From false harmony to frank speech

verbal aggression in presidential election campaigns

Abstract

Relying on the theoretical framework of discourse studies, this paper aims at investigating the functioning and a possible intensification of verbal aggression in the last two presidential electoral campaigns in Brazil, in 2014 and 2018, which are considered highly violent by the Brazilian’s perception. To do so, it relies on the concept of discursive event that is closely linked to the conditions of emergence, since the statements are produced from a regime of enunciability. These utterances are inescapably inscribed in historical and social scenarios of their constitution, from which they are analyzed, considering their formulations and spreading forms. The results point out that, based on the analyzed excerpts extracted from the electoral campaigns of 2014 and 2018, the discursive fabrication of a false harmony tends to express a balance in polemic relations befitting the political discourse, especially in a scenario of electoral campaign. The frank speech, in turn, under the mask of authenticity, and by extension of being truthful, acts as a revealing strategy of the authoritarian political discourse, even obliterating the possibility of a political game based on argumentative exchanges.