The production of a Lula-Dilma co-presence effect in the political media discourse in Brazilian weekly magazines from 2010

Abstract

Foregrounded on the theoretical and methodological presuppositions of French Discourse Analysis, current paper embodies the Foucauldian idea of History as a discontinuous set of temporalities and recovers the discourse of the most important event in Brazil during 2010. Dilma Rousseff was indicated as the presidential candidate of the Workers´ Party (PT), as the successor of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva. Facts and events that comprised conditions for the presidential race during the period are discussed, whilst force relationships that delineate the political and media discourse are problematized. Current paper analyzes the regularities/ dispersions that guide Dilma´s and Lula´s discursiveness within a 208-issue archive of the weekly magazines CartaCapital, Época, IstoÉ and Veja published during the election year. Results show the production of a discursive effect of the Lula-Dilma co-presence which, in three magazines, makes explicit a lack of qualification of the candidate´s image as a product manufactured for electoral purposes. On the other hand, in CartaCapital, as dispersion, the discursive effect underscores a partnership of the two subjects as basic for the continuity of PT´s policy.