| Due to the great tragedies of the 20th century and to the social demand to recognize these tragic events, memory has never been as apparent in our society. In Canada and in other Western societies, the recent valuation of the past shows the dynamic of recognition, of pardon and of reparation, which are considered to be vital for the groups marked by a traumatic past. It is within this context that the Armenian community in Diaspora has been fighting for the recognition of the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16. Since the establishment of the Turkish nation in 1923, the Armenian genocide has been the object of official denials by Turkey and indifference by part of the international community.;Within this context, this study examines the memorial discourse of the Armenian genocide in the Quebec media. The analysis of the representation and the themes related to the Armenian genocide was accomplished from a corpus, composed of articles appearing in two daily Quebec newspapers, Le Devoir and La Presse from 1965 to 1998. Whereas 1965 commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the Armenian genocide, 1998 marks the inauguration in Montreal of the monument commemorating the victims of all genocides. The innovating aspect of this study is the use of specialized programs in textual data analysis for the exploration of the representations of the Armenian genocide. Conjoining linguistic and statistic analysis, these programs allow us to examine the evolution of the memorial demands of the Armenian community in the Quebec media. |
