Abstract

The following paper will center on Critical Discourse Analysis and will deal with social

and political aspects. This paper will analyze the discourse of Rafael Correa in his

political debate prior to his election as the president of Ecuador. The debate was held in

Guayaquil by La Cámara de Comercio de Guayaquil in 2006. Five candidates were

invited to participate: Cynthia Viteri, León Roldós, Rafael Correa, Álvaro Noboa and

Fernando Rosero. In the analysis of Rafael Correa’s discourse, we will to take into

account the macro-level observation such as society and history and micro-level

observation such as linguistics features.

Resumen
El siguiente ensayo se centrará en un análisis crítico de discurso. De la misma forma

tomará aspecto políticos y sociales. El tema a analizar será el discurso de Rafael Correa

en su debate político previo a su elección con presiente de la república del Ecuador. El

debate se llevo a cabo en la ciudad de Guayaquil con la ayuda de La Cámara de

Comercio de Guayaquil en el 2006. Cinco candidatos participaron en este: Cynthia

Viteri, León Roldós, Rafael Correa, Álvaro Noboa y Fernando Rosero. Para el análisis

del discurso de Rafael Correa, se deberán tomar observaciones a nivel macro como: la

sociedad de ese entonces y algo de historia, y observaciones a nivel micro como las

características lingüísticas del discurso propio.

Introduction
Politics is a
Since when does politics exist?
Who? Where?

Theoretical Framework
Politics is
Discourse analysis
Human beings are social creature and seek the need to communicate. The means

of communication defer from individual, the purpose, the context and many other

factors. Nevertheless, what humans create in essence is a discourse (oral or written).

According to Susan Strauss and Parastou, discourse can be described as

“the cognitive process of (1) putting the world into words, (2) transforming our

perceptions, experiences, emotions, understandings and desires into common

medium of expression and communication, through language and other semiotic

resources. (Strauss & Feiz, 2014)

This means that a person’s worldview is expressed overtly through how she or

he talks: their opinions, dreams, likes, dislikes, etc., is displayed through each utterance

or sentences that is articulated. The choice of words (i.g why we choose a certain word

over another) does reflect how we perceive the world and gives us hint of how other

people see the world. In addition, Encarnacion Hidalgo Tenorio say that discourse is the

highest unit of linguistics description. This means that phonemes, morphemes, words,

phrases, clauses, sentences and text are levels below (Tenorio).

Critical Discourse Analysis

According to Susan Strauss and Parastou, critical discourse analysis […] is a

broad, interdisciplinary methodological to language and society that centers on

discourse as a social practice […] (Strauss & Feiz, 2014). This type of discourse focuses

on how our language and discourse is influenced and reshaped by society. CDA does not

only consists of linguistic forms (micro-level analysis), but also considers the relevant

surrounding semiotic resources. Micro level encompasses analysis of patterned linguistics

features (lexical items) such as verbs, adverbs, figures of speech, euphemisms, etc., and

other elements that presuppose stance-taking.

Referential
Teum Van Dijk approaches discourse sociocognitively and his approach is characterized

by the Discourse-Cognition-Society triangle. He says that discourse structure and social

structure are dissimilar, but they can only be related through the mental representation of

language and how we perceive the world (Wodak & Meyer, 2016).

In 2014 during the European Parliament elections, he carried out a study on the

racist propaganda. Specifically, in England, political parties launched infame propaganda

using billboards that read like the following:

Here, the studies centered on how such subtly racist messages would influence the

vote decision on many British. He concluded that the smart use and choice of words

would have the biggest effect. Firstly, this discourse utilized the strategic number 26

million people. This created amazement on how big and critical the statistics are. The

billboard also has this rhetorical question Whose jobs are they after? This suggest that

immigrants are hunting down Europeans’ jobs. This message is complemented by a hand

and a pointing-at-you finger to suggest that the reader’s job is at risk due to immigrants.

The message finishes with take back control. This presupposes that the country is

currently out of control and by the act of voting for this political party (UKIP), British

society would take control again. They finally say our country to increase the sense of

nationality (Dijk, 2016).

 He finally concludes that this message would make any sense if the alarming high

unemployment rate in England back then were unknown. Likewise, he concludes that the

political party held accountable for this billboard (UKIP) is encouraging a xenophobic

attitude suggesting that British workers should be prioritized. Simultaneously, they are

suggesting a division between ingroup and immigrants along with ethnic superiority of

British.

METHODOLOGY
For the following Critical Discourse Analysis, we have choses Rafael Correa’s

discourse at the political debate in 2006 prior to his election as president.

Bibliography
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