Resumen

LEON, Florelba  y  GRACIA ROMERO, María. The linguistic and discursive construction of Bolívar and Zamora in Venezuelan presidential messages. Opcion [online]. 2008, vol.24, n.57, pp.93-113. ISSN 1012-1587.

This paper analyzes the linguistic and discursive construction of the historical figures Simón Bolívar and Ezequiel Zamora in the political speech of the current Venezuelan president. By studying speech using a semantic-pragmatic approach, the investigation is based on the conjunction of the theoretical and methodologic contributions of linguistic semantics (Pottier, 1992, 1993); the textual linguistics of Van Dijk (1980, 1990, 1994, 1999) and it connects with the ideas that have been being adapted and developed in the research line from applied linguistics to discourse analysis (Molero, 1985, 2002, 2003). The corpus includes a total of seventeen (17) presidential speeches emitted by the leader from the year 2001 to 2006. Analysis of the corpus permitted obtaining the following results: a) the construction of “I-we” is demonstrated at the logical-conceptual level through use of causatives, which indicate processes of degradation caused by opponents and processes of improvement that the “I” (discursive subject) carries out; b) actancial analysis reveals the identification that the leader establishes between the “I” and the historical figures of Bolívar and Zamora; c) semantic fields demonstrate that the discursive meaning depends on the contextual variables as well as the lexical strategies that allow for re-contextualizing meanings from other social and discursive practices legitimized and widely known by the receivers. Conclusions are that the use of these historical figures contributes to persuading the public about the legitimacy of the policies developed from the Government.

Palabras clave : Simón Bolívar; Ezequiel Zamora; political discourse; speech analysis; semantic and pragmatic approach.