Comparación de métodos de análisis discursivo a la luz de dos pronunciamientos del Presidente Enrique Peña Nieto

Abstract

In the present study we analyzed two speeches given by the Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, which had been previously evaluated through Paéz and Gallardo’s (2011) AdQaT (Advanced Discourse Quality Analysis Tool) method as ‘good’ and ‘poor’, respectively. For our analysis, we used two approaches derived from Halliday’s (1985) systemic functional linguistics (the genre and the appraisal models), as well as Mann and Thompson’s (1988) rhetorical structure theory. Our purpose was to find out if the results of an analysis based on a strictly linguistic theory coincide with those presented through the AdQaT method, which mainly relies on the analysts’ intuitions. This stems from the assumption that, unlike AdQaT, linguistic analyses of a functional nature are descriptive rather than prescriptive, and are thus capable of revealing the specific linguistic resources that elicit a positive or negative evaluation of the structural elements of a speech. Although the AdQaT method proves to be accurate, the linguistic analysis offers the theoretical evidence needed to validate the intuitions.