The main objective of the present thesis is to show the results achieved after investigating the presence of violence in the brothers Grimm’s fairy tales collection. After reviewing how the brothers Grimm’s fairy tales collection, a discourse aimed at adults, suffered a transformation and ended up being aimed at children, I explored whether the presence of violence in the brothers Grimm’s fairy tales collection could be empirically demonstrated by means of a Corpus Linguistics analysis. By doing this, I was able to show that classical readings aimed at children might be reclassified empirically and objectively after having analysed their content using a multidisciplinary approach. The framework for analysis is a combination of (i) corpus-based approaches (Biber et al 1998, Scott 2001 and Stubbs 1996, 2002); (ii) Systemic Functional Linguistics (transitivity analysis) (Berry 1977, 1989, Downing 1996:186, Downing and Locke 2006:120-167 and Halliday 1994: 106-175) and (iii) Critical Discourse Analysis (Van Dijk 1997, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, Widdicombe 1998 and Wodak & Meyer 2002-2009). The present study might provide a new insight into the violent content in the brothers Grimm’s fairy tales collection, as well as into the possible effects that these may have on children. In order to carry out a study of violence I have first paid attention to the type of verbal processes that appear in the corpus in order to find out who is inflicting violence upon who and then, I have studied the transitivity shifts, that is, verbal processes, and the participants and circumstances that are part of the corpus selected for the analysis, The Grimm Corpus. By doing this, it was my intention to find out whether power and violence were intrinsically related in them. In sum, my main objective was to find out the relationship between verbal processes and socially-constructed meaning related to power in these tales. By doing this, I intended to shed some light on the power relations that may help feature the characters in these tales and the consequences these power relations might have on the potential addressees. In order to carry out this research, I have divided the current article into five sections: firstly, I have reviewed how the literature aimed at children appeared during the 17th and 18th, centuries as a kind of game for adults in the midst of an aristocratic society where there was no demand for children’s books. The tales, then, became nursery tales by the 19th century; mainly due to an increasing market demand for children’s literature but their violent content remained as this study will demonstrate. In the last part of this stage, we will shed some light on the violent content of the brothers Grimm’s fairy tales collection. Section two introduces the concept violence and its different types. Sections three and four, presents a theoretical background dealing with the notions related to Corpus Linguistics (CL), Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistcs (SFL). Additionally, I present a brief explanation of how the combination of these approaches, have, in my opinion, contributed to clarify the relationship between social identity and the power that features the characters in the tales. The fifth part provides a concise explanation about the hypotheses and research methodology. The sixth part of my study is devoted to showing the detailed analyses and results achieved in the present thesis. Finally, chapter 7 depicts the concluding remarks and some pointers for further research. The results confirmed the initial hypothesis and provided some useful and interesting insights into the different kinds of identities related to violence found in fairy tales which come from oral tradition.

El principal objetivo de esta tesis es mostrar los resultados obtenidos tras investigar la presencia de violencia en un corpus compuesto por una selección de 22 cuentos pertenecientes a la colección de cuentos de los hermanos Grimm. Después de revisar cómo la colección de cuentos de los hermanos Grimm, una colección que nació como un proyecto filológico destinado a preservar la tradición alemana, se transformó en literatura para niños, he investigado cómo la presencia de violencia en esta colección de cuentos puede ser identificada empíricamente por medio de un análisis multidisciplinar compuesto por un análisis de procesos verbales (Berry 1977, 1989, Downing and Locke 2006 y Halliday 1994), un análisis de corpus (Biber et al 1998, Scott 2010 y Stubbs 1996) y un análisis del discurso (Antaki y Widdicombe 1998a/b, Fairclough 1989-2003, Tajfel 1974, Sacks 1974, Van Dijk 1997-2004 y Wodak & Meyer 2002-2009). Con este estudio, pretendo demostrar que las lecturas destinadas a niños que provienen de tradición oral podrían se reclasificadas siguiendo los mismos criterios de clasificación que se utiliza hoy en día en todas las lecturas destinadas a niños, es decir, criterios relacionados con el contenido y el vocabulario, entre otros valores, tras analizar los resultados obtenidos en este estudio. Por otro lado, mi segundo objetivo ha sido el estudio del papel que representan los principales participantes en los cuentos de los Grimm en relación a los procesos verbales encontrados. Este estudio se ha realizado con el propósito de identificar las categorías (en cuanto a status social y/o familiar) a las que pertenecen dichos participantes con el objetivo de comprobar si hay una relación entre status social, poder y violencia en estos cuentos de tradición oral. Es decir, si los personajes de estos cuentos cometen actos violentos respaldados por su identidad social y/o familiar, lo que les da poder sobre otros personajes. Los resultados obtenidos confirmaron la hipótesis inicial proporcionando datos útiles e interesantes en cuanto a la identidad de los participantes involucrados en el corpus de los hermanos Grimm y, por tanto, de algunos de los valores que se están transmitiendo a los receptores potenciales, es decir, los niños.