The ideological role of Chilean judges in the definition of Mapuche domestic violence

Abstract

In this work we analyse the way in which ideologies, understood as an extra-legal factor, are discursively manifested in a corpus of judicial rulings that resolve cases of Mapuche domestic violence. We understand the judicial ruling as an ideological discursive genre inherent to the legal field formed by social and discursive practices. By applying critical discourse analysis, we analyse the judicial discourse strategies used in order to construct (i) the idea of domestic violence in an indigenous context, (ii) the image of the Mapuche woman and (iii) the self-image of judges who resolve the conflict. We conclude that these strategies serve two purposes: one is to legitimate the law as an apparently impartial mechanism, and the other is to define the way those involved in the issue must be understood.