The discursive construction of moral censure to the indolence of the political class in Chile during the pandemic

Abstract

In the midst of the serious health emergency experienced worldwide in 2020, in front of the cameras of a national channel in Chile, Piñera’s Health Minister, Jaime Mañalich, admits that he was not aware of the poverty level that existed in Chile until the arrival of the pandemics. Faced with the impossibility of taking to the streets to demonstrate, the Chilean population resorts to alternative spaces such as the social networks to condemn the discursive legitimation of ways of normalizing the indifference towards the precariousness in which the most vulnerable population currently live. We assume the approach of the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and the model of the Functional Systemic Linguistics (FSL) to analyze and interpret the construction of the discursive censureto the minister’s statements that reveal an indolent distancing of the privileged classes from the most vulnerable population. The comments analyzed mainly express, in categories of ATTITUDE, people’s reproach to the lack of sympathy of the political class towards the impoverishment experienced by the lower classes, through the presence of evoked and inscribed judgements of social sanction of integrity.