8.8-MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE IN CHILE AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS IN BACHELET’S ADMINISTRATION

By

Constanza López & Constanza Reyes

June 24th, 2014

ABSTRACT

This paper analysis the way British and American broadsheets newspapers portrayed

Bachelet’s administration after the consequences of the 2010 earthquake in central

Chile. The main objective of the study is to determine how the main entities in

Bachelet’s administration were evaluated according to goodness and certainty

parameters, considering the influence of editorial bias in both in quotes as in the text in

general. For this purpose, six online newspaper articles were studied: three British and

three American. The study pays attention to 2 different aspects; first, the entities

involved and their evaluation and second, the influence of the editorial stances in

quotations and the articles in general. The findings of this paper were categorized in

four aspects; first, all articles used plenty of evaluative language in terms of the

goodness and certainty parameter. Second, the editorial and journalistic bias had great

influence in the way the events and entities were portrayed. Third, journalists used

quotations to indirectly express their own opinion on the issues, and finally the use of

opinions under the name of facts.

Keywords: newspapers, article, Discourse Analysis, Evaluation Theory,

evaluation, quotation, editorial bias, earthquake, Chile.

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1. INTRODUCTION

Chile is located at a destructive convergent plate boundary where all the

right conditions converge to generate megathrust earthquakes, the planet’s most

powerful type of earthquake. On Saturday, 27 February 2010, at 03:34:17 local time an

8.8-magnitude earthquake occurred off the coast of central Chile. Due to its intensity

and duration the 2010 Chile earthquake ranks as the sixth largest earthquake ever to be

recorded by a seismograph, and is also the strongest earthquake affecting Chile since

the 9.5-magnitude 1960 Valdivia earthquake –the most energetic earthquake ever

measured in the world.

National and international opinion regarded former president of Chile

Michelle Bachelet as not being able to appropriately manage the imminent

consequences of the destructive earthquake and tsunami.

In the first place, she was strongly criticized by public opinion for

spreading erroneous information given by the Chilean Navy. Shortly after the initial

quake a strong tsunami struck the Chilean coast destroying several coastal towns in

central-south Chile already devastated by the impact of the earthquake. No sooner had

the quake end than a tsunami warning was issued for 53 countries across the Pacific

Rim by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center; however, the tsunami warning for

coastal zones in Chile was not issued on time due to a mistake from the Chilean Navy

which informed Chile’s oceanographic service SHOA that no tsunami was expected

for national coasts. Such information was spread at 05:40 local time by Carmen

Fernandez, former director of the national emergency office ONEMI, and former

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president Michelle Bachelet, preventing some coastal villagers flee to higher ground.

As a consequence, dozens of human lives were lost in the tsunami.

In the second place, she also received massive disapproving for not

immediately send military forces to restore order in looting cities. A day after the

earthquake, nearly half the places affected were declared catastrophe zones and

extensive looting of supermarkets and gas stations occurred after the widespread

rumors of food and gas shortage. At first, she didn’t want to remind people of the

Dictatorship years by sending military forces to the streets. Nonetheless, vandalism

and rioting became unsustainable and Bachelet’s government sent the military to

control disorders in those cities.

In the third place, Bachelet was reproached for not accepting international

humanitarian help. Despite the fact that about two million people were affected by the

quake and more than 500,000 houses were uninhabitable for structural damage, four

hours after the sinister president Michelle Bachelet informed the population of the

situation and stated that Chile did not yet need international aid.

In this regard, we would like to offer an insight into former president

Michelle Bachelet’s administration portrayal after the earthquake and tsunami in

central Chile in 2010 in a series of news reports about this topic in British and

American broadsheet newspapers. We will realize that writers’ opinions are

camouflaged behind professedly neutral and impartial tone. We will also see that

journalists’ opinions are conveyed through the use of evaluative language and the

conscious choice of quotations that help support their own stance, as well as the

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political bias of the institution they work to, and persuade –at the same time that they

inform –readers to share their particular viewpoint.

Drawing on Hunston and Thompson’s Evaluation Theory (2000) we will

analyze the discursive construction of the consequences of the central Chile earthquake

in relation with the evaluation of Michelle Bachelet’s administration from the different

points of view presented by newspapers in America and Britain.

The research question to which we are seeking to provide answers is as

follows: How was Bachelet’s administration portrayed in American and British

broadsheets covering the consequences of the 2010 earthquake in central Chile

according to their underlying ideologies?

In order to provide an answer to this question, we will analyze and

compare six different news articles published in six broadsheet newspapers from the

United Kingdom (The Financial Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian) and the United

States (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Denver Post). While doing so,

we will focus on terms used by journalists to evaluate Michelle Bachelet’s

government.

The structure of this article consists of 5 sections. In section 2, a literature

review will be presented, setting the paper’s theoretical framework through definitions

of journalistic and linguistic terminology, and through the connections made among

them for a better understanding of the study. In section 3 we will provide a brief

analysis of the corpus we chose. In section 4 we will carry out a data analysis of every

one of the texts that make up our corpus, showing the evaluations made by the

newspapers writers. Finally, in section 5 we will draw conclusions of our findings.

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2. LITERATURE REVIEW

This section provides an overview of the dominant concepts and themes

covered in this paper. We will introduce the theoretical framework for the description

and explanation of the corpus analysis in section 4.

2.1. Discourse

According to Chimombo & Roseberry (1998) discourse is “a process

resulting in a communicative act. The communicative act itself takes the form of a

text.” (9). The term discourse may be defined in different ways and its meanings will

vary according to the context where it is used. Van Dijk (1997a) mentions that

discourse is usually identified as a form of spoken language, what is said in public

speeches for example, or it could also refer to the ideas of certain schools of thoughts,

for instance the discourse of contemporary philosophies. However, Van Dijk (1989)

comments that on discourse studies, the term discourse is understood as a particular

form of language use, as well as form of social interaction that can be defined as a

communicative event in a social situation.

2.2. Discourse Analysis

According to Taylor (2013) Discourse Analysis may be understood as the

close study of language and language use as evidence of aspects of society and social

life, this mean the study of a system of formation of meanings and the connections of

those meanings to society, including the power relations within society.

2.3. Journalistic Discourse

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Journalistic discourse has earned substantial attention from the part of

linguists. Bell (1995) provides four reasons for the attention paid to journalistic

discourse, “First, the media provide an easily accessible source of language data for

research and teaching purposes. Second, the media are important linguistic institutions.

Their output makes up a large proportion of the language that people hear and read

every day. Media usage reflects and shapes both language use and attitudes in a speech

community. For second language learners, the media may function as the primary – or

even the sole – source of native-speaker models. Third, the ways in which the media

use language are interesting linguistically in their own right; these include how

different dialects and languages are used” by different segments of media “to construct

their own images and their relationships to an unseen, unknown audience. Fourth, 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”

2.4. Evaluation

According to Hunston & Thompson (1999) evaluation is “the broad cover

term for the expression of the speaker or writer’s attitude or stance towards, viewpoint

on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she is talking about.” In

other words, “it is the speaker or writer’s view of something as desirable or

undesirable.”

With this in mind, it is valid to say that evaluation theory is used to

thoroughly examine oral and written discourse, and as an interpretative tool in every

day evaluative language used by people.

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In this regard, evaluation’s importance lies in 3 different functions. First,

evaluation is used to express opinions. This is the most obvious function of evaluation

and consists in “telling the reader what the writer thinks or feels about something.” It is

acknowledged that an act of evaluation goes beyond a single person’s ideas; indeed,

evaluation involves the expression and building up of communal value-systems

showing a “component of ideology of the society that has produced the text.”

(Hunston, S., & Thompson, G. 1999). Second, evaluation is used to maintain relations

–as well as for constructing them. It comprises three main areas: manipulation,

hedging, and politeness; all of them are resources the writer uses in order to build a

particular kind of relationship with the reader. Specifically, manipulation is used in

evaluation “to persuade the reader to see things in a particular way” (Hunston, S., &

Thompson, G. 1999); hedging is not only used to “adjust the truth-value or certainty

attached to a statement” (Hunston, S., & Thompson, G. 1999), but also “to mark a

knowledge claim as unacknowledged by the discourse community, not as uncertain”

(Myers, 1989: 12)

2.5. Evaluation Theory

According to Hunston & Thompson (2001) approach, evaluation

corresponds to the way by which the speaker or writer refers to certain entities and

propositions, therefore, revealing his or her personal and biased point of view.

Evaluation Theory distinguishes between evaluative meaning and

connotative meaning in discourse. Through the use of particular words to convey a

viewpoint, evaluation may bring confusions and misunderstandings. Accordingly,

connotation is an inherent characteristic to lexical items. That is to say, it is the

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meaning associated to certain words. On the contrary, evaluation is a user-dependent

and context-dependent characteristic. In other words, a word may be merely

descriptive in a context and evaluative in another (Hunston, S. & Thompson, G. 2001)

The linguistic identification of evaluation is found at different levels: the

lexical level (adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs), grammatical level (involving co-

dependent sentence structures), and the text level (considering the whole of the text)

(Hunston, S. & Thompson, G. 2001)

In addition, evaluation is comprised of four parameters: goodness,

certainty, expectedness, and importance. On the one side, goodness and certainty are

real world oriented. This means that these markers express the producer’s view of a

proposition or an entity present in the real world. On the other side, expectedness and

importance parameters are text oriented. In other words, these evaluation markers are

used by the writer to signal surprise and importance. In this paper, the goodness and

certainty parameters will be used to describe whether the entities are positively or

negatively described, and whether the actions and descriptions are presented with low

or high levels of certainty, respectively (Hunston, S. & Thompson, G. 2001)

2.6. Broadsheet

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, broadsheet refers to a newspaper

that is printed on large sheets of paper. In some countries, especially Australia,

Canada, the UK, and the US, broadsheet newspapers are commonly perceived to be

more intellectual in content than their tabloid counterparts, using their greater size to

examine stories in more depth, while carrying less sensationalist and celebrity

material. This distinction is most obvious on the front page: whereas tabloids tend to

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have a single story dominated by a headline, broadsheets allow two or more stories to

be displayed, the most important at the top of the page—"above the fold". In other

countries, such as Spain, a small format is the universal for newspapers—a popular,

sensational press has had difficulty taking root—and the tabloid size has no such

connotations. (Wikipedia, 2014)

2.7. Newspaper Article

Although news genre has not been thoroughly defined by experts yet

(Bonini, 2009: 198-9), Lage (1979: 54) provides a more complete notion of the

concept, describing it as “something which consists of two basic components: (a) a

relatively stable organization –or the logical component; and (b) elements which are

organized in the news, chosen according to essentially variable value criteria—the

ideological component.”

Based on this definition one can conclude that the ideological component

is an influential characteristic in the way events are organized and presented in news

reports.

2.8. Editorial Bias

In his research paper No. 1845 Persistent Media Bias, David Baron (2004)

acknowledges that news media is very important for society. However, he says that

news media is highly regarded as biased. Moreover, he adds: “Bias could reflect the

preferences or world view of the owner of the news organization.” (2004:1)

Accordingly, a survey carried out by the American Society of Newspapers

Editors (ASNE, 1999) concluded that “The public appears to diagnose the root causes

of media bias in two forms. First, (and at best), bias is a lack of dispassion and

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impartiality that colors the decision of whether or not to publish a story, or the

particular facts that are included in a news report and the tone of how those facts are

expressed. Second (and at worst), they see bias as an intent to persuade.” (Baron, 2004:

4)

2.9. Influence of Quotations

Quotations are a linguistic resource massively used in news articles.

Indeed, quotations are frequently found in almost all news reports referring to entities,

events, and speeches, among others. With this in mind, the regular or repeated use of

quotations should be carefully examined.

Editorial bias has a great influence in the use of quotations because all

newspapers tend to sympathize with a particular political viewpoint and stance.

Therefore, journalists tend to write accordingly to that particular ideology. In this

regard, it is said that “language reproduces ideology and therefore … no text is free

from ideology” (Jullian, 2011:767). Additionally, he mentions that quotation is neither

chosen randomly nor useless. Using the words of the referent permits journalists to

express their opinion implicitly, tinting the information given to the audience.

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3. CORPUS DESCRIPTION

This research is constituted by six online news articles taken from three

American and three British broadsheets newspapers.

a) American broadsheets newspapers: The New York Times, The Washington

Post, and the Denver Post.

b) British broadsheets newspapers: The Financial Times, The Telegraph, and the

Guardian.

We have decided to use news articles taken from broadsheet newspapers

because this type of newspapers is known for dealing in a serious tone with relevant

news.

In this paper, we focus on the evaluative language used in newspapers

because they enable to explore, describe and explain “the way language is used to

evaluate, to adopt stances, to construct textual personas and to manage interpersonal

positioning and relationships.” (White 2005)

The selected articles were published between March the 1st and March the

10th and their focus is not on how the events, but rather in how Michelle Bachelet’s

administration is portrayed after the 2010 earthquake in central Chile.

Newspaper and Date Bias

The New York Times: March 6, 2010 Liberal Center Left

The Washington Post: March 1, 2010 Liberal Center Left

The Denver Post: March 1, 2010 Liberal Center Left

The Financial Times: March 10, 2010 Conservative Right

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The Telegraph: March 4, 2010 Conservative Right

The Guardian: March 1, 2010 Center Left

4. CORPUS ANALYSIS

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In this paper, American and British newspapers articles will be analyzed

based on the parameters of goodness and certainty proposed by Hunston and

Thompson (2001). Similarly, quotation will also be considered under the same

framework to draw conclusion on the influence of editorial biases on news article.

4.1. British Newspapers

4.1.1. The Financial Times

In this article, the entities evaluated are under the name of Michelle

Bachelet, Ms. Bachelet, her government, Ms. Bachelet’s personal style, her popularity,

and her achievements. They are all evaluated in the light of the earthquake which

happened on February 27, 2010 in central Chile.

In the article, Ms. Bachelet is said to have “exuded the empathy that is one

of her best-loved traits as she toured wrecked towns, hugged victims and choked

back tears on television.” The language used appears to have an ironical connotation

since the journalist boasts her touching attitude despite she had “looked slow to deliver

aid.” In this sense, looked slow is loaded with negative meaning in terms of the

goodness parameter due to Ms. Bachelet slow acting facing the earthquake and its

consequences.

With regard to her background as a president, her popularity is evaluated

negatively given that her government had “hurried the introduction of an integrated

metro and bus system for the capital, Santiago, leaving thousands of residents facing

epic journeys to work.” The word “hurried” and the expression “epic journeys” are

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loaded with negative meaning in terms of the goodness parameter because both point

out to an uncomfortable situation people from Santiago still have to live daily.

Ms. Bachelet’s personal style is also subject of evaluation referring to a

naïve and dithered personality. Both words in bold are full of negativity according to

the goodness parameter because they make reference to first, in the case of naïve to a

lack of experience and second, in the case of dithered to not being able to decide what

to do about a particular issue. Moreover, in the news article it is said that she had even

“set up councils to examine key issues” which is also loaded with a negative meaning

given that it is a proof of Ms. Bachelet’s naivety.

In the article, the author expresses certainty about some issues using

boosters to give emphasis to her opinions. For instance, the author expresses that

“though the mammoth reconstruction effort will spur recovery and jobs later in 2010”

using the word in bold as a booster of certainty. Similarly, the author expresses that

“The handover will end two decades of rule by a leftwing coalition (…)”

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the article highlights by the use of

quotations the fact that Ms Bachelet’s slow acting during the aftermath of the

earthquake is not representative of her role as President. Rodrigo Alvarez, of the Latin

American School of Social Sciences, expressed “It's very sad (…) She didn't deserve

to go out like this.”

4.1.2. The Telegraph

In this article, the entities evaluated appear under the name of Chile’s

outgoing president Michelle Bachelet, Chilean President, her government, and Mrs.

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Bachelet’s government. They are all evaluated a week later of the earthquake happened

in central Chile.

Throughout the text, the author seems concerned to compromise himself

into the accusations Ms. Bachelet has to face. Consequently, the article is full of

quotations from Chilean newspapers that refer to an incompetent labor by the

President. A clear example of this is portrayed in the first paragraphs when it says

“Critics said her government had failed to grasp the scale of the tragedy, had poorly

managed law and order and rescue efforts and had initially refused offers of

international aid.” By the use of the word said, the author is detaching himself of

making such negative comments about what had happened and puts the responsibility

on the critics.

In another example we see that Mrs. Bachelet’s government had shown

“incomprehensible weakness and slowness” as La Tercera, an influential Chilean

daily had portrayed in its pages about the issue of maintaining law and order and

coordinating relief operations for thousands of homeless and hungry. The words in

bold are full of negative connotation and act as a criticism to Bachelet’s performance

as a President, but again here it is not the journalist who claims these words but put the

responsibility on the daily.

The article also contains negative evaluation according to the goodness

parameter. When referring to Ms. Bachelet’s background, it is mentioned that her

father was “sympathetic to the government of Salvador Allende.” In this last extract

from the article, we can appreciate that the word sympathetic is used to add a negative

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connotation given that it suggests that Ms Bachelet’s father was a supporter of the left

parties while the editorial stance of this newspapers is more conservative right.

By the same token, the article also states that Michelle Bachelet had been

“reportedly jailed and tortured by the military dictatorship of General Augusto

Pinochet.” The use of reportedly before words with such strong connotations like

jailed and tortured refers to the use of a hedge as a mitigator of the journalist assertion.

This also points out to the strong editorial stance the newspaper has by toning down

the terrible episodes lived during the military dictatorship in Chile.

Finally, as the article makes extensive use of quotations we can appreciate

the employment of boosters according to the certainty parameter. A clear example of

this is portrayed in the next quotation by Ms. Bachelet when admitting rescue efforts

were slow “People probably are always going to feel that we could have done things

better. You can always feel that things could have been done better but the truth is it

will always be insufficient.” The words in bold are used as boosters because they are

signaling that the author is expressing an epistemic opinion about certain propositions.

(Hunston and Thompson, 2001)

4.1.3. The Guardian

In this newspaper article the entities appear under the following names:

President Michelle Bachelet, Bachelet, the Chilean defense minister, and building

codes. They are evaluated in terms of the contributions made after the February 27

earthquake that hit central Chile in 2010.

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In this news article, former president Michelle Bachelet is evaluated in a

positive way according to the goodness parameter after stating that she had “directed

rescue operations and toured heavily hit areas.” Both terms in bold are loaded with a

positive connotation given that they imply an intention to do something, specifically in

areas of Chile where actions were more needed.

Similarly, Francisco Vidal, the Chilean defense minister during Bachelet’s

government, is portrayed in a favorable way as he “announced a curfew and said

10,000 troops would be sent in an attempt to stop the looting” as “hundreds of

residents continued to loot supermarkets in Santiago and southern regions.” It is

known that both curfew and troop carry a military connotation, so in that sense the

words may carry a negative meaning. However, in this specific extract of the article

the words are loaded with a positive evaluation in terms of the goodness parameter,

because they represent an action against the lootings that were affecting many people

and companies in the country.

The article also makes reference to the Chilean’s building codes by quoting

an expert who said that “Chile's long history of major earthquakes and solid

construction were instrumental in preventing far more deaths.” In this context, the

word instrumental is full of a beneficial evaluation because it refers to an important

influence in causing something to happen. For this purpose, the building codes were

essential in preventing more deaths.

Finally, the author of the article expresses certainty through the use of

quotations that contained booster elements acting in the certainty parameter. For

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instance, the president stated that “We face a catastrophe of such unthinkable

magnitude that it will require a giant effort [for Chile to recover].”

4.2. American Broadsheet Newspapers

4.2.1. The New York Times

In this news article, the entities being evaluated by the journalist are named

as Departing Chilean President, Government’s Actions, President Michelle Bachelet

of Chile, President Michelle Bachelet, her government, and Ms. Bachelet. Basically,

the entities refer to former president Michelle Bachelet and her administration and they

were all evaluated a week after the earthquake happened.

Throughout the news article, the journalist seems to be making a positive

evaluation of Ms. Bachelet. First, the journalist depicts former president of Chile as a

defender of her government and administration itself as receiving attacks after the

earthquake and tsunami hit. The writer uses the word “defended” to make a positive

remark on the person of Michelle Bachelet. Second, the writer highlights Ms.

Bachelet’s attitude towards areas and people affected by the earthquake and tsunami

by using expressions such as “daylong tour,” which corresponds to positive evaluative

language to express that she cared of affected people. Similarly, she is evaluated

positively as “she trudged through mud and debris and consoled weeping

constituents who had lost almost everything […].” Here, “trudged” and “consoled”

mean that Ms. Bachelet walked wearily among crying people and damaged buildings

to offer comfort and hope to thos who lose almost everything.

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Aditionally, we find that the journalist paraphrases Bachelet’s words in an

interview, signaling that “Ms. Bachelet dismissed accusations —including some

coming from ministers in her own government —that her past experience as a political

prisoner during the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet made her

reluctant to deploy troops as vandals descended on the disaster zone, looting homes

and businesses.” According to the goodness parameter in Evaluation Theory (Hunston

& Thompson, 2001), the use of “dismissed” is trying to point out that Ms. Bachelet

didn’t take too seriously the assertions made by other people about her. She is also

evaluated as a former “political prisoner,” which makes a negative evaluation of Ms.

Bachelet, assuming that that condition made her “reluctant” to “deploy” military forces

to help devastated areas. These two last words are loaded of negative connotation too,

for they apply to the unwillingness of former president to use resources to help people

get on their feet.

However, the journalist tries to prove the contrary throughout the news

article through the use of different quotations that evaluate Ms. Bachelet and her

government positively and make use of the certainty parameter (Hunston and

Thompson, 2001) to clarify any doubts. For example, the president said “Here was no

delay. I don’t have any problems, particularly ideological problems, making

decisions that warrant the armed forces to take control of certain functions, while

civilian authorities take control of others.” Here, the journalist presents Ms. Bachelet’s

words as true facts and assumes her posture towards the situation, too.

Finally, Michelle Bachelet is depicted as a having a very sympathetic

sentiment towards all Chileans suffering the consequences of the earthquake and

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subsequent tsunami. Moreover, the journalist quotes the following words of hers:

“What has happened to all of us is tremendous,” Ms. Bachelet told Mr. Rivera. “But

at least we are alive. And as long as we are alive we are going to get on our feet

and move forward.” In this example, the journalist chooses a quotation that combines

the parameters of goodness and certainty (Hunston and Thompson, 2001) to reinforce

her point.

4.2.2. The Washington Post

In this article, the entities being evaluated are named as the Chilean

government, President Michelle Bachelet, Bachelet, and building codes. They are all

evaluated under the light of the earthquake that happened on February 27, 2010, in

central Chile.

The first place, the journalist depicts the Chilean government as having

“dispatched troops,” giving the entity a positive evaluation, in this context and

purpose, as “dispatched” means that Chilean authorities have a sense of responsibility

over citizens security.

Second, and similarly, when the journalist points that “President Michelle

Bachelet opened the door to international aid,” the word “opened” is loaded with

positive evaluation for Ms. Bachelet was able to leave her proud and self-sufficiency

aside to think first of the safety of the citizens affected by the earthquake and tsunami.

Third, the country’s building codes are being positively evaluated

recognizing that “the fact that so many Chileans survived was a testament to the

nation's enactment and enforcement of stringent building codes.” To this regard, the

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journalist uses the parameter of certainty to state that the building codes of the country

helped save lives, and the goodness parameter –by occupying the word “testament” –to

highlight that these are evidence of how well they work. Additionally, the writer

quotes an expert who says that "We would have expected that an 8.8 earthquake

would have done a lot more damage," to reinforce and give substance to the former

point.

4.2.3. The Denver Post

In this article, the entities evaluated appear under the name of President

Michelle Bachelet, Bachelet, and the nation's enactment and enforcement of stringent

building codes. They are all evaluated in the light of the earthquake happened on

February 27, in central Chile.

In the article, the author expresses certainty about some issues using

boosters to give emphasis to his opinions. For instance, he expresses that “Experts said

earthquake repairs will take years and will probably cost tens of billions of dollars.”

The use of will gives more emphasis to the sentence intensifying the consequences of

the earthquake that will probably take years and cost a lot of money.

Another example is given when the author states that “the deaths there

were mostly because of widespread building collapses.” In this case, the use of mostly

is also acting as an intensifier pointing out that one the most important reasons for the

death of a lot of people was the building collapses.

In the article, the nation's enactment and enforcement of stringent building

codes under Bachelet’s administration is evaluated positively. For instance, it is stated

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that “the fact that so many Chileans survived was a testament to the nation's

enactment and enforcement of stringent building codes.” In this particular case, the

fact that so is acting as a booster in terms of the goodness parameter of evaluation

attributing these codes a vital importance and loading it with a positive connotation.

Finally, the Chilean President is portrayed in a positive way arguing that

she “opened the door to international aid” after stating that “we generally do not ask

for help.” In this particular case, the expression open the door is loaded with a positive

evaluation in terms of the goodness parameter given that one of the consequences of

doing this action allowed the country to be helped by international aids. In the case of

the quote by Ms. Bachelet, we can see the use of the hedger generally to express

uncertainty which finally makes a lot of sense due to the fact that they ended up asking

for help.

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CONCLUSION

The aim of this paper was to determine how the main entities in Bachelet’s

administration were evaluated according to goodness and certainty parameters,

considering the influence of editorial bias in both, quotes and the text in general in

American and British broadsheets newspapers, based on the following research

question: How was Bachelet’s administration portrayed in American and British

broadsheets covering the consequences of the 2010 earthquake in central Chile

according to their underlying ideologies? This objective was achieved through the

analysis of the tone and the quotes used by journalists in a corpus composed by six

online news articles, three of them American and three British, and the following

conclusions were drawn:

First, regarding the first issue on our research question, it is concluded that

the main entities in Bachelet’s administration were evaluated negatively by some of

the news articles through the use of negative evaluative language that pretended to

devalue the performances of entities during the 2010 earthquake. However, there were

certain newspapers articles, mainly American newspapers, which made efforts to

provide positive evaluation to them through the use of the goodness parameter and of

specific quotations that helped those entities to appear as being right. Accordingly, in

relation to the influence of the editorial bias it is possible to assert that all articles

remained faithful to their political stances which also interfered in the way the events

and the entities were portrayed by the use of quotations and in the text in general.

Second, regarding the use of evaluative language in terms of the goodness

and certainty parameters on the entities, it is possible to state that all the analyzed

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articles worked under the influence of such parameters to evaluate the performance of

Michelle Bachelet’s administration. In terms of the goodness parameter, the news

article that used negative connotations in its choice of words to assess entities was The

Financial Times and the news article that stood out for making positive evaluation of

entities were The Guardian and The Washington Post. In terms of the certainty

parameter, all articles made use of boosters and hedges in order to express epistemic

opinions about certain and uncertain propositions; the article that stood out in this

criterion was The Telegraph.

Third, regarding the influence of the editorial and journalistic bias in the

analysis and development of the news articles, it is possible to assert that all the

articles were consistent with their editorial bias. The article that loomed the most in

this point was The Telegraph by showing a clear political stance regarding Ms.

Bachelet’s past.

Fourth, regarding the use of quotations to indirectly express the journalist’s

opinion on the issue, it is possible to state that most of the writers made use of

quotations from Chilean newspapers and interviews to experts to report and express

their own point of view on the concern using other people’s words. Accordingly, this

characteristic makes evident the editorial bias of each newspaper, and therefore the

political stance of journalists and newspapers agencies. The news article that stood out

in this regard was The Telegraph’s, where the author seemed concerned to

compromise himself into the accusations Ms. Bachelet has to face.

Fifth, most of the articles made use of an interesting technique; journalists

were prone to express an opinion on the issue making it appear as a fact, through the

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careful choice of certain quotations and use of paraphrasing of entities’ words to

present them as real facts, which after thorough analysis demonstrate the specific

political stand a journalist has, therefore the newspaper agency has, and the biased

opinion they present the readers with, aiming to persuade them to adopt it as their own.

As a final conclusion, we consider important to go back to our initial

research question: How was Bachelet’s administration portrayed in American and

British broadsheets covering the consequences of the 2010 earthquake in central

Chile according to their underlying ideologies? In this regard, it is possible to

conclude that Bachelet’s administration was portrayed negatively by two out of the six

newspaper articles analyzed and positively by 4 out of the six news articles. That is to

say, right-leaning newspapers articles demonstrated a marked political stance,

criticizing Bachelet’ administration and political skills, and left-leaning news articles

were prone to defend her and her administration.

All of this seems to suggest that there are ideologies that underlie the

representation of news about Michelle Bachelet’s administration and we were able to

attest that the broadsheet newspaper articles we compiled were indeed influenced by

editorial bias.

We think there are two main questions that arise from this study and which are

important for they are subject of public and pedagogical interest. First, is the general

reading audience aware of the underlying ideologies of newspapers? And second,

should we teach our students how to differentiate from the objective account of a fact

from an opinion while reading a news article? Perhaps this last question has deep

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implications for pedagogical matters, as an answer to this question would enable all of

us gain understanding of the resources used by media to transmit hidden affairs.

“Analysis of professional discourse can reveal... power relationships and the goals

that may be hidden in them. Different types of discourse are intended to exploit

consumers, voters, employees, children, women, minorities, and many other

groups within society. An ability to analyse discourse offers such groups a means

of protection.” (Chimombo & Roseberry, 1998, p. x)

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