To read beyond the word: instruments for the analysis of political discourses

Abstract

This review critically discusses the conference Linguistic Instruments for the analysis of political discourse given by professor Uli Reich during the event Abralin ao Vivo, in which the author presents linguistic concepts from the field of formal pragmatics that may be used to unveil the ideology behind texts and utterances. More specifically, Reich presents the concepts of common ground (STALNAKER, 2002), Questions under discussion (ROBERTS, 2012), conventional implicatures (POTTS, 2005) and “table” (FARKAS; BRUCE, 2010), and then analyzes excerpts from the interministerial meeting held by Jair Bolsonaro’s government on April 22^nd, 2020. Through the analysis, the linguist demonstrates which common grounds are projected by the discourses of the interlocutors present in the meeting. Reich’s talk, besides being a class about the role of Linguistics in the understanding of contemporaneity, provides us with tools for the development of a critical reading of the world.