiva dialógica da linguagem, sobretudo em escritos de Bakhtin e Volóchinov dos quais destacamos os conceitos de gêneros do discurso e forma arquitetônica. Além da oscilação no diálogo estabelecido entre o jornal e um leitor presumido ora habitual, ora ocasional, o resultado revela uma forma arquitetônica alicerçada na avaliação da presença da leitura entre os participantes da interação discursiva e da importância do emprego de recursos lexicais comuns, frequentes, compreensíveis, como forma de garantir a difusão do jornal em escala mundial.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Arquitetônica; Diálogo; Campo jornalístico; Editorial; El País

Introduction

The aim of this work is to reflect upon the editorial genre based on utterances available in Spanish and put into circulation by El País, a newspaper of record located in Spain. This is an interpretation exercise belonging to a broader research project whose purpose is to compare the editorial production in the websites of a wide-circulation Brazilian newspaper with the aforementioned Iberian newspaper, in order to contribute to the examination of the specificities of this speech genre in each of these communication vehicles. For this purpose, we support the assumption that the historical and cultural transformations of a genre take place in the light of the transformations that took place in the sphere of human communication to which it belongs.¹

The writings of Bakhtin (1990, 1986) and Vološinov (1973, 1976) are the basis of our analysis. Thus, in addition to the concept of speech genres, we assume that every use of word is permeated by the other and, therefore, determined by social, historical and ideological values, a thought also shared among the members of the Circle. More specifically, we adopted the assumption that the genre (its thematic content, compositional structure and style) is determined by a constructive unity, that is, by an architectonic form.

The methodological procedure adopted was the collation between texts belonging to the journalistic sphere, while seeking to recover past contexts and anticipate future contexts. For this, we started out the analysis with El País online editorials published during February 2020. For the retrospective movement, we take as a fundamental tool the Libro de Estilo [Style Guide] (El País, 2014). For the prospective movement, we consider the anticipation of the interlocutor’s active responsive attitude: the assumption about who he is and what is expected of him are some of the questions that arose at this stage of the analysis.

This paper is organized in three sections: first, we discuss the concept of speech genres, as well as the notion of architectonic form, given its centrality to the development of this analysis. Second, we seek to contextualize the emergence of El País and the relationship it has established with technological innovations throughout its history. Finally, in a movement that is also dialogical by nature, we present the corpus interpretation, seeking to describe the general characteristics of the utterances and to point out the particularities of the dialogue established between the newspaper and the assumed reader.

1 The Concepts of Speech Genres and Architectonic Form

Within the Circle, the approach to the notion of speech genres is not restricted to Bakhtin, above all, in his book Speech Genres and other late essays (1986), but it was also addressed by Vološinov, who dedicated himself to reflect upon genres of oral and written tradition and to analyze them, both in Marxism and the philosophy of language (1973) and in Freudianism: A Marxist Critique (1976), in the appendix, “Discourse in Life and Discourse in Art.”

Bakhtin and Vološinov share the conception of language as an activity of socio-interactional nature. For the first author, the use of language occurs through oral and written utterances, concrete and unique, produced by members of the most diverse spheres of human communication. For the second, the word (and its meaning) is inseparable from life, that is, from the extralinguistic situation, a definition that accentuates the inextricable relationship between the social character and the singular character of each discursive interaction. Therefore, the construction of each and every utterance, which is the real unity of the discursive flow, takes place between two socially organized individuals.

In point of fact, word is a two-sided act. It is determined equally by whose word it is and for whom it is meant. As word, it is precisely the product of reciprocal relationship between speaker and listener, addresser and addressee. Each and every word expresses the “one” in relation to the “other.” I give myself verbal shape from another’s point of view, ultimately, from the point of view of the community to which I belong. A word is a bridge thrown between myself and another. If one end of the bridge depends on me, then the other depends on my addressee. A word is territory shared by both addresser and addressee, by the speaker and his interlocutor (Vološinov, 1973, p.86, with emphasis on the author).²

It is from this epistemological framework that speech genres are conceived. In the perspective adopted by Bakhtin (1986), there is an assumption that in discursive communication the participants speak and write through certain speech genres. This is equivalent to saying that, even in the most informal and spontaneous communicative situations, speakers (or those who write) shape their discourse in certain ways that are sometimes more standardized and stereotyped and, at other times, more flexible, free and creative.

His theory highlights the intrinsic correlation between the spheres of human activity and the ways of saying. For Bakhtin (1986), all spheres of human activity are linked to the use of language, therefore, the character and forms of this use are as diverse as the spheres themselves. With this in view, the utterances

(…) reflect the specific conditions and goals of each such area not only through their content (thematic) and linguistic style, that is, the selection of the lexical, phraseological, and grammatical resources of the language, but above all through their compositional structure. All three of these aspects - thematic content, style, and compositional structure – are inseparably linked to the whole of the utterance and are equally determined by the specific nature of the particular sphere of communication. Each separate utterance is individual, of course, but each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances. These we may call speech genres (Bakhtin, 1986, p.60, with emphasis on the author).³

In the conceptualization of speech genres, the expression “relatively stable” highlights its historicity and the compulsory imprecision of its distinctive features, which presupposes to admit that genres are not defined once and for all, but they involve continuous transformations, inasmuch as human activities are in continuous transformation. Consequently, the genres of each sphere will change as the sphere itself develops and/or changes, an issue that will be crucial for the development of this work.

It is also necessary to discuss, even if briefly, the elements that make up the composition of each speech genre, and on which our analysis will focus: the thematic content, the style and the compositional structure.

The thematic content is not to be confused with the theme, that is, with what an utterance is about. It is the result of the socio-historically determined relationship between a genre and the sphere to which it belongs, in light of the interaction established between the interlocutors. Within the journalistic sphere, the approach of the thematic content of a genre such as the editorial presupposes to inquire about what deserves the opinion of the journalistic company. Therefore, it is necessary to consider that this selection be based on the relationship established between the different sections of a newspaper and on the link between the editorial and the news, under the dialogical angle from which the speaker observes the participants of the communicative situation.

The style is not restricted to the expression of individuality, but it is always socially oriented. Each choice is an expression of the self in relation to the other and impregnated with evaluations. In this sense, the other to whom an utterance is addressed, whether he is real or assumed, defines the selection of the linguistic-discursive resources.

As stated by Vološinov (1976, p.114),⁴ “Style is at least two persons or, more accurately, one person plus his social group in the form of its authoritative representative, the listener—the constant participant in a person's inner and outward speech.”

Bakhtin, in turn, considers addressivity, that is, the addressee’s modalities and conceptions defined by the sphere of human activity in which the utterance is inserted, which determines not only the style and composition, but also the whole production of a speech genre: “Each speech genre in each area of speech communication has its own typical conception of the addressee, and this defines it as a genre.” (Bakhtin, 1986, p.95).⁵

The compositional structure can be defined as the typical (relatively stable) form of expression of the production, that is, what prevents an utterance from being considered a free and unrestricted individual combination of forms. This dimension inserts the utterance in the discursive communication chain, circumscribing the project of saying of the one who produces the utterance.

The concept of architectonics, in turn, permeates the notion of utterance shared by the members of the Circle. Although it is more related to aesthetics (Bakhtin, 1990),⁶ it can also be understood as the constructive unit of an object. According to Rojo and Melo (2017, p.1280, free translation), “the architectonics designates the point of articulation between the internal totality and the axiological evaluations (ethical, aesthetic and moral values) that construct a historically situated object, both socially and ideologically, giving meaning to it.”⁷ For Campos (2012, p.253, free translation), this concept “(...) is born from a thought that has the human being as the center of value, as there is a man who speaks, who questions himself and who seeks to establish interactive relationships by formulating questions and giving answers to the events of life.”⁸

Therefore, all language activity presupposes the organization of an architectonics, the inseparable link between the internal totality and the external axiological reality, that is, the perception that the compositional structure, the theme and the style (in our case, of a speech genre) are guided by social, historical and ideological value judgments (evaluations, expressive intonations). In the perspective of Sobral (2009, p.88, free translation), “theme, style and compositional structure only make sense in the context of an architectonics,”⁹ in other words, they are axiologically oriented.

Vološinov (1976), in turn, considers that social evaluations and the extra verbal situation are part of the utterance, as they are a fundamental part of its semantic composition. He argues that “value judgments, first of all, determine the author's selection of words and the reception of that selection (the coselection) by the listener.” (Vološinov, 1976, p.107, with emphasis on the author).¹⁰

The writings of the Circle that underlie our work are permeated by the understanding of the interdependence between the utterance and the concrete situation of enunciation, as well as between the meaning of the utterance and an evaluative attitude. According to Faraco (2009, p.24, free translation), “the axiological dimension is, therefore, an inalienable part of the living word.”¹¹ This statement, to some extent, recovers the Bakhtinian reflection on aesthetic creation as a result of an interwoven network of axiological positions between the planes of content, material and form (Bakhtin, 1990).¹² For the author, there is no neutral utterance, since every utterance appears in a given cultural context full of values and it is always a position taken in that context.

Based on this theoretical framework and recognizing the reciprocal influence between compositional structure and style, as well as the determining character of the architectonic form and the axiological dimension, we analyze a speech genre specific to the journalistic sphere, namely, the editorial, whose social function lies in expressing the journalistic company’s opinion about a current fact. Our analysis will focus, above all, on the newspaper’s assessment of itself and of its readers - the I-for-myself and the other-for-me are highlighted in the understanding of the architectonics of this genre.

Before attempting to delimit the dialogical process presupposed in the established interaction between El País and the assumed reader through its website, we retrace part of the history of this newspaper — mainly with regard to its relationship with technological innovations —, aiming to apprehend some traces of its identity.

2 About El País

El País is a Spanish newspaper whose emergence coincides with the beginning of Spain’s transition to a democratic regime after forty years of repression. It was conceived by Promotora de Informaciones Sociedad Anónima [Information Promoter Inc.] (PRISA), a company founded in early 1972, by José Ortega Sppotorno, son of the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, who was known for his defense of freedom and democracy.

Having overcome the difficulties imposed by the Dirección General de Prensa [General Directorate of Press], the body responsible for submitting the media to the service of the General Francisco Franco (1939-1975), the newspaper had its first printed edition published on May 4, 1976, enjoying the freedom of not having to be forced to exalt Francoism. In that context,

The progressives carried EL PAÍS under their arms. It was an implicit, ideological message, a signal to recognize the comrades at the newsstand, in the cafeterias, on the bus (...) the young rebels were taking EL PAÍS to the places of battle. The newspaper was run over along with its readers when police horses invaded Moncloa’s cafeterias chasing protesters (Vicent, 1996, free translation).¹³

In Moureau’s perspective,

Through his vigorous defense of freedom and his support for political and social change, it was winning the loyalty of more and more readers. A symbol and spokesperson for a modern and pluralist Spain, with a clear European vocation, in four years it has become the most widely read newspaper and a reference medium for the most influential sectors of society (Moureau, 2004, p.288, free translation).¹⁴

Twenty years after the publication of the first print edition, the first digital edition was registered under the domain elpais.es on the internet. The newspaper won over 27,000 readers straightaway, 40% of whom came from 100 different countries (Cabrera, 2004). At the beginning of the 2000s, the first domain adopted was replaced by elpais.com, in order to highlight the newspaper’s global mission, which was also claimed in its slogan: El Periódico Global [The Global Newspaper]. The list presented in an opinion article commemorating the 20th anniversary of El País is indicative of the expansion and diversity of its reading public:

Among our readers, there were Rolling Stones fans, politicians in the headquarters of their parties, trade unionists in their offices, designers, decorators, pioneer artists, diplomats and the first recycling punks. It had been a while since all the Founding Fathers of the countries looked at themselves in this mirror each morning to find out who was the most beautiful. EL PAÍS did not intend to overthrow any government. It was enough for it to know that it could awaken the president and force him to read an editorial in his pajamas (Vincent, 1996, free translation, with emphasis on the author).¹⁵

Currently, the newspaper’s website offers six editions in four different languages: Spain, North America and Mexico in Spanish; Brazil in Portuguese; Catalonia in Catalan; and an edition with the main news in English. These editions are identified at the top of the page as follows: ESP, AME, MEX, BRA, CAT, ENG.¹⁶ It has a multiplatform distribution, that is, the digital newspaper can be accessed through the web, through mobile applications and social networks. The print edition is restricted to Spanish territory.

More than four decades after its foundation, El País is considered the newspaper with the largest number of readers in Spain. According to data from the Mikroscopia 2020 study, carried out by 40dB., a company specialized in market research, 26.1% of the Spanish population aged between 18 and 65 years access the newspaper’s website regularly, that is, three or more times per week (elDiario.es, 2020).

Among the causes attributed to the high ratings, the newspaper itself points out its opinion articles, which have experienced a reading growth greater than other journalistic genres, with an increase of 200% in one year. During the month of October 2017, for example, seven out of the ten most read texts belonged to editorial and opinion article genres, which to some extent demonstrates the strength of the opinionated content among online readers. In the same period, the digital edition reached the mark of 100 million unique visitors, half of them coming from Latin America (El País, 2017).¹⁷

The strengthening of the relationship established between El País and the digital world can be attested by the last edition of its Libro de Estilo [Style Guide], published in 2014. The cover of the manual (Figure 1) presents the image of what would be a hardcover book, whose back contains connections and a USB cable attached, typical of a computer. In the prologue, the emergence of this edition is justified by the substantial changes in the production and distribution of information that were brought about by the internet more recently. In the manual itself we find general and specific prescriptions for online publications, mainly for news. In this circumstance, El País digital edition is well regarded due to its ambition, narrative autonomy and self-publishing speed (El País, 2014).

Figure 1
Libro de Estilo [Style Guide] cover, El País. Source: El País (2014).

It is worth noting that the twenty-first edition of Libro de Estilo [Style Guide] was published in 2008, six years before the current edition. At that time, even though it had been twelve years since the launch of the newspaper’s digital edition, the changes that came with the production and publication of information through the internet was considered only trivial (El País, 2014). This fact seems to point out to a certain moderation in the newspaper by not being restricted to the relationship established with the internet.

Moureau (2010) points out that although in the early 1990s many periodicals began to introduce color photos in their print editions, El País only did so by the end of September 1998, and only in the first and last pages of the Sunday edition. The explanation presented by the newspaper at the time allows us to have a glimpse at a certain resistance to something that, at first, could be seen as indicative of content trivialization:

The change is not the result of a simple aesthetic adaptation, but responds to EL PAÍS’s desire to continue in its necessary and permanent line of the newspaper adaptation to the new trends of society (...) without losing, however, its identity signs of rigor and quality journalism (El País, 1998, free translation).¹⁸

In 2001, the inclusion of colors started to occur on a daily basis, but still restricted to the first and last pages of the print edition. Only from October 2007 did the color printing become massive, as a result of a major restructuring that reached the typography, design and internal layout of the sections.

Considering El País’ moderation when adopting certain technological innovations (the gradual use of colors in the print edition and the “late” prescription of specific rules for online content can be considered evidences of this moderation), its global nature, heterogeneity and the breadth of the audience that accesses the newspaper through digital platforms, below we analyze its editorials.

3 About El País Editorials

To carry out the analysis, we selected the editorials published on the website of the El País newspaper, ESP edition (https://elpais.com), during the month of February 2020. On the one hand, the choice of the editorial genre is due the fact that we intend to describe this genre as it manifests itself in the aforementioned Spanish publication and to analyze the dialogue established between the newspaper and the assumed reader. Our choice for the El País newspaper, on the other hand, is due to its outstanding diffusion and influence. It is also due to the apparently moderate relationship between the newspaper and the technological innovations throughout its history, something that certainly leaves its mark on the types of relatively stable utterances through which the journalistic company presupposes a certain social purview (Vološinov, 1973).¹⁹

As we seek to show, the newspaper’s assessment of the editorials’ addressee oscillates between having a view of them as a “typical” reader of a print newspaper, who is considered proficient and interested in the journalistic genre regardless of the subject addressed, and another one regarded as an occasional reader, taken as a less prepared or educated reader who, apparently, comes from the digitalization process of the journalistic practice.

On average, two editorials are published every day.²⁰ The access to them from a personal computer can be done in three different ways inside the newspaper’s website: through the main menu located at the top of the page just below the newspaper’s name; through a more detailed menu located on the left side of the page, which can be accessed through an icon; or through the highlights given to the index or to one of the editorials and some articles of the Opinion section, all located along the page.²¹

In the main menu, the sections of El País are presented in the following order: Internacional, Opinión, España, Economía, Sociedad,²² Educación, Ciencia, Tecnología, Cultura, Deportes, Televisión, Gente e Vídeo [International, Opinion, Spain, Economics, Society, Education, Science, Technology, Culture, Sports, Television, People and Video].²³ This form of presentation, in which the news section regarding themes outside Spain are in the first position, is in itself a fact indicative of the purposefully global character aspired by the newspaper (and made explicit in its slogan El Periódico Global [The Global Newspaper]) and the dialogue with an assumed reader who, in turn, is interested in matters of this scope. The same conjecture can be verified in the distribution of the thematic content of the editorials.

Out of the fifty-five utterances analyzed, more than 50% relate to news published in the International section, subdivided as follows: Europe, 15; Latin America, 5; United States, 3; Africa, 2; Asia, 2; Mexico, 2; and Middle East, 2. In our view, the large number of editorials pertaining to news about the European Union and the American continent (twenty-five editorials in all) reveals the dialogue between El País and a more immediate reader, whose identity shared with the newspaper seems to transcend the trace of Hispanicity to the advantage of the supranational character; and another reader who, being somewhat slightly geographically distant, as in other European countries, whether in the United States and/or in Latin America, can recognize his reality by being contemplated by this communication vehicle.

With regard to topics of a nationwide scope, the twenty-four utterances are related to news published in the following sections: Spain: 12 editorials of a partisan political nature; Society: 6 editorials (two related to the environment, two related to migration policy, one on the regulation of euthanasia and the last one on the social isolation of the elderly); Economy: 4 editorials; Education: 1 editorial; and Technology: 1 editorial. In these editorials, sometimes we can find comparisons between Spain and other European countries and/or we can find at least some mention of them, which, to some extent, reinforces the European orientation of part of the participants in the communicative situation.

The disparity between editorials on political-partisan issues and those related to national themes, at first sight could be interpreted as revealing the dialogue with an audience — to use the same expression as Vološinov’s (1976)²⁴ — formed by government officials and political parties’ representatives. However, this understanding is not supported by the way the newspaper distributes the news related to these editorials throughout its sections. In a strict sense, political themes appear in an integrated way with other events of life of Spanish society, since there is no specific section about it on the newspaper’s website.

As our data points out, the architectonic form determines the very selection of El País editorials themes, since an assessment of the extralinguistic situation underlies the choice of what will be deserving of the newspaper opinion. This assessment is guided by the geographical location of most readers, by the assumption of their interests and by the need to provide to different editions.

From a formal point of view, each utterance presents the title center-aligned in italics and bold, preceded by the word editorial in uppercase and in blue color. The subtitle also appears center-aligned just below the title and is followed by the name of the newspaper, in the space that would correspond to the subscription. The date and time of the publication are aligned to the left margin of the page. A large color photograph illustrates each editorial, which usually consists of four paragraphs. In the corpus, however, there are utterances with three, five, six and seven paragraphs. There are no links whatsoever in the body of the utterances. Whenever used in other parts of the website, the links are arranged in the form of an eye,²⁵ either they refer to previous editorials on the same subject, or they refer to related information in case it is the first time that the newspaper takes a position on a topic (see Appendix A).²⁶

According to El País’ Libro de Estilo [El País Style Guide], the existence of a typographic code that allows the reader to identify the degree of subjectivity of each journalistic genre is a way of guaranteeing the reader’s right (El País, 2014). Thus, in the perspective of the newspaper, the fact that the editorial titles are written in italics – the font style prescribed by the manual – clearly signals to the reader that he will come across an utterance endowed with a strong presence of the author’s opinion. The newspaper’s option for italics is also an important indication of its assessment of the external reality of the utterance. Or rather, it is an indication of the constitutive permeability of the utterance by extralinguistic elements, that is, of its architectonics. In addition, next to the word editorial, there is an information button²⁷ that whenever clicked on it displays the following message about the journalistic genre: “It is the director’s responsibility and expresses the newspaper’s opinion on current national or international issues” (El País, 1996-, free translation).²⁸ Perhaps, in these two resources lies a subtle indication that El País dialogues with an assumed reader who, by navigating from anywhere in the world, would not be able to assess the degree of subjectivity of the newspaper utterances by himself.

The editorials present short titles often formed by nominal constructions: Confianza, Situación insostenible, Violencia en Brasil [Confidence, Untenable Situation Violence in Brazil]. Although they occur less frequently, there are also titles constructed with noun phrases: Combatir la soledad, Comienza la carrera, El campo negocia [Fighting loneliness, The race begins, The field negotiates].

In general, the headlines oscillate between those that present more explicit information, through which the reader could easily anticipate the editorial’s motto, and others through which it would be more difficult to predict the subject addressed. This oscillation, to some extent, responds to the guide’s prescription that, in opinion texts, the titles “are at the discretion of the author, but, like all titles, their mission is to guide the reader about the content” and “they must not anticipate the conclusion of the text” (El País, 2014, p.75, free translation).²⁹ In both forms of composition, with rare exceptions (Combatir la soledad [Fighting Loneliness] is one of them), the titles do not allow us to have a glimpse on the opinion defended throughout the utterance. From our point of view, through the headlines that to a certain extent summarize the subject matter, the newspaper dialogues with a reader who selects the journalistic utterances based on the themes of his interest, to the detriment of the genre. The titles that do not summarize the topic clearly, on the other hand, seem to put in place the dialogue with a reader who, regardless of the theme, selects the editorial for reading because he values the vehicle’s opinion.

The titles Violencia en Brasil [Violence in Brazil] and El campo negocia [The field negotiates], on the one hand, and Confianza [Confidence] and Situación insostenible [Untenable situation], on the other, exemplify relatively well (even for a foreign reader as in our case) the process of responsiveness that we described. From the first two titles, it is possible to anticipate that the editorials will deal, respectively and generically, with violence in the South American country and with an agrarian issue. By contrast, the other titles do not suggest a subject, not even roughly.

It is also necessary to consider that the access to the utterances is always preceded by a presentation formed by the word editorial, a miniature photograph, and, in some cases, the title and the subtitle, which, in turn, anticipate the opinion of the journalistic company, as in: La respuesta frente al coronavirus debe estar coordinada por la OMS [The response to the coronavirus must be coordinated by WHO],³⁰ a subtitle of the Confianza [Confidence] editorial, of February 1^st, 2020. This partial form of presentation of the utterances, to some extent, shows the dialogue with a reader who, considered by the newspaper with little availability of time to read, could easily skip reading the editorial. However, when the utterances are fully presented, another kind of reader seems to be summoned.

Although short (the editorials have approximately 500 words), the utterances are made up of dense paragraphs which, in turn, are made up of phrases that should not exceed the maximum length of twenty words, as prescribed in Libro de Estilo [Style Guide] (El País, 2014). This aspect of the compositional structure reveals a dialogue with an assumed reader capable of “facing” a consistent textual mass, that is, a habitual reader. In view of the limited availability of time, this reader can read the first and last paragraphs of the text as a reading strategy resulting from the compositional structure of El País editorials. This strategy takes place in a similar manner to the strategy used in news reading, since the structuring technique of this kind of discourse, known as inverted pyramid, favors the reading of the lead so to apprehend the essential data related to the reported event.³¹ In this way, as will be shown further on, the reader is informed about the news that motivated the production of the editorial, in a kind of “what needs to be known today,” so he will acquire previous knowledge on the position of the journalistic company. It should be noted that the compositional form of the utterances stems from the value judgment attributed by the newspaper to its recipient’s reading proficiency and should not be confused with the architectonic form.

The introduction of the utterances is predominantly informative. Enough data is presented for the reader to understand the editorial without having previous knowledge on the news that motivated the newspaper’s positioning. This fact, which does not present any thematic coercion, apparently establishes a dialogue with a reader who is accustomed to reading opinionated genres. This way it is possible to recover the news content considered relevant by the journalistic company, as in the case of editorials. The first paragraph of the editorial Violencia en Brasil [Violence in Brazil], of February 16, 2020, is an example of this process:³²

Murders fell in Brazil by 19% in 2019, the largest decrease since the count began, thanks to a civil society initiative that has been collecting and standardizing state data since 2007. It is encouraging news, despite the fact that with more than 41,000 deaths the giant South American remains among the most violent countries in the world. With almost 10,000 murders less than a year before, other crimes such as robberies or rapes have also decreased. The data confirm a trend that was looming for months. These are important achievements as insecurity is one of the main concerns of the 210 million Brazilians, whether they are rich or poor. And it is logical that the Government of President Bolsonaro congratulates itself on this (Violencia, 2020, free transation).³³

The development of the argumentation, that is, the analysis and interpretation of the event, is generally permeated by the recovery of historical facts, the presentation of statistical data, the exposure of positive and negative arguments, the diffusion of research, the mentioning of the positioning of specialists and/or of standards set by international bodies.

In the editorial chosen to support our analysis, the information regarding the reduction in the number of murders and other crimes committed in Brazil in 2019 is a counterpoint to the increase in the number of deaths in police operations. The opposition is marked by the use of the adversative conjunction sin embargo [however] that opens the second paragraph:

However, there is another data that cannot be ignored. The deaths in police operations — which are also among the highest in the world— have increased remarkably, above all in the State of Río de Janeiro, where there were more than 1,800 incidents in the past year, the highest in decades. This is a level of police lethality that is incompatible with a state of strong law, in which security forces have the duty to protect citizenship rather than being considered by broad sectors of society as a threat (Violencia, 2020, free translation).³⁴

In this fragment, the expression of an opinion (that in the introductory paragraph is restricted to the adjectives esperanzadora [hopeful] and gigante [huge], attributed respectively to the news about crime reduction rate and to the country in question) gains more precise outlines. The author makes considerations about the discrepancy between the level of police lethality and a democratic state, based on the alleged perspective of broad sectors of society on security forces.

The argumentation is also supported by the allusion to statistical data regarding the profile of those who lost their lives during police actions, as well as in the inconclusiveness of police investigations that would determine those responsible for the deaths:

The statistics show that the majority of the victims of police actions are blacks and poor men, who had been shot during incursions against drug trafficking in favelas. Rarely do investigations on these deaths determine that the agents exceeded the use of force, which reinforces a feeling of impunity (Violencia, 2020, free translation).³⁵

If, on the one hand, at the end of the first paragraph the newspaper admits as legitimate the fact that the government of Jair Bolsonaro congratulates himself on the drop in the number of homicides, the intermediate paragraphs, on the other hand, supports the criticism that takes shape in the final paragraph:

President Bolsonaro attributes to his Government the historic fall of murders in his first year in office, but nothing is said about the number of deaths during police operations, which has alarmed even the United Nations. His intention of shielding by law the agents who shoot down suspects in police interventions was stopped in Congress, but his intention to make the gun purchase and possession more flexible still stands firmly. Experts attribute the drop in violent deaths to a combination of factors that goes beyond the influence or action of the federal government, and warn against the use of the fall of crimes arguments to legitimize the abuse of force. The death of an old policeman suspected of being involved in the crime that costed the life of the leftist councilwoman Marielle Franco has put the focus on the criminal gangs of ex agentes and on their connections with local politicians, suspicions that spills over senator Flávio Bolsonaro. The president cannot obviate this reality. He has the obligation to elucidate any type of relationship and take measures to avoid further damage to democracy. (Violencia, 2020, free translation)³⁶

The scathing criticism towards the Brazilian president is built around his silence regarding the large number of deaths occurred during police operations, a fact seen with astonishment by the United Nations, thus considered an argument of authority. Another resource mobilized by the newspaper is the experts’ voice on reducing the number of homicides (which removes the centrality of the supposed government efforts to reduce crime) and their warning about the use of statistics to legitimize police violence. It is enough for the journalistic discourse to refer to the specialists to construct their argumentation, without specifying who they are and/or in which areas they operate. The same is true for “broad sectors of society” mentioned in the second paragraph. Thus, throughout the utterance, the positioning of El País is being built on arguments, to some extent, irrefutable. It is as if the newspaper affirmed “it is true, because I am not the one who says so,” thus forging an opinion that seems to emanate from the heart of social life.

This way of constructing the argument exposes a dialogue with a communication vehicle supposedly known by the recipient as reliable and knowledgeable. It is meant for the reader who hypothetically respects the newspaper as a “primary source” of information. This is because the editorials are produced following a discursive practice that makes the reader feel the newspaper is close to the source of information - as we pointed in the analysis of Violencia en Brasil [Violence in Brazil] (2020). Apparently, the newspaper circulates what seems to be an already well-established public opinion, seeking to consolidate what are supposed to be the expectations of the other participants in the discursive interaction. Our understanding can be reinforced by the value judgment expressed in the newspaper’s manual about who owns the information: “Since EL PAÍS was founded, readers are considered to be the definitive owners of information, and journalists are solely the mediators between the two” (El País, 2014, p.8, free translation).³⁷

The density of the paragraphs contrasts with the color image that illustrates each utterance, thus producing a certain lightness to the page (see Appendix A). Perhaps, in this resource lies the most evident trait of the analyzed genre, the integration of El País with one of the precepts of journalism in digital media: the multimediality (Palacios, 2003). However, it is a moderate integration if we consider that the use of color static images became quite common in journalistic practices at least three decades ago. The “novelty” lies in the use of these images in a genre that historically has not been illustrated, especially in print editions. Through the use of photography, the newspaper seeks to ensure a kind of pause for the cyber reader, an individual who is supposedly familiarized with verbal-visual language, seeking to establish the proximity between the opinion of the journalistic company with the extralinguistic situation: life is in color.

Another characteristic of this form of journalism is the hypertextuality (Palacios, 2003), but it was not found in the corpus. There are no highlighted elements throughout the utterances that would refer to another hypertext when triggered by a click. However, as we stated earlier, the newspaper does not refrain from using links.³⁸

In its style guide, more specifically in the part reserved for prescribing standards for the news published on the website (extended to the other journalistic genres), the links are considered to be differential elements of the internet, designed to contribute with more information and references to help the reader in the contextualization process and to increase the navigation time (El País, 2014). As for its use, it is stated: “It is necessary to consider that the links can divert the reader away from the main story and, therefore, they must be used sparingly” (El País, 2014, p.46, free translation).³⁹

If the presence of links throughout a journalistic utterance, on the one hand, can give the readers some freedom to build their reading path (not necessarily a linear one), and allow them to fill supposedly knowledge gaps, its absence, on the other hand, can be seen as an indication that the assumed reader is a well-informed individual who values a reading method similar to the one that occurs in the print edition.

The presentation of this resource, in the form of an eye, seems to reinforce the dialogue with a captive reader of the Opinion section, since most of times the links refer to correlated editorials. It also points to a strategy by El País to bring the editorial genre closer to its print version, by omitting hypertext, while recognizing the commercial importance of the disseminating of journalistic articles and by keeping the reader on the site for longer periods. In other words, following the example given by El País, in the late 1990s, for the inclusion of color photographs in the print edition, the links in the editorials also seem to respond to the newspaper’s desire to adapt to new technologies without renouncing to the rigor and quality that supposedly make up their identity. This journalistic practice, to some extent, exposes a view at the online from the print editions that may imply prejudices, as it occurs in the sphere of language studies, when the oral language modality is “read” from the writing modality.⁴⁰

Finally, the lexical choices — common, frequent, easy to understand — reiterate the dialogue with a heterogeneous reading public:

The journalists will write in the style of journalists, not in the style of politicians, economists or lawyers. Journalists have an obligation to communicate and make technical or specialized information accessible to the general public. The presence of unexplained erudite words reflects the writer’s inability to conceive and convey a complex reality (El País, 2014, p.31, free translation. ⁴¹

The occurrence of three Latinisms is exemplary of the “style” of journalists recommended in the style manual. The ex post and ex ante phrases appear in the utterance El Peñón y el veto [El Peñón and the veto], of February 5, 2020, accompanied by an explanation in parentheses. They refer to a very specific context of the agreements established within the European Union:

Despite this diplomatic setback, which should not be repeated - let alone in such a delicate matter - this eventual new meeting may contribute with some complementary services, with the strict condition that Spain’s role does not occur ex post (in the agreements validation phase), but ex ante (prior to their formalization).⁴²

However, in the utterance Mal momento [Bad Moment], of February 11, 2020, which is also related to the economic bloc, sine die is used without any explanation, which can be interpreted as an indication of a supposedly shared knowledge between writer and reader:

In case an approximation of tax policy between European partners is extended sine die and the recovery of tax revenues withheld by technology groups continues inexistent, the pessimistic perception that the European Union does not value social or economic cohesion will be reinforced (Mal, 2020).⁴³

In our view, this occurrence demonstrates that the use of an accessible lexicon aims to cover a very diverse audience without, however, neglecting their knowledge.⁴⁴

In the dialogical relationship established through the style of the utterances, the reason why the assumed reading public is also a captive audience becomes clear: the editorials of El País are produced with accessible language and concern subjects that are not restricted to the most immediate context of the discursive interaction. Moreover, they are informative.

With this, El País dialogues with an absolutely heterogeneous reading public, formed mainly by Spaniards, other Europeans and Latin Americans, making its diffusion on a worldwide scale through linguistic choices. For a company that calls itself global, a clear accessible language, shared by native speakers of different varieties of the Spanish language as well as foreigners is as fundamental as the defense of democratic values and guidelines related to human rights and political and social changes. Our analysis corroborates the words of the former president of the PRISA Group, Juan Luis Cebrián, in his autobiography:

I wanted to make a newspaper with a balanced and succinct profile, a sober, well-written newspaper, well-documented in its analyses and plural in its opinions. (...) read and respected, both by the elite and by ordinary people, a newspaper that played an essential role in shaping the public opinion (Cebrián apud Arias, 2017, free translation).⁴⁵

Given the expressive number, the community of readers of the digital edition seems to respond to the dialogue by validating the editorial, not as a serious genre, excessively formal and/or distant from the general public, but as an event of social life.

Final Considerations

The analysis we carried out of the Spanish-language editorials published in the digital edition of El País reveals an axiological process of responsiveness, apparently based on the consideration of the great diversity of its reading public and their proficiency.

The dialogue established with a considerably broad and heterogeneous audience is revealed in the architectonics and in the three dimensions of the analyzed genre: in its thematic content, in its compositional structure and in its style.

The selection of what deserves the opinion of the journalistic company shows that the assumed reader is not restricted to residents of Spanish territory, but most of them exceed the borders of other countries belonging to the European continent and some are even located in the American continent. The assumption of ethnolinguistic diversity among the recipients of the newspaper (individuals who speak different varieties of the Spanish language and foreigners) highlights the importance of choosing clear, uncomplicated, understandable lexical resources. This strategy aims to contemplate an absolutely diverse reading public and “democratize” the access to information and reasoned opinion, a euphemism for what, in another historical moment, could be considered expansionism.

The assumed readers by El País not only read in Spanish, but they also read texts with a dense configuration and of an opinionated character. If not, for what reason would the newspaper suggest the reading of other editorials when it could retain the reader’s browsing time with any other journalistic genre?

It is also evident that the newspaper assumes an occasional reader who accesses its pages through social networks and search engines and who seems a little unprepared. The newspaper presumption of this reader, whether shown through the illustration of the utterances with large color photographs or the previous presentation of their title, subtitle and miniature image, in our view, is a sign of the functioning of the journalistic sphere in the digital media, a commercial activity that you cannot do without clicks. His presence in the digital edition of El País, however, does not overlap the presence of the reader considered “de facto” and “of rights.”

This oscillation in the dialogue established between the newspaper and their readers — sometimes habitual ones, sometimes occasional ones — can be seen as an effect of the production, circulation and reception of the utterances analyzed in digital media. According to Grillo (2005, p.174, free translation), “the relationship of the utterance with its co-enunciators — the anticipation of their responsive attitude, the knowledge of their social position, their tastes, their preferences, etc. — are also conditioned by the specificities of one sphere.”⁴⁶ Our analysis indicates that the digitization of practices in the journalistic sphere alters the product of the interrelationship established between El País and its social purview.

From the adopted theoretical point of view, it can be said that there are ongoing changes related to the inseparable link between the internal totality of the editorials and the external axiological reality. From the internet, the typical image of the newspaper reader changes. In compared to print editions, a new architectonics begins to take shape, based on the considerable expansion of the reading public and the limits of time and space imposed on the journalistic sphere. Thus, this concept, although still little explored in Bakhtinian studies, proves to be quite productive for the analysis of discourse genres whose mode of circulation takes place online and it also helps in the apprehension of their socio-cultural, historical and discursive idiosyncrasies.

Finally, we consider that the architectonic form that determines the compositional structure of the analyzed utterances is based on the assessment that reading is part of the habits of the participants in the discursive interaction and the Spanish language has a priceless economic value. For this reason, in its editorials, El País may renounce a style that could distance it from the general public audience.

Reviews

Review I

The article aims to discuss the editorials of the Spanish newspaper El País from a Bakhtinian discursive perspective. The title already precisely synthesizes what is discussed in the article, whose textual organization allows us to follow the logical development of the proposal. The theoretical part that underlies the research is adequate to the proposal and coherently presents the categories that are explored in the selected editorials as objects of analysis. The research is coherent and represents the stage of a broader project. In a clear and objective language without writing problems whatsoever, it makes its investigative proposal more explicit. The works and authors mentioned are suitable for the research proposal in the dialogic perspective of language. That is why I consider the article suitable for publication. ACCEPTED

Miriam Bauab Puzzo - https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0046-7159; [e-mail]; Universidade de Taubaté: Taubaté, SP, Brazil;

Review II

The article meets most of the evaluation criteria established by the journal: the title is adequate, the objectives are clearly explained and the text development is coherent with the proposal. The language is correct, clear and suitable for scientific work. However, the theoretical discussion could be broader and deeper. The presentation of the notion of gender from the essay "Discourse Genres" takes up well-known elements, but the expressive component, inseparable from the author's position, that is, the axiological position, very important in the analyzed genre, is not explored even in the theoretical part nor in analysis. The notion of architectonics also deserves a more in-depth look, given that it is pointed out as a category of analysis. I suggest a deepening of the notions indicated in the opinion. ACCEPTED WITH RESTRICTIONS

Doris Arruda Cunha - https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5349-2887; [e-mail]; Universidade Católica de Pernambuco: Recife, PE, Brazil; Universidade Federal de Pernambuco: Recife, PE, Brazil;

Editorial review

Considering the opinions above, we ask the authors to meet the requests of the second reviewer, review the text and send it back to the e-mail of the journal [e-mail] until 05-04-2021 for a new evaluation.

Review III

The article was re-presented with additions to the theoretical foundation in relation to the previous version. According to a previous evaluation, the text meets most of the evaluation criteria established by the journal: the title is adequate, the objectives are clearly explained and the text's development is coherent with the proposal. The language is correct, clear and suitable for scientific work. The additions made refer to the notion of architectural and axiological positioning. ACCEPTED

Doris Arruda Cunha - https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5349-2887; [e-mail]; Universidade Católica de Pernambuco: Recife, PE, Brazil; Universidade Federal de Pernambuco: Recife, PE, Brazil;

Final remark

Considering the attached opinion, the article El País Editorials from a Dialogical Perspective is ACCEPTED. We ask that you carefully read the guidelines below, with the next steps for editing and publishing in Bakhtiniana. Journal of Discourse Studies and send the texts to the email [e-mail] until 05-30-2021.

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• 1
  We adopted the term sphere in line with Bakhtin (1986).
• 2
  VOLOŠINOV, V. N. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R-Titunik, New York and London: Seminar Press, 1973.
• 3
  BAKHTIN, M. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press, First Edition. 1986.
• 4
  VOLOŠINOV, V.N. Freudianism: A Marxist Critique. Translated by I. R. Titunik. Academic Press, New York, 1976.
• 5
  For reference, see footnote 3.
• 6
  BAKHTIN, M. Supplement: The Problem of Content, Material, and Form in Verbal Art. In: Art and Answerability. Early Philosophical Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Translated by Keneth Brostrom (notes by Michael Holquist, including material from the editor of the Russian edition, S. G. Bocharov). Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990, pp.257-325.
• 7
  In Portuguese: “a arquitetônica designa o ponto de articulação entre a totalidade interna e as avaliações axiológicas (valores éticos, estéticos, morais) que constroem um objeto situado histórica, social e ideologicamente, atribuindo-lhe sentido.”
• 8
  In Portuguese: “nasce de um pensamento que tem o ser humano como centro de valor, porque há um homem que fala, que se interroga e que procura estabelecer relações interativas, formulando perguntas e respostas diante dos acontecimentos da vida.”
• 9
  In Portuguese: “tema, estilo e forma de composição só fazem sentido no âmbito de uma arquitetônica.”
• 10
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 11
  In Portuguese: “a dimensão axiológica é, portanto, parte inalienável da palavra viva.”
• 12
  For reference, see footnote 6.
• 13
  In Spanish: “Los progresistas llevaban EL PAÍS bajo el brazo. Era un guiño, ideológico, una señal para reconocer a los tuyos al pie del quiosco, en las cafeterías, en el autobús. (...) los jóvenes rebeldes llevaban EL PAÍS hasta los lugares de la batalla. El periódico era arrollado junto con sus lectores cuando los caballos de la policía irrumpían en las cafeterías de Moncloa persiguiendo a los manifestantes.”
• 14
  In Spanish: “Por su vigorosa defensa de las libertades y apoyo al cambio político y social, se granjeó la fidelidad de lectores cada vez más numerosos. Símbolo y portavoz de la España moderna y pluralista, de clara vocación europea, se convirtió en cuatro años en el periódico más leído y en el medio de referencia para los sectores más influyentes de la sociedad.”
• 15
  In Spanish: “Lo leían los amantes de los Rolling Stones, los políticos en las sedes de los partidos, los sindicalistas en las oficinas, los diseñadores, interioristas, los artistas iniciáticos de la movida, los diplomáticos y los primeros punkis reciclados. Ya hacía tiempo que todos los padres de la patria se miraban cada mañana en este espejo para saber quién era el más guapo. EL PAÍS no pretendía derribar a ningún Gobierno. Le bastaba con saber que podía levantar de la cama al presidente y obligarle a leer un editorial en pijama.”
• 16
  The AME, MEX, BRA and CAT editions present texts published in the ESP edition (translated to Portuguese and to Catalan, according to each case) and original texts, that is, texts produced by journalists who are part of the newspaper staff.
• 17
  For the analysis we carry out, we deem necessary to highlight that the utterances belonging to the editorial genre are present in both, ESP and AME editions.
• 18
  In Spanish: “El cambio no es consecuencia de una mera adaptación estética, sino que responde al deseo de EL PAÍS de continuar en su línea de necesaria y permanente adecuación del periódico a las nuevas tendencias de la sociedad (…) sin perder por ello sus señas de identidad de rigor y periodismo de calidad.”
• 19
  For reference, see footnote 2.
• 20
  During the period designated for the analysis, there were days when no editorials were published, one day when only one editorial was published and another day when three editorials were published.
• 21
  The descriptions refer to what was observed on the newspaper’s website in the first half of 2020.
• 22
  This section is not to be confused with social or gossip columns, but it is focused on issues related to health, environment, equality, consumption, communication, secularism and education.
• 23
  Unlike the normally found division in Brazilian newspapers, El País does not reserve a specific section for content related to the political and governmental scenario. The texts on this subject appear distributed in sections such as, Spain, Economy, Society and Education.
• 24
  For reference, see footnote 4.
• 25
  Journalistic jargon used to designate the highlight in the layout of part of the material considered interesting and/or able to attract the reader’s attention to the text.
• 26
  In the corpus, there are only two utterances with links to related information.
• 27
  The information button and the corresponding message are also found in other opinionated genres.
• 28
  In Spanish: “Es responsabilidad del director, y expresa la opinión del diario sobre asuntos de actualidad nacional o internacional.”
• 29
  In Spanish: “Quedan a criterio del autor, pero, como todos los títulos, su misión es orientar al lector sobre el contenido. (…) no deben destripar el remate final del texto.”
• 30
  The response in face of the coronavirus must be coordinated by the World Health Organization - WHO (Confianza, 2020, free translation).
• 31
  About reading strategies, see Kleiman (2013).
• 32
  In Appendix B, we reproduced the translation of the editorial Violencia en Brasil (2020) exactly as it was published in the Brazilian edition of the newspaper El País, with the title A queda da violência num Brasil envolto no mistério da morte de Adriano da Nóbrega (2020).
• 33
  In Spanish: “Los asesinatos cayeron en Brasil un 19% en 2019, el mayor descenso desde que comenzó el recuento que gracias a una iniciativa de la sociedad civil reúne y homologa los datos estatales desde 2007. Es una noticia esperanzadora, pese a que con más de 41.000 muertos el gigante sudamericano se mantiene entre los países más violentos del mundo. Son casi 10.000 asesinados menos que un año antes y también han disminuido otros delitos, como los robos o las violaciones. Los datos confirman una tendencia que asomaba hacía meses. Son logros importantes porque la inseguridad es una de las principales preocupaciones de los 210 millones de brasileños, sean ricos o pobres. Y es lógico que el Gobierno del presidente Bolsonaro se felicite por ello” (Violencia, 2020).
• 34
  In Spanish: “Sin embargo, hay otro dato que no se puede obviar. Las muertes en operaciones policiales —también entre las más altas del mundo— han aumentado notablemente, sobre todo en el Estado de Río de Janeiro, donde hubo más de 1.800 víctimas el año pasado, el máximo en dos décadas. Es un nivel de letalidad policial incompatible con un Estado de derecho afianzado, en el que las fuerzas de seguridad tienen el deber de proteger a la ciudadanía en lugar de ser consideradas por amplios sectores de la sociedad como una amenaza” (Violencia, 2020).
• 35
  In Spanish: “Las estadísticas muestran que la mayoría de las víctimas de acciones policiales son hombres negros y pobres que mueren alcanzados por disparos en incursiones contra el tráfico de drogas en favelas. Rara vez las investigaciones sobre esas muertes determinan que los agentes se excedieron en el uso de la fuerza, lo que refuerza una sensación de impunidad” (Violencia, 2020).
• 36
  In Spanish: “El presidente Bolsonaro atribuye a su Gobierno la histórica caída de los asesinatos en su primer año de mandato, pero nada dice de las cifras de fallecidos en operativos policiales que han hecho saltar las alarmas incluso en Naciones Unidas. Su pretensión de blindar por ley a los agentes que abaten a sospechosos en intervenciones policiales fue frenada en el Congreso, pero su intención de flexibilizar la compra y tenencia de armas es firme. Los especialistas atribuyen el descenso de las muertes violentas a una conjunción de factores que van más allá́ de la acción del Gobierno federal, y advierten contra el uso de la caída de los delitos para legitimar el abuso de la fuerza. La muerte de un antiguo policía sospechoso del crimen que le costó la vida a la concejal izquierdista Marielle Franco ha puesto el foco sobre las bandas criminales de exagentes y sobre sus conexiones con políticos locales, sospechas que salpican al senador Flávio Bolsonaro. El presidente no puede obviar esta realidad. Tiene la obligación de despejar cualquier tipo de relación y tomar medidas para evitar un mayor daño a la democracia” (Violencia, 2020).
• 37
  In Spanish: “Desde que se fundó, en EL PAÍS se ha considerado que son los lectores los propietarios últimos de la información, y los periodistas tan sólo los mediadores entre aquéllos y ésta.”
• 38
  The editorials about Brazil published in the Spanish edition are translated and put into circulation in the Brazilian edition of El País. However, in this context, as can be seen in A queda da violência num Brasil envolto no mistério da morte de Adriano da Nóbrega (2020), a translation by Violencia en Brasil (2020),(in English: The Fall of violence in a Brazil surrounded by the mystery of Adriano da Nóbrega’s death [2020]) available in Appendix B, the newspaper “abuses” the use of links and defines a title for the utterance that in no way comes close to the one verified in the corpus of analysis. Roughly speaking, these aspects of the utterance style addressed specifically to the Brazilian public, suggests a substantial change in the dialogical relationship established between El País and the reader, and that deserves to be examined.
• 39
  In Spanish: “Ha de tenerse en cuenta que los enlaces pueden desviar al lector del relato principal y, por tanto, han de usarse con comedimiento.”
• 40
  For a history of the thought on speech and writing and its dichotomies and paradigms, see Marcuschi (2004).
• 41
  In Spanish: “Los periodistas han de escribir con el estilo de los periodistas, no con el de los políticos, los economistas o los abogados. Los periodistas tienen la obligación de comunicar y hacer accesible al público en general la información técnica o especializada. La presencia de palabras eruditas no explicadas refleja la incapacidad del redactor para comprender y transmitir una realidad compleja.”
• 42
  In Spanish: “Pese a ese traspiés diplomático, que conviene no repetir —y menos aún en un asunto tan sensible—, esta eventual nueva mesa podría prestar algunos servicios complementarios, a condición estricta de que el papel en ella de España no se produzca ex post (en la fase de validación de los acuerdos) sino ex ante (con carácter previo a su fragua)” (El Peñón, 2020).
• 43
  In Spanish: “Si también se demora sine die un acercamiento de la política fiscal entre los socios europeos y sigue sin concretarse la recuperación de los ingresos fiscales escamoteados por los grupos tecnológicos, queda reforzada la percepción pesimista de que la UE no valora la cohesión social o económica” (Mal, 2020).
• 44
  Another indication that the newspaper does not disqualify its reader, perhaps resides in the fact that the Portuguese phrase printed on the Brazilian’s shirt depicted in the photograph that illustrates the editorial Violencia en Brasil (2020) was not translated either.
• 45
  In Portuguese: “Queria fazer um jornal de perfil equilibrado e sucinto, um jornal sóbrio, bem escrito, documentado em suas análises e plural em suas opiniões. (...) lido e respeitado, tanto pela elite como pelas pessoas comuns, que desempenhasse um papel essencial na formação da opinião pública” (Cebrián apud Arias, 2017).
• 46
  In Portuguese: “a relação do enunciado com seus co-enunciadores – a antecipação de sua atitude responsiva, o conhecimento de sua posição social, seus gostos, suas preferências etc – também é condicionada pelas especificidades de um campo.”
• Translated by Lívia Cremonez - [e-mail]

• ERRATUM

  In our last issue (17.1), there was a mistake in the affiliation of the author of the article “El País Editorials from a Dialogical Perspective.” This is Heloisa Mara Mendes, from Universidade Federal de Uberlândia [the Federal University of Uberlândia], Instituto de Letras e Linguística [Institute of Letters and Linguistics], to whom we publicly apologize. [e-mail]

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  29 Nov 2021
• Date of issue
  Jan-Mar 2022

History

• Received
  11 Feb 2021
• Accepted
  16 Sept 2021