Piñericosas. Discursive construction of ethos and gender representations in Sebastián Piñera’s public speeches

Abstract

This article explores the gender representations in three of the Chilean President Sebastián Piñera’s public speeches, and in particular the positions assigned to women by himself, his Government, and his political sector. Conceptually, we use Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) as our starting point. This approach analyzes ideological effects on language, highlighting social problems such as power dominance and inequality. Methodologically, we focus on the discursive construction of ethos, taking into account the position of communication and enunciation, both present in every scene of communication. Two of these three cases analyzed correspond to what have been called ‘Piñericosas’: President Piñera’s errors, impasses and unfortunate comments. We postulate that these enunciations are linguistic accidents produced as a result of contradictions and tensions reflected in his discursive production. These linguistic accidents generate commotion not only because of Piñera’s position as President, but also because they confront the pre-discursive construction of ethos based on the position of power he has had throughout his life.