The justicialist rhetoric of Néstor Kirchner

Abstract

The main thrust of this essay is to account for the preliminary results of a discourse analysis research on former president Néstor Kirchner’s oratory as head of the Partido Justicialista [Justicialist Party; abbreviated PJ]. Within the frame of discourse analysis current tendencies in the French-speaking field, it examines some rhetorical and argumentative features of the speeches belonging to Kirchner’s “justicialist” stage, starting from the hypothesis that the speaker’s institutional move from the Presidency of the State to that of the PJ implies a mutation on different levels of its political enunciation, mainly on the forms of subjective agency and on those of control of destination. On such horizon, this work takes into account Eliseo Verón’s contributions in his classic article “La Palabra Adversativa” and seeks to explore the link that the word of the leader extends on his positive and negative recipients. We believe that the image of himself a leader offers, the traditions and meanings he brings together in his argumentative weaving, the auditories he seeks to interpellate, the commonplace spaces in which he weaves up his explanations and his passions become ineluctable dimensions of an enquiry concerned with the construction of political hegemony.