Military Honor: a category of analysis in the formation of discourse in the military press of the 19th century

Abstract

From the 1850s onwards, many military periodicals appeared in the national press. Such periodicals written by military personnel and aimed at the military public follow the trends towards professionalization of the national armed forces that began to occur in the 19th century, as a consequence of the development of the modern nation state. In Brazil, periodicals serve to categorically affirm a positive discourse about what it means to be a soldier during this period. In the absence of an official institutional discourse, the institutional discursive construction rests in the hands of ordinary officers, who use the press as a communication channel to express their ideas about the military metier and its duties. In this sense, The objective of this article is to present honor and military pride, as important characteristics attributed to being a soldier in the 19th century, according to the editors and contributors of military periodicals published in the period.