Metadiscursive negation, evidential points of view and ethos in Argentine political discourse

Abstract

In this chapter, I will focus on the analysis of the evidential meaning of metadiscursive negation in Spanish that, like certain syntactic structures, certain adverbial constructions, some discourse markers, certain uses of verb tenses, etc., can convey this type of meaning. However, with a view to accounting for such meaning, I will drift from many of the assumptions upon which most studies on evidentiality rest. In fact, on the research paths paved by the theories of polyphony (Ducrot, 1984, 2001), dialogism (Bakhtin, 1981, 1982) and argumentative semantics (Carel, 2011; Carel & Ducrot, 2005; Ducrot, 2004), the dialogic approach to argumentation and polyphony (Caldiz, 2019; García Negroni, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021; García Negroni & Hall, 2020, 2022; García Negroni & Libenson, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2021; Zucchi, 2020), within which this study is framed, advocates a non-truth-value and non-referential characterisation of meaning (i.e., there is no meaning component that can actually be considered purely objective). Furthermore, this perspective drifts from the principle of the uniqueness of an intentional subject in discourse (i.e., the subjective points of view posed in a given utterance cannot necessarily be attributed to the same discursive being) while also focusing on the functioning of signs in the language system and in discourse.I will delve into what I have described as quotative evidential points of view (García Negroni, 2018, 2019, 2021) and into how such viewpoints are displayed in instances of metadiscursive negation. All the cases analysed here belong to a corpus collected from a series of speeches delivered by different Argentine political figures: Juan Domingo Perón, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Julio Cobos. I will seek to attain a two-fold aim. First, I will bring to light the fact that, in these cases, negative enunciation is presented as emerging from and responding to a discourse frame related to other voices –which are dialogically evoked by the enunciation itself. I will then seek to show that in dialogic response to such discourse frame, a given subjective responsive positioning arises along with a given ethos of the locuteur (Ducrot, 1984; Amossy, 1999). Associated with different scenes (Maingueneau, 1999, 2002) typical of political enunciation and moulded in light of the different addressees at stake, the variety of ethos identified in the analysis will be as follows: the ethos of confrontation and discredit; the pedagogical one; the defensive ethos of someone who cares for its own public image; the one showing a condition of symmetry; and the cautious, fearful one facing an extreme situation.