Building polarization through political discourse. Analysis of the use of peripheral cues in the rhetoric of Mexican President López Obrador

Main Article Content

Carlos Muñiz

Abstract

Since his arrival to the presidency of Mexico in 2018, López Obrador has established a communication strategy focused on his daily press conferences, called "mañaneras", through which he tries to establish the informative agenda of the country. It is common for the president to use a discursive rhetoric tending to polarization, for which he makes use of cues or labels that offer a context to understand the issues on which he is pronounced. The paper has as aim to analyze the use of labels or cues by the president in his discourse, for which a quantitative content analysis was carried out on a sample of his interventions (N = 867) during a year in the "mañaneras". The findings made it possible to detect two discursive schemes from the convergence of different cues: one that tends to present an “Us” visualized in a new government scheme, linked to positive aspects such as engagement or the fight against corruption, compared to an “Others” that presents the previous government, linked to negative aspects such as corruption.

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How to Cite
Muñiz, C. (2021). Building polarization through political discourse. Analysis of the use of peripheral cues in the rhetoric of Mexican President López Obrador. Culture, Language and Representation, 26, 149–165. https://doi.org/10.6035/clr.5806
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ARTÍCULOS / ARTICLES
Author Biography

Carlos Muñiz, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

Carlos Muñiz es licenciado en Comunicación Audiovisual (2000) y doctor en Comunicación (2007) por la Universidad de Salamanca (España). Actualmente es Profesor Titular de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (México), donde imparte docencia en nivel licenciatura y posgrado. Es coordinador del Laboratorio de Comunicación Política (LACOP) y líder del Cuerpo Académico Consolidado de “Comunicación Política y Opinión Pública”. Sus principales líneas de investigación se centran en el análisis de los efectos mediáticos en el área de la comunicación política, el impacto de las prácticas comunicativas sobre la generación de actitudes políticas y el tratamiento informativo (framing) de los acontecimientos en los medios de comunicación.

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