Neoliberalismo en el discurso de Manuel Santos

Estrategias discursivas

Abstract

The debate on neoliberal discourse regarding economics has not acknowledged the market failure due to, among other factors, varying degrees of power anchored in commercial activity, uncertainty, external forces acting on production and consumption, and large-scale production, so the phenomenon seems to be open-ended. The Colombian case allows us to identify the general tendency to suppress social rights in Latin America, associated with the particular characteristics of the development of the internal armed conflict based on an old dispute between different social actors around the forms of wealth distribution, thereby revealing the axis on which the public sphere is built. The discursive practices and semiotic constructions that contribute to stabilizing the neoliberal model are identified in a Colombian presidential speech. The shift from the representation of the economic environment to the different areas of social life and its potential effects on the stabilization of a “semiotics of power” is examined. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos inaugural address of August 7 2014 is analyzed. Different categories taken from critical discourse studies, semiotics, sociology and political science are used to illustrate the semiotization ways through which the representational systems underlying the neoliberal regime are stabilized in political discourse.