The reconstruction of memories in Villa Grimaldi: Multimodal analysis of a detention and torture center in Chile

Abstract

This paper focuses on a multimodal site, Villa Grimaldi, centre of detention and torture during the Chilean dictatorship (1973-1990). This qualitative study aims to analyze how, over time, this space is recontextualized and resemiotized as site of the memories in relation with the violation of human rights during that historical period. The analysis is carried out from a multimodal valorative space and thus, harmonizes the contributions of the Appraisal Theory (White, 2003; Martin & White 2005; Oteíza & Pinuer, 2012) and the Multimodal Analysis according to the visual grammar approach (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006; O'Toole, 2011; Unsworth, 2006). It is claimed that this place, which has been turned into the Park for Peace, is a "place of memory" in which different multimodal semiotic resources (coupling and convergence between verbal and visual resources) are co-deployed to construct meaning. The results show such resources, combined with Judgement of Social Sanction, graduate affective appraisals, and heteroglossic Engagement assist in the resemantization of the space associated with the changing historical circumstances of the place before and after the 1973 coup d’etat.