Discourse, Persuasion and Performance in Political Institutions across the Spanish-Speaking World

Abstract

This part of the book progresses logically from the previous one insofar as its four constituent case studies explore discourse in political institutions that have a symbiotic relationship with the media. Political state discourse on housing and poverty in Argentina, the focus of Chapter 8, is disseminated to a considerable extent through local government websites and print media (e.g. promotional leaflets). Similarly, interaction in parliamentary debates, the political institution examined in Chapters 9 and 10, is regularly ‘recontextualised’ (Linell 1998) across a range of media, spanning television and radio news through to newspaper op-ed pieces. And political leaders’ national addresses, the context in which analysis of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s discourse is assessed in Chapter 11, are frequently televised and/or made available either in part or in their entirety on the Internet. Different degrees of mestizaje ideológico (ideological mestisation) (Pujante and Morales López 2003: 108) between political and media institutions — and their discourses — thus provide a natural transition between the chapters in Part I and this part of the book.