Joint remembering: Cognition,communication and interaction in processes of memory-making

Cultural models

Cultural models (Kronenfeld, 2008; Shore, 1996) are driven by socially shared knowledge (Goldman, 1999; Jovchelovitch, 2007; Schütz and Luckmann, 1974; van Dijk, 2003, 2005) and emotional codes (Röttger-Kössler and Markowitsch, 2009) of specific epistemic communities (van Dijk, in press). Emotional codes exert a crucial influence by shaping the ways in which emotions emerge and are communicated. They also determine the way in which human beings should feel according to their location in a complex network, formed by them being embedded and interacting in social relationships, cultural norms and social institutions. These emotional codes are defined as feeling rules (Röttger-Kössler and Markowitsch, 2009) that differ in varied ways according to social status, gender, age and life experience. Thus, emotional codes need to be thought of as cultural- and subject-specific sets of feeling rules that change and develop throughout one’s life. Hence, how people interpret features of their environment (e.g. actors’ goals, cause-and-effect interactions) is in terms of knowledge previously acquired (Wyer and Skull, 1994; Zwaan and Madden, 2004) and emotional codes of their communities.

We normally make inferences about features of the information which were not present in the information provided and, even more, we tend to build connections among these features (Sperber, 2000; Sperber and Wilson, 1995, 2002; Wyer and Carlston, 1994). That is to say, we are endowed with the capacity to construct representations and meta-representations (e.g. representations about others’ mental representations, intentions, etc.) that, in many cases are selections from and elaborations on the input information on which they are based. The interpretation of perceptual and conceptual features of the social and material environment relies on cultural and multimodal shared knowledge (e.g. diagrams and other visual images, sounds, smells, language, gestures), and emotional codes which are learnt, structured and transmitted to us from the time we are born. Thus, the individual’s conceptualization of the ongoing experience is driven by the values, motivations, emotions and norms of the social and material environment we inhabit. Nonetheless, these cultural models guided by social knowledge and emotional codes need to be individuated in a certain way.

Situation models

The individual instantiations of cultural models are carried out by personal and situation models (Johnson-Laird, 1983; van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983; Zwaan and Radavansky, 1998; Zwaan et al., 2002). Situation models (van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983; Zwaan and Radavansky, 1998) enable us to construct and represent meanings from what is expressed, conveyed and perceived by sounds (and music), writing, visual images, eye-gaze, hand-pointing, touch, facial expressions and other body movements as part of everyday action and experience. We construct and update situation models when we participate in and interpret activities (e.g. talking about past events, watching the news on TV). Situation models reconstruct and represent specific situations according to personal interpretations of such events. They are organized by a schematic structure consisting of a number of fixed and schematic categories, e.g. temporal and spatial settings (in various levels of specificity according to their concrete relevance), ongoing activities (talking about past events), participants, roles, identities and relationship (including the self), opinions and emotions, knowledge and intentions and goals (van Dijk, 1999). Situation models are reconstructed and represented in memory and supported by socially shared knowledge and emotional codes driven by cultural models.

The construction and updating of situation models is determined by cognitive processes of event segmentation, understanding of utterance, reconstruction of old models of similar situations in memory (van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983; Zwaan and Madden, 2004), and instantiations of more general personal information, as well as instantiations of cultural models. Situation models create the grounds for everyday action (e.g. buy a coffee to take away), and embodied interaction and communication (e.g. family members sharing memories at the dinner table), and operate to segment activities top-down as discrete units (van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983). It is important to point out that we do not construct situation models from scratch. The reconstruction and updating of models (e.g. my first full English breakfast in London) implies the re-activation and re-shaping of old models in memory (e.g. my usual breakfast in my hometown Buenos Aires, basically consisting of a strong café latte and two small croissants).

Context models

The pragmatic and personal representation of the social and material environment coordinates and synchronizes situation models, as well as cultural models, in communicative interactions, conceived as cooperative actions. In order to meaningfully proceed in social cooperation and interpersonal communication, speakers need to take for granted that, to some extent, their representations are shared with their addressees (Givón, 2005; Tomasello, 2008). In communicative interactions, the sensation that we share goal-specific and relevant situation models with our addressees relies on our subjective and unique representation of the context in which the interaction unfolds. These unique representations of the communicative interaction are defined as context models (van Dijk, 2008, 2009).

The speaker’s context models include a representation of the mind of the interlocutor that may shift constantly from one utterance to the next during live communication. This cognitive and discursive process allows us to make strategic hypotheses about what our addressee knows. A language user’s context models are not only about his/her interlocutor’s epistemic (knowledge) and deontic states (intentions). Rather, they are constituted by the interplay of the following schematic categories: setting (time and place), current action and participants with their social and cognitive proprieties such as identities, goals and knowledge (van Dijk, 2006). These elements determine how we communicate the reconstructed and updated experiences in situation models.

The pragmatic and communicative relevance of context models relies on the fact that they control the way in which speakers accommodate their utterances to the communicative situation (van Dijk, 1999, 2009). Context models are like other situation models (van Dijk, 2008) reconstructed and updated in memory, and employed to conceptualize experiences, but they are specifically for interaction. Nonetheless, in contrast to situation models which reconstruct and represent episodes in memory and indicate what discourses are about in terms of their meanings, namely, their semantic content, context models as models of communicative interaction have a marked pragmatic nature. Context models are personal, and represent for each participant the unique definition of the current communicative situation. They enable language users to accommodate situation models in the current communicate interaction (van Dijk, 2008). According to van Dijk (2008), context models determine what experiences, knowledge, worldviews and emotions may or should be appropriately shared and communicated in the ongoing communicative situation.

Each new communicative interaction does not lead language users to construct completely new context models from scratch (as occurred with situation models). To build a completely new representation for each communicative interaction from scratch would generate too much cognitive effort, and thereby, such cognitive processes would not be efficient. Context models must be partially planned in advance (van Dijk, 2008). This becomes evident if we take a look at the schematic categories that constitute context models. Every time we engage in a new communicative interaction we have representations of similar communicative situations grounded in cultural models driven by socially shared knowledge, emotional codes and memories of personally relevant experiences of situations alike.

On the other hand, context models need to be dynamic and flexible as well. The language users need to construct and update context models automatically, implicitly and subconsciously. However, not every perceptual change provokes a shifting of context models. These changes need to be pragmatically relevant for each language user. Obviously, a shift in setting (time and place) and number of participants engaged in the communicative interaction will automatically cause an updating of context models. Perceived shifting in epistemic (knowledge) and deontic (intentions) states of the participants, as well as their roles and emotions also affect the online updating and reconstruction of context models. The updating processes are fundamental to represent perceptual changes in communicative interactions.

Discourse strategies

Language users employ discourse strategies to manage communicative instantiations of situation models and to make them appropriate for the current communicative interaction defined by context models. Here is a brief description of each of the discourse strategies that I use to explore cognitive and discourse processes of joint remembering:

Rejections and corrections

Examples of rejection play a key role in the communication of memories in groups, in which we are likely to find distributed and shared knowledge of the past. Rejections function by creating social agreement, which is crucial in cognitive and discourse processes of joint remembering within social groups. They are usually realized in negations, ‘you weren’t there’, doubts, ‘are you sure?’, and corrections, ‘that was a year ago’. Corrections are generally used to introduce new knowledge organized by situation models which may either validate a previous rejection or lead to a reformulation. Moreover, rejections and corrections often need to be supported by justificatory moves in order to strengthen our credibility as speakers.

Reformulations

Participants of communicative interactions introduce new information in terms of old information by means of reformulations. These reformulations are based on old information which can be presented by appropriating what others have said in communicative interactions.

Reminders

Reminders as well as rejections are extremely important in sharing memories within social groups in which knowledge of the past is shared or distributed. The use of reminders, such as ‘do you remember when …?’ in order to bring a shared past into the present for the sake of a specific goal (e.g. to create a feeling of connection between parents and children) makes it evident that we are dealing with joint past experiences in which memory is distributed among members of social groups. Moreover, reminders function to facilitate the re-construction of shared past experiences among members by means of mechanisms of collaborative facilitation (Harris et al., 2010). They may also act as interactive communicative devices that may trigger the generation of ‘new’ memories. These new memories can be considered cases of ‘implanted memories’ (Loftus, 2005; Newman and Lindsay, 2009), which are strategically constructed in accordance with interactional goals.

Agreements

Conversational agreements (Clark, 2005; Norrick, 2005; Pagliai, 2009; Quasthoff and Becker, 2004) are defined as discourse strategies that enable people to align with each other. In discursive processes of memory-making in groups with shared or distributed knowledge, when one member introduces a past event, agreement from the other participants leads to its reinforcement (Pagliai, 2009: 550). Furthermore, we can note a spiral effect in cases in which members are repeatedly involved in the creation of agreements during the co-reconstruction of memories (Pagliai, 2009). This spiral effect may facilitate the creation of shared memories.

Group C3: Extract 1 [4.06–6.09]

1. Laura: Es que no sé, por lo menos me parece que nosotros no (.4) yo no sabía nada, no

2. sé yo le comentaba que yo hasta los doce años, hasta que fue lo de Malvinas o pasó a la

3. democracia yo no sabía que existiera otra forma de gobierno que fuera la (.2) la dictadura

4. militar o que hubiera dictadura miliar en el gobierno (.) eso me parecía lo normal (.)

5. después (.2) ya ahí a los doce o trece años cuando cambió todo, ahí recién es como que te

6. empezás a dar cuenta de que existían otras cosas

7. María: Exacto, eso era normal

8. Claudia: Lo que yo si viví me acuerdo era como que había mucho miedo, no se podía

9. salir a la calle, era como que te cuidaban (.) yo era muy chica, y nos cuidaban mucho de

10. salir, no llegar tarde o (.2) se cuidaba a la gente de lo que decían, de lo que hacían o de lo

11. que mostraban, era como que todo el tiempo había mucho miedo, pero se no hablaba del

12. tema

13. Lucas: ¿En la escuela, casa?

14. Claudia: Nadie (.3) todo muy silencioso

15. María: No (.3) nosotros no lo vivimos con miedo, no (.4) desde mi casa y (.) mi familia

16. o en mi colegio no recuerdo haberlo vivido con miedo, tal vez porque como te digo era

17. interior de Jujuy, entonces tal vez posiblemente llegaba menos la información o porque

18. al ser un lugar más pequeño no no (.) había tanto e: (.) problemas como acá me imagino

19. pero no no no he vivido con miedo esa época (.) para mí no, es todo lo que nos

20. informamos después, como lo que les pasó a todas ¿Me entendés?

21. Laura: : Sí, yo vivía en Quilmas y la verdad no sabía nada (.) es decir no tuve ningún

22. allegado que le pasara algo (.) no sabíamos nada hasta que fue después el cambio de

23. gobierno cuando empezó lo de la democracia recién ahí te empezabas a dar cuenta o

24. empezabas a saber qué era lo que había sucedido

25. María: uh

26. Claudia: Sí (.)

1. Laura : I don’t know, at least we didn’t (.4) I didn’t know anything, I was saying that up

2. until I was 12, until the Falklands or the return of democracy, I didn’t know

3. that there was a different kind of government other than (.2) the military dictatorship, or

4. even that there was a dictatorship (.) that seemed normal to me (.) later (.2) when I was

5. 12 or 13, when everything changed, that’s when you realize other things exist

6. María : Exactly, because that was normal

7. Claudia : What I did live I remember was that there was a lot of fear, you couldn’t go out

8. to the streets, it was like you were looked after all the time (.) I was very little, and they

9. looked after us a lot if we went out, or get home late or (.2) people were cautious of what

10. they said, of what they did or what they showed, it’s like there was a lot of fear all the

11. time, but you wouldn’t talk about it

12. Lucas : At school, at home?

13. Claudia : Nobody (.3) it was all very silent

14. María : No (.3) we didn’t live in fear, not us (.4) in my house (.) my family or at school, I

15. don’t remember living with fear, maybe because, like I was saying, it was the interior of

16. Jujuy, so probably there less information was arriving, or maybe because it being a

17. smaller place, there wasn’t (.) so many (.) problems like I imagine there was here (.2) but

18. no, I didn’t live that period with fear (.) not me, it’s all that we found out later, like it

19. happened to everybody, understand?

20. Laura : Yes, I was living in Quilmes, and the truth I didn’t know anything (.) I mean,

21. nothing happened to the people around me (.) we didn’t know anything until the

22. government changed and democracy began, that’s when you started to realize or know

23. what had happened

24. María : uh huh

25. Claudia : Yes(.)

In line 1, Laura conveys what her situation as a child during the period of dictatorship was like. She uses the first person plural form nosotros ‘we’ to establish generational boundaries between the members of the focus group who were born between 1965 and 1975 and other generational groups. She pauses for 4 seconds to give herself time to reformulate her claims while reconstructing situation models of the events she plans to narrate. From line 2 onwards these events are specifically focused on her personal experience. Pauses of this kind may indicate more controlled cognitive processes of narrative pre-construction (Labov, 2006). We observe another 2-second pause prior to defining the military period as a dictatorship (lines 3–4 [3–4]). Perhaps this may be related to the fact that the military dictatorship is still widely defined as El Proceso ‘The Process’, which stands for El Proceso de Reorganización Nacional ‘The National Reorganization Process’, and is how the military junta, the media and large sectors of Argentinean society used to define the period.

Next, María agrees with Laura in her mode of remembering how she perceived the military period as a child. Thus, María creates a new common ground (Clark, 1996; Enfield, 2008) with Laura based on the fact of not knowing what was occurring during the dictatorship. However, this common ground does not appear to be totally supported by Claudia’s memories in the next turn. The verb viví ‘lived’, reinforced by the affirmative pronoun sí ‘yes’ and framed as a real recollection ‘me acuerdo’ I remember, functions as a mark of evidentiality sustaining the introduction of an emotional state miedo (line 8 [7]) ‘fear’. The repetitions of the material verb cuidar ‘look after’ (lines 9–10 [8–9]) anticipate the definition of the emotion which determined social behavior during the military dictatorship (line 8 [7–8]). However, the cause of the threat remains implicit. Thus, Claudia appraises the social situation under the conditions created by the military dictatorship.

A couple of turns later, María rejects Claudia’s appraisal of the social situation during the military regime. In this way, María tries to maintain the common ground previously created between her and Laura. The use of the negative pronoun no ‘no’ generates expectations in the addressee of María’s speech. Such a rejection must be sustained by convincing arguments, otherwise María’s image as a worthy group member could be damaged. Taking into consideration that the participants of the group do not know each other, the necessity to provide convincing arguments backing up the rejection becomes more salient. Her childhood memories deny the emotional state which determined social behavior introduced by Claudia. Nonetheless, the indices of evidentiality presented by María only refer to her own experience mi casa (line 15) ‘my house’ [line 14], mi familia (line 15) ‘my family’ [line 14], mi colegio (line 16) ‘my school’[line 14]. The individualization of her appraisal of the situation is later justified with geographical reasons (line 17 [15–16]). That is, María’s lack of knowledge is in accordance with a shared experience – everybody knew later (when democracy returned in 1983) that people were being abducted.

It is interesting to point out the difficulty that emerges at the time of defining the causes that may be provoking fear within the part of society described by Claudia. Two false starts and hesitations (line 18 [17]) reflect such difficulty, which is overcome by the noun problemas ‘problems’. We note a low degree of specificity when defining the causes of the social and political situation. Finally, Laura agrees with María’s description of the events (line 21 [19]). Such agreement requires an argument to back it up. By reformulating her claims (line 21 [20]), Laura justifies her lack of knowledge and, therefore, the sensation of fear introduced by Claudia. This justification is suggested by no tuve ningún allegado que le pasara algo (lines 21–2) ‘nothing happened to the people around me’ [line 20–1], which implies that she did not know because she was not directly affected. Then, Laura closes her turn by returning to the topic which she mentioned in the first lines, namely, that she began to find out what had been occurring during the military dictatorship when Argentineans went to the polls in 1983. Thus, Laura returns to the common ground about not knowing that she negotiated with María at the beginning of the extract.

Due to Claudia’s intervention (lines 8–12 [7–11]), María and Laura need to reformulate her previous agreement on not knowing what was going on. This agreement created the common ground that the fact of ignoring the human rights violations was ‘normal’ (e.g. Laura, line 4 and María, line 7 [6]). After Claudia’s autobiographical memories rejecting such normality, María and Laura bring such normality closer to the self by means of possessive adjectives mi casa ‘my house’, mi familia ‘my family’ (María, line 15 [14]) and verbal forms in the first person no tuve ningún allegado que le pasara algo ‘nothing happened to the people around me’ (Laura, lines 21–2 [20–1]). ² By bringing the normality closer to the self, María and Laura are able to still maintain the common ground negotiated at the beginning of interaction. Moreover, the delimitation of the scope of their personal experiences enables them not to challenge Claudia’s memories. Despite their lack of agreement with Claudia, neither Laura nor María is attempting to disapprove of Claudia’s experience. A strong rejection of Claudia’s memories would have caused an unnecessary confrontation during the interaction by undermining the conversational expectations within the focus group (e.g. the search for consensus).

In what follows I demonstrate that the memories which are reconstructed in extract 1 are subject to corrections and new reformulations, which may even contradict the autobiographical memories expressed a few minutes before. The next extract comes 3 seconds after extract 1.

Group C3: Extract 2 [6.14–8.41]

27. Laura: Perdón (.3) yo, yo lo único que me acuerdo es que decían que no agarrara nada de la

28. calle, nada más (.) eso la típica del paquete y (.2) que se yo no había que agarrar nada, pero

29. vos, que se yo (.) yo lo vivía como algo, viste cuando vos le decís a un chico “no agarrés nada

30. del piso que está con microbios” o así (.2) no no se vivía, yo no lo vivía como algo que podía

31. ser una bomba o que podía ser algo (.) otra cosa no (.)

32. María: Lo que sí me acuerdo es (.2) no exactamente la fecha pero de alguna (.) de un par de

33. personas que eran conocidos de mis padres que dijeron “se los llevaron” y yo pregunté ¿A

34. dónde se los llevaron”? “Se los llevaron porque andaban en cosas raras”, esa es la explicación

35. que me dieron a mí y con eso me quedé, ¿entendés? (.2) y bueno después entendí porque se

36. los llevaron y todo (.3) pero de esa época recuerdo eso “se los llevaron” y que personas que

37. aparecieron después, sí ellos aparecieron pero después de un, de unos años

38. Alejandro: Yo me acuerdo que hablando de las vueltas y recuerdo ver los falcón verdes

39. dando vueltas (.) custodiando la escuela y en ese momento en la escuela era donde hablaban

40. de no agarrar cosas y que estábamos todo el tiempo como observados (.2) e inclusive se

41. mencionó, yo no lo verifiqué, que había una persona que atendía (.) era una escuela doble

42. escolaridad y había una persona que trabaja en la cocina, una mujer desagradable dentro de

43. todo y una vez dijeron “se la llevaron porque le encontraron un arsenal en la casa”, en ese

44. momento el pensamiento era un poco bueno (.) era una persona desagradable, realmente no

45. me extrañaría pero (.) me acuerdo de eso, de ver los Falcón verdes, en ese momento yo tenía

46. conciencia de lo que significaba un Falcón (.2) estoy hablando, no sé, quinto grado

26. Laura : Sorry (.3) I, the only thing that I remember is that they said not to pick up anything

27. from the streets, that’s it (.) the typical story of the package (.2) but you, I don’t know (.) for

28. me, it was like when you tell a kid ‘don’t pick up anything off the floor because of the germs’

29. or something like that (.2) no, it wasn’t like, for me it wasn’t like it could be a bomb or

30. something (.) something else (.)

31. María : What I do remember is (.2) not exactly the dates, but some (.) a couple of

32. people my parents knew and they said ‘they were taken away’ and I asked ‘taken away

33. where?’ ‘They were taken away because they were involved in some funny business’, that’s

34. the explanation I was given and that’s what I understood, see? (.2) well, later I understood

35. why they were taken and all (.3) but of that period, I remember that ‘they were taken away’

36. and some people reappearing later, yes, they reappeared after a few years

37. Alejandro : Talking about going round, I remember the green Falcons going round (.)

38. watching over the school, and at that time the school was where we were told about not

39. picking up things and that we were sort of being watched all the time (.2) and even I

40. mentioned, I never verified it, that someone who worked (.) it was a full-day school and there

41. was a woman who worked in the kitchen, an unpleasant woman and once they said ‘they took

42. her away because they discovered an arsenal in her house’, at this time my thinking was

43. like (.) she was an unpleasant woman, I really wouldn’t be surprised but (.) I remember that,

44. seeing the green Falcons, at this time I was aware of what that car meant (.2) I am

45. talking about, I don’t know, maybe fifth grade.

In line 27 [26] Laura seems to begin remembering something. It is important to point out how this experience is introduced: the usage of an expression of apology is employed to make the other participants anticipate what will be said and may contradict the prior common ground. Laura’s apologies for having undermined social agreement (that neither Laura nor María knew that people were disappearing) act as a discourse strategy by framing and creating the conditions necessary to insert her childhood experience. As we observed above in regards to María (L.15 [14]]), there is a 3-second pause after the apology framing the rejection and correction (L.27 [26]). Laura does not need to re-negotiate the taking of the floor. This lack of overlapping or change in speaker may be provoked by the fact that the other participants expect Laura to back up her rejection. By providing the reasons supporting her rejection, Laura creates an implicit agreement with Claudia (lines 8–12 [7–11]), which relies on the fact that both remember the social fears about how they should have behaved as children. These social fears form part of cultural models of the experience of dictatorship.

The reformulation (lines 29–30 [28–9]) that Laura provides as an example depicts a common attitude maintained by many parents towards their children. However, within the communicative interaction it operates as a justificatory strategy by giving arguments as to why she did not know what was occurring during the period of dictatorship. Laura’s memories of her childhood experiences (including her memories of the meanings she assigned to such events) warrant her claims about her lack of knowledge. Then, María begins to remember some stories from her childhood as well (line 32 [31]). This behavior may indicate that María is reconstructing situation models about her memory traces of the period of dictatorship which were disregarded less than 2 minutes before when she said that she learnt about human rights violations, namely, after the end of the dictatorship in 1983 (lines 19–20 [18–19]). María’s memories update the common ground negotiated with Laura in the first extract. Now, it is the case she remembers some autobiographical experiences from childhood. María recalls hearing that people were being abducted. She seems to be reinterpreting her mental states as a child according to her present knowledge (e.g. those people were kidnapped by the military). Thus, for María the re-experiencing of memories during the interaction may create the conditions for the re-description of past experiences.

The new common ground between Claudia, María and Laura is based on the fact that they agree on having autobiographical memories which demonstrate that to some extent they knew that something was occurring (e.g. abductions, guerrilla attacks). Based on this updated common ground, Alejandro – who is four years older than María, and Claudia – begins to cooperate by conveying an autobiographical memory from his childhood (line 38 [37]). His narrative not only confirms Laura’s memories about the measures taught to children to prevent risks (line 40 [38–9]), but, what is more significant, the abduction of persons introduced by María (line 33 [32]). The use of a verb of perception, ver ‘to see’, serves as an index of evidentiality the aim of which is to reinforce the reliability and non-mediated trait of the memories he is communicating.

Both María (line 33 [32]) and Alejandro (line 43 [41–2]) employ a verb indicating speech, dijeron ‘they said’ to discursively manifest a distancing from reasons they were given by the adults in order to justify the abductions. Nevertheless, Alejandro goes a bit further by providing his own arguments in regards to how, when he was a child of nine or ten years of age, he understood the abductions (lines 45–6 [44–5]), rather than uncritically incorporate and internalize the motives proposed by the adults. Alejandro’s move can be thought of as a mechanism used to distance himself from the agreement maintained by Laura and María; he does not merely have memories of events related to the military dictatorship but he also portrays himself as being able to assign meaning to them at the time that the events were experienced. ³

The piece of interaction that I present next comes after 2.04 minutes of discussion (8.43–10.47) about the differences in age between Alejandro (1967), María (1971), Claudia (1971) and Laura (1971), and the lack of information and the 1978 FIFA World Cup. The previous 1.03 minute (10.49–10.52) was about which social classes and groups were more affected by the military regime. In a few words, the discussion was centered on which groups were the main target of the kidnappings by the military.

Group C3: Extract 3 [11.53–13.29]

47. María: Ledesma sí tiene, tenía que ver y (.2) empezando a hacer un poco de memoria con

48. gente que estaba estudiando (.) e: los padres vivían en Ledesma, los chicos, e:, me refiero a

49. sus hijos, estudiaban en San Salvador o Tucumán (.) eso sí recuerdo, que se llevaron chicos de

50. eso lugares, entonces bueno, los padres estaban desesperados (.) entonces bueno (.) toda esa

51. información me llegaba de lo que escuchaba de mis padres (.2) pero casos puntuales ahí en

52. Ledesma hubo, hubo varios que después yo me enteré

53. Lucas: ¿Cuando fue el apagón de Ledesma?

54. María: Para esa época

55. Lucas: Claro (.) para esa época

56. María: Justamente, claro para esa época (.) y hay una persona que tenía (.) un (.2) era líder ahí

57. por lo que movilizaba dentro del ingenio Ledesma (.2) entonces que es lo hicieron

58. desaparecer

59. Lucas: Por supuesto

60. María: Era el Dr.Arédez y que después su esposa es la que siguió la lucha y la que formo el

61. grupo de las madres ahí en Ledesma porque hubo un par de desparecido si, si (.) pero tiene

62. que ver todo relacionado con el ingenio, ¿no?

63. Claudia: Eso creo

64. María: Si, es así (.3)

46. María : Ledesma is, was involved and (.2) beginning to make one’s memories, with people

47. that were studying (.) uuhh the parents lived in Ledesma, the kids, I mean their children,

48. studied in San Salvador or Tucumán (.) I do remember that, that they took the kids from those

49. places, then, well, the parents were desperate (.) then, well (.) all that information I overheard

50. from my parents (.2) but there were specific cases in Ledesma, there were a few I found out

51. about later

52. Lucas : When was the night of the blackout in Ledesma?

53. María : Around that time

54. Lucas : Ah (.) around that time

55. María : Of course around that time exactly (.) of course for that period, and there was a

56. person that had (.) a (.2) he was leader there because he mobilized people within the

57. Ledesma sugar refinery (.2) then they (the military) caused his disappearance

58. Lucas : Of course

59. María : It was the doctor Arédez and after his wife is the one who then continued the struggle

60. and the one who formed the mother’s group there in Ledesma because there were a couple of

61. desaparecidos there (.) yes, yes there was (.) yes but it had to do, it all had to do with the

62. sugar mill, isn’t it

63. Claudia : I believe so

64 María : Yes, exactly (.3)

The updating of common ground, which facilitates the joint construction and communication of memories, which are driven by the participants’ intentions and goals, plays a central role in María’s search for memories. The situated activity of reconstructing situation models about the experience of dictatorship that enables María to retrieve and to assign new meanings to old memories is reflected in the metaphor that she employs in line 47 [46]; empezando a hacer un poco de memoria ‘beginning to make one’s memories’ presupposes that in this case remembering is an action which requires an intentional actor who is willing to remember. Two lines later, María provides a mark of evidentiality, eso sí recuerdo ‘I do remember that’, after a short pause which serves to reinforce the veracity of her memories. In letting us know the source of that autobiographical knowledge, María uses a verb of perception, escuchaba ‘listened’, which operates as a mark of evidentiality. Then, I know that during the military dictatorship there were several massive blackouts in Ledesma ⁴ (line 53 [52]), which were intentionally provoked by the military with the assistance of the owners of the sugar mill ‘Ledesma’. These blackouts lasted seven days and were strategically planned in order to abduct workers at the sugar mill, students and political dissidents from their houses at night (Da Silva Catela, 2003).

My intervention acts as a reminder which serves to create common ground between María and me. María and I negotiate this new common ground by expressing our shared knowledge about blackouts. This negotiation is interactionally manifested in the alternation of turns between lines 53 [52] and 59 [58]. The new common ground generates the conditions for María to communicate further memories about the events she is narrating. These reformulated conditions are discursively manifested in the growing level of specificity in the events she is sharing (lines 56–8 [55–7] and lines 60–2 [59–62]). Two false starts (lines 56 [55–6]) may reflect a certain degree of difficulty in defining the attributes of the new character el doctor Arédez ‘the doctor Arédez’. Next, María suggests a causal co-relation between Arédez’s activities at Ledesma and his kidnapping. This implicature is discursively realized by the logical connective entonces ‘so’. The suggestion of such a presupposed causal co-relation occurs after a 2-second pause, which may signal (more) controlled cognitive processes of discourse pre-construction and planning.

In the next section I explore the cognitive and discourse processes of joint remembering in a focus group aged between 70 and 80 years (group C1). The participants born between 1925 and 1935 employ agreements, corrections and reformulations to negotiate and synchronize their individual memories. As it occurred in the communicative interaction analyzed above, the memories conveyed by the participants born between 1925 and 1935 operate at two integrated cognitive levels; one level for facts, e.g. I remember I did X and Y, and a meta-representational memory for one’s own mental states, e.g. I did not believe X and Y. For generational reasons, participants of group C1 were fully aware that people were being abducted and murdered by the military –in contrast to what we have noticed in group C3.

Group C1: Extract 4 [1.42–4.11]

1. Clarita: El mundial de fútbol fue en el 78 (.) fue el año que vino la televisión color acá

2. Nora: Nosotros lo ganábamos y no sabíamos lo que estaba pasando en la Argentina

3. Clarita: Exacto

4. Nora: Que era como que mi hijo me los decía y yo no lo quería creer (.) mi hijo estaba

5. estudiando economía en la facultad (.) me decía “hay campos de concentración, están

6. matando a la gente en la universidad” (.) estábamos entretenidos con el mundial mientras

7. pasado un hecho tan grave como el que pasó que no nos lo vamos a olvidar más

8. Clarita: Claro

9. Nora: Es una parte de la historia que (.2)

10. Clarita: Era todo una gran fiesta por un lado (.) y por otro una gran tragedia (.3)

11. Nora: Que no sabíamos

12. Clarita: No

13. Nora: Lo supimos después, los jóvenes quizás que estaban en la facultad y sabían pero

14. los viejos (.2) los viejos no sabían (.) creíamos que era todo mentira, que no podía ser (.)

15. entonces ese mundial que vivimos con tanto euforia hoy día recordamos (.2) porque

16. somos muy futboleros

17. Dora: Y gritamos tanto

18. Clarita: Las Malvinas, Galtieri

19. Nora: Que desastre

20. Dora: Pero se grito también (.) yo fui a todos los actos

21. Nora: Yo fui al de Alfonsín cuando estaba

22. Dora: No, pero eso es

23. Nora: Más antes

24. Clarita: Esto fue antes

25. Dora: Lo de las Malvinas fue en el 82

26. Clarita: Lo de los desaparecidos fue en el 76

27. Nora: Sí sí sí (.) sí los chico me acuerdo que contaban que se escapaban de la facultad

28. por las ventanas, mi hijo tiene 51 años, en esa época estaba estudiando económicas, se

29. escapaban por las ventanas, era terrible el medio que tenían, agarraban a cualquiera, los

30. milicos agarraban a cualquiera, al que le tocaba, le tocaba y lo mataban

31. Clarita: Yo pienso que hubo una gran violencia, que hubo una gran violencia porque la

32. otra parte también

33. Dora: De los dos lados

34. Clarita: La otra parte también fue e hizo cosas terribles como poner una bomba en la

35. casa Lanbruschini pero, ellos (los militares) tenían el poder y tenían ejercerlo

36. debidamente

37. Nora: Exacto

1. Clarita : The Football World Cup was in 1978 (.) that was the year that color television

2. arrived here

3. Nora : We won and we didn’t know what was going on in Argentina

4. Clarita : That’s right

5. Nora : My son would tell me and I didn’t want to believe any of it (.) my son was

6. studying economics in the faculty (.) he’d say to me ‘there are concentration camps, they

7. are killing people at the university’ (.) we were distracted by the World Cup while such

8. a serious thing was going on, that we will never forget it

9. Clarita : Of course

10. Nora : It’s a part of history that (.2)

11. Clarita : On the one hand (.) it was all a big party, and on the other a terrible

12. tragedy (.3)

13. Nora : We didn’t know about

14. Clarita : No

15. Nora : We knew later, maybe the youngsters at the university knew, but the old people

16. (.2) the old people didn’t know (.) we thought it was all a lie, it couldn’t be possible (.)

17. so the World Cup was lived with such euphoria, even today we remember (.2) because

18. we’re big football buffs

19. Dora : And we scream so much

20. Clarita : The Malvinas (Falklands, UK), Galtieri

21. Nora : What a disaster

22. Dora : but we scream too (.) I went to all political meetings

23. Nora : I went to Alfonsín’s when he was (.)

24. D ora : No, but this is

25. Nora : Much before

26. Clarita : This was before

27. Dora : that the thing of Malvinas was in 82

28. Clarita : The thing of the ‘disappeared’ was in 76

29. Nora : Yes, yes, yes (.) I remember the kids talking about people escaping the faculty

30. through windows, my son is 51 years old now, he was in studying economics back then

31. (.) they would escape through the windows, it was terrible the fear that they had (.)

32. anyone could be taken, the military would take anyone (.) whoever’s turn it was (.) that’s

33. the way it went and they killed you

34. Clarita : I think there was great violence, there was great violence on the other side as

35. well

36. Dora : On both sides

37. Clarita : The other side also did terrible things, like putting a bomb in Lambruschini’s

38. house but, they (the military) had the power and should have exercised it properly

39. Nora : Exactly

Nora (1935) semantically links the win of the 1978 FIFA World Cup and the military regime and introduces a sense of collective experience by means of the use of nosotros ‘we’ (line 2 [3]), which is then continually employed by other participants in the conversation. Although this is not a multimodal analysis of the interaction (e.g. one that includes descriptions of eye gazes, hand gestures, pointing, etc.), which could capture differences in the referents of the several uses of the personal pronoun in the first person plural form, Nora’s use of the first person pronoun (line 2 [3]) may have a more inclusive referent (we as Argentines) than the second which is embedded in the verb morphology no sabíamos ‘we didn’t know’ (we as participants of this focus group). In other words, the referent of the first person pronoun (plural) embedded in the verb morphology is the members of the focus group aged between 70 and 80 years who were not aware of large-scale abductions and torture of people during the dictatorship. This sort of collective experience grounds the sustained use of the first person in the plural form, either in the pronominal form or as embedded in verb morphology.

Clarita (lines 3, 8, 12 [4, 9, 14]) and Dora (line 17 [19]) agree with Nora’s description of the events. Such agreement among group members serves to morally justify the shared positive attitudes toward the win of the football World Cup and negotiate a new common ground in the communicative interaction, i.e. estábamos entretenidos con el mundial (line 6–7) ‘we were distracted by the World Cup’ [lines 7–8]. In short, the massive support of the FIFA World Cup should not be considered as behavior that helped to sustain and legitimate the regime. The apparent contradiction between knowing that people were being abducted and, at the same time, participating in the celebrations is further cancelled and justified by making clear that it was only later that they learnt what was occurring (line 13 [15])

Nevertheless, this collective experience based on a new common ground which emerges from the agreement during the interaction is undermined several times by Nora’s autobiographical memories (lines 4–7, 27–30 [5–8, 29–33]). Nora begins reconstructing situation models about her individual recollections which seem to deny her previous positioning as someone who was not aware of the crimes being committed by the perpetrators of the military regime. The transition from not knowing (lines 2, 11, 13–6 [3, 13, 15–8]) to remembering (lines 5–6, 27–30 [6–7, 29–33]) but not believing (lines 4, 14 [5, 16]) must be justified in some way to maintain a coherent moral sense. The change from the first person singular pronoun yo (L.4) ‘I’ [line 5] to the plural form nosotros (line 6) ‘we’ [line 7], which is embedded in the verb morphology creíamos que era todo mentira (line 14) ‘we thought it was all a lie’ [line 16], implies that the decision not to believe was shared to a large extent. Interestingly, none of participants rejects Nora’s inclusive use of the first plural and tries to distance her-/himself from Nora’s memories of past mental states. Nora further conceptualizes the identification of we-forms with the participants of the interaction (born between 1925 and 1935) by defining those who did not know as los viejos (line 14) ‘old people’ [lines 15–16].

Nora defines what was occurring during the period of dictatorship by means of a reformulation of a previous interaction with her son (lines 4–7 [5–8]) and by reporting what she listened to (lines 27–30 [29–33]). The source of her knowledge is her son’s experiences. These operate as indices of evidentiality supporting Nora’s descriptions, which seem to be appropriated (e.g. due to the lack of challenges from other participants) according to her context models. Nora’s re-descriptions may also be cases in which the situated act of reconstructing situation models of memories of autobiographical events related to the military regime may facilitate the reinterpretation of past mental states.

It is important to point out that the only instance of rejection and correction within the communicative interaction (lines 22–6 [24–8]) aims at providing a more accurate chronology of the historical events (the FIFA World Cup in 1978, the Malvinas war in 1982, and the return of democracy a year later). This regulatory interactional mechanism indicates that accuracy in relation to non-controversial issues, such as the chronology of historical events, may be a shared goal of the group. However, as we noted, this does not occur for more controversial topics such as the description of actions (e.g. abductions), actors (e.g. perpetrators and victims), and, remarkably, the transition from not knowing to remembering but not believing.

In lines 31–2 [34–5] and 34–6 [37–8], Clarita seems to challenge the description of the victims presented by Nora a few lines above (lines 29–30 [32–3]). Clarita’s description of the human target of the political repression undermines Nora’s passive representation (lines 29–30 [32–3]). Clarita introduces such differences in the way of defining these actors by the use of both the first person singular pronoun yo ‘I’ and the subjective epistemic modalizer (Papafragou, 2006: 1696) pienso ‘I think’. Dora agrees with Clarita (line 33 [36]) on defining the political spectrum of the late 1970s in metaphorical and spatial terms, i.e. partes ‘parts’ (Clarita) and lados ‘sides’. Then, the increasing level of specificity in Clarita’s description of the actions carried out by members of armed, political organizations (lines 34–6 [37–8]) justifies the metaphorical conceptualization in terms of ‘parts’ or ‘sides’. However, the disclaimer pero (line 35 [38]) ‘but’ tries to block inferential processes generated by the spatial conceptualization, which may suggest a symmetry in the consequences of the violent actions performed by both actors. Finally, Nora agrees on the differentiation triggered by the disclaimer and, thereby, reinforces the group’s consensus.

From minute 4.42 to 10.12 the participants of the focus group C1 discussed the following themes: (1) Malvinas War (4.44–7.22); (2) the 1978 FIFA World Cup (7.29–8.56); and (3) the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (9.06–10.08).

Group C1: Extract 5 [10.13–10.32]

38. Nora: Yo recuerdo en esa época mi hijo que estaba en económicas y un chico de en frente que

39. era compañero de él le cruzaron dos camiones y se lo llevaron al chico que no tenía nada que

40. ver, le rompieron toda la casa, no lo mataron de casualidad, nada que ver el chico

41. Clarita: El problema era figurar en una agenda (.) figurás en una agenda, ya está

42. Dora: De otro

40. Nora : I remember that my son was studying economics back then and a kid from across the

41. street that studied with him, two trucks came and took him, the kid had nothing to do with

42. anything, they destroyed his house, he was lucky they didn’t kill him, he had nothing to do

43. with anything

44. Clarita : The problem was even being in an address book (.) they found your name in an

45. address book and that was it (.)

46. Dora : Someone else’s

Nora returns 6.02 minutes later in the interaction to the theme being discussed in extract 4. In line 38 [40], she reformulates the narrative communicated a few minutes before. In this reformulation she shares a more concrete story in which she reiterates a representation of the victims as passive actors who were abducted by the military without any compelling reason. Thus, Nora rejects Clarita’s description of the victims in lines 31–2 [34–5] and 34–6 [37–8] in which she metaphorically defined them in spatial terms. Surprisingly, it seems that Nora had agreed on Clarita’s description of victims in line 37 [39].

In line 41 [44] Clarita brings into the interaction the agenda ‘address book’ as incriminatory object. The fact of having one’s name written down in someone else’s address book as sufficient reason to be abducted and murdered may form part of socially shared knowledge about the experience of dictatorship. She is, thus, agreeing with Nora’s description of the victims as passive actors but to some extent rejecting her previous definition of the victims as actors who carried out bombings less than 6 minutes before (lines 34–6 [37–8]).

Nora’s definition of the victims as passive actors (lines 29–30 [32–3]) and her agreement with Clarita’s description of them as violent actors who carried out bombings (lines 34–6 [37–8]) seems to reformulate her previous definition a few seconds before. This shows the synchronization of different views about the victims. This synchronization led to the creation of a common ground, namely, that the military was not the only violent actor. Nora reformulates the events narrated in the first extract 6.02 minutes later, and Clarita agrees with her description of the victims (line 41 [44–5]). Thus, the new common ground negotiated in the second extract indicates that the victims were passive actors and, thereby, undermines their agreement 6 minutes before. The coordination of different views about the victims of the military regime is determined by context-dependent cognitive and discursive processes, the goal of which is to reach a consensus between the participants.

The time elapsed between lines 31–7 [34–9] and 38–42 [40–6] (6.02 minutes) may facilitate the re-negotiation of common ground in the mode of defining the victims, without being perceived as a contradiction because both, Nora and Clarita may be less conscious of what they expressed a few minutes ago.