PERSUASION AND THE IMPEACHMENT PROCESS IN EDITORIALS OF THE NEWSPAPERS FOLHA DE SÃO PAULO AND THE NEW YORK TIMES
Keywords:
impeachment, representation, conceptual metaphor theory, critical linguistics, systemic functional linguistics.Abstract
The objective of this research is the critical examination of the processes of representation regarding the possible impeachment of the President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, found in the newspapers Folha de S. Paulo and The New York Times, based on the metaphors related to metaphoric expressions present in editorials and opinion articles of these newspapers. The polarized constructions of the issue and the roles of the participants in the two newspapers are reinforced by lexical cohesion, allowing both newspapers to consistently develop certain metaphorical expressions that build specific understandings of the impeachment process. The study combines the cognitive and pragmatic approaches, based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Critical Linguistics, which allow the verification of the relations among the choices of certain linguistic forms, ideologies and power relations that underlie such forms, and its analysis is supported by Systemic-Functional Linguistics. The analysis shows that these choices constitute metaphorical expressions related to conceptual metaphors that acquire two functions: (i) they interfere in the representations of the impeachment process, playing an important role in the persuasive rhetoric that each newspaper uses about the fact; (ii) they contribute to the establishment of the discursive coherence of the text.