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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 1431

Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)

Of Presidents and Protestors: discursive strategies in Chile’s educational conflict

Authors: Paffey, Darren James
Submitted by: Paffey, Darren James (University of Southampton, United Kingdom)

Between May and December 2011, a wave of student protests occurred in the Chilean capital of Santiago and other major cities throughout the country. The protests were a response to government proposals to allow further privatisation of the higher education sector, in the context of a country whose education system has been judged by UNESCO to promote inequality and division along class lines (UNESCO/Muñoz 2011). In response to the occupation of schools and huge public marches organised by university students, Sebastian Piñera – Chile’s first right-wing President since the Pinochet era – announced the ‘Gran Acuerdo Nacional de la Educación’ (Grand National Agreement on Education). Following more demonstrations in July, the Gran Acuerdo was amended and announced again in August, and a third version was unveiled at the end of August.

Drawing on the critical discourse analytical frameworks offered by Fairclough (2001) and Wodak (1999, 2009), this paper considers the argumentation strategies employed by President Piñera in these successive high-profile policy proposals announced in relatively quick succession throughout July and August. It considers how the students’ position and actions are framed in relation to the position of the government, and how the students’ perceived cause is discursively constructed by Piñera in order to then make his own case. The study also draws on Aristotle’s three-part model of the means of persuasion (through personality and stance, arousal of emotion, and reasoning. Beard 2000:37) to analyse the persuasive strategies employed by Piñera in his efforts to legitimise and validate his government’s own position in contrast to that of the protestors.

I look not only at the elite voices and institutional discourse (Thornborrow 2002) of the government and Presidency, but also critically analyse the ‘grassroots’ voices emerging from students and other participants in the protests, asking whether similar discursive strategies are apparent in their discourse, or whether these voices and discourses are constructed in different ways.

References

Chilton, P. (2004) Analysing political discourse : theory and practice, London: Routledge.

Fairclough, N. (2001) Language and power, Harlow: Longman.

UNESCO / Muñoz, V. (2011) El derecho a la educación: una mirada comparative:

Argentina, Uruguay, Chile y Finlandia, Santiago, Chile: UNESCO.

Thornborrow, J. (2002) Power talk : language and interaction in institutional discourse, Harlow: Longman.

Wodak, R., De Cillia, R., Reisigl, M. & Liebhart, K. (1999) The discursive construction of national identity, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Wodak, R. & Meyer, M. (2009) Methods of critical discourse analysis, London: SAGE.