Tensile Forces on Conceptions and the Delegitimization of the News Media: Linguistic-Enunciative Strategies in Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's Facebook Lives

Abstract

The present article aims to describe four linguistic-enunciative strategies used by Jair Bolsonaro in his live broadcasts on social media to apply tensile force to the conception that the press is a reliable source of information, as well as propose two criteria for measuring the intensity of this tensile force. From the perspective of Enunciative Pragmatics, and primarily inspired by the works of Ducrot, Anscombre, and Nølke and collaborators, the study defines conception as a special type of point of view (PDV), prior to enunciation, attributed to a collective voice, which links a term T of a particular language to an attribute A, so that T becomes an argument in favor of A. Conceptual tensile force, or simply tensile force, is understood as an action exerted by utterances on a conception in an attempt to reduce the strength of T as an argument in favor of A. Adopting an exploratory approach, the tensile force strategies were classified as syntagmatic, phrasal, textual, and presuppositional. As for intensity, two criteria were proposed: duration (unlimited and limited) and scope (total and partial). In general, the study aims to contribute to the expansion of theoretical-methodological principles that help understand the relationship between language, politics, and democracy.