Abstract

The objective of this research is to describe the force dynamics that emerge in the testimonies of former political prisoners of the civil-military dictatorship in Chile. This research is grounded in the principles of cognitive linguistics, force dynamics, and testimonial discourse. The methodology is qualitative, based on grounded theory and the constant comparative method. The corpus consists of 30 testimonies from former political prisoners compiled in the book Cien voces rompen el silencio: Testimonios de expresas y presos politicos de la dictadura militar en Chile (1973-1990), edited by Wally Kunstmann and Victoria Torres. The analysis was conducted using the model proposed by Leonard Talmy, which allows the description of force dynamics that are applied in language. The analysis identified patterns in which the majority of the agonists were the people that gave their testimonies, while the antagonists were represented primarily by members of the Armed Forces and the dictatorship.