Semiotics of Song Discourse During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)

Abstract

Song discourse, as a type of discourse, represents a special field research. A piece of music related to a certain historical context is part of the expression of culture, memory and identity of the nation. The aim of the study is the interpretation of song and poetry works from the period of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), one of the difficult stages in the history of the country, as well as a semiotic analysis of the song texts of the two fighting parties. The analysis of the lyrics makes it possible to determine the key features of the depiction of the military conflict within the linguocultural, linguocognitive, social and political context. The role of song discourse as part of propaganda and a way to rally the population against the designated enemy is defined. In addition, the relevance of the study is consonant with the socio-political course of Spain in the last few years to deal with the traumatic past of the Civil War and the consequent dictatorship of F. Franco. The material of the study is Spanish-language song texts about the period of the Spanish Civil War (1936- 1939). The main research methods are lexical-semantic, contextual, corpus analysis, methods of semantic and pragmatic interpretation. In addition to the study of the song discourse of the Civil War period, the song discourse of the post-war period is also analyzed. The authors conclude that song and poetry texts acted as an effective tool for rallying the people and quickly conveying the position of the conflicting parties, strengthening propaganda. To date, the musical works of the supporters of the Republic who lost the war in 1939 and after 1939, which were censored in Spain, basking in the popularity, given the campaigns of Spanish public organizations to search for the remains of soldiers and perpetuate the memory of the victims of the Civil War of 1936-1939 and the dictatorship.

Keywords

• militaristic discourse
• propaganda