Velte Moran, Samara

The research I am currently carrying out in Oñati is part of a broader research concerning the whole Basque Country. It focuses on the transmission of the memory of the Basque armed conflict during ETA's armed period (1958-2018): analyzing the discourses of the first generation of young poeple who have no direct memories of the most violent events of the past, we aim to identify which are the main means through which memory is being transmitted, and how they affect the mental models these young people have about the past. We part from the hypotheses that the recent past is still a disputed issue in politics as well as in society, and this has direct influence on the education of children, be it formal or non-formal. So far, the issue has barely been adressed in textbooks; nevertheless, as attitudes can be transmitted also without having transmitted the knowledge about the events these attitudes are based on, many youth's opinions and ways of identification rely stongly on private discourses —transmitted by the family, a way of transmission which in many cases suffers from self-censorship— or mediatic discourses. We wil try to identify some of these processes through a psycholinguistic approach and using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a theoretical and methodological tool.

The Institute, with its amazing library, offered me a great workplace, thanks to which I could concentrate during most of the theoretical work. The staff was also very helpful and provided me with direct contact addresses to the local schools, through which I could get in touch with the participants of the study.