Woman’s power. Semiotic analysis of power in Clementina Mamita chronicle

Abstract

From the perspective of the semiotic discourse analysis, the concept of identity is employed to design the principle of permanence that persists despite the subject transformations in a narrative. This identity consists of both the cognitive and axiological dimensions. In this regard, the main objective of this paper is to show how the feminine representation values the condition of domestic woman and what characteristics allow for paradigm changes, in which the woman is conceived as free and independent. That is, the investigation and analysis of the underlying axiology will provide fundamental elements, such as the value system in which women grow, in the identity configuration process found in the feminine representations in Colombian chronicles. This way, the discursive analysis will focus on eliciting both the form and the exercise of power sanctioned by the enunciator of Clementina Mamita, by Francis Nelly Jaramillo. In this journalistic text, we will analyze the modality of power which triggers the sanction, the last of the canonical narrative scheme components. We adopt the theoretical and methodological perspective of the School of Paris’s semiotic framework. This paper presents a partial investigation developed in the scope of the Master’s dissertation entitled “Women’s identity configuration in Colombian journalistic chronicles” whose main target is to establish the characteristics of permanence and transformation in the construction of the feminine representation presented in such Colombian journalistic discourses. This study is part of the CUYNACO investigation group which belongs to the Master’s in semiotics program of the Industrial University of Santander.