La valoración como estrategia persuasiva: comparación entre textos del franquismo y la “nueva política” española del siglo XXI

Abstract

The lexicon has a high persuasive capacity. Politicians and communicators pay attention to the lexical selection, conscious of its functionality as an argumentative mechanism. Valuation, usually expressed through adjectives, is a highly profitable persuasive procedure to express the speaker’s ideological position and orientation. In the political texts of the Franco era, collected in the media of the time (ABC, Hoja del lunes, for example) the position of the dominant group is shown in an intensified assessment that serves to distinguish the position that is legitimized or considered correct of that which is qualified as negative or proper to the exogroup. Sometimes, it is used strategically to praise the image of the other and in this way persuade him to adopt a certain position; others, it is clearly linked to the imposition.

This valuation strategy is found in any political and/or media text, also, of course, in the current ones. In the new parties that appear in the Spanish political panorama of the 21st century, either because of their desire to install their proposal within an area dominated by bipartisanship, this “hypervaluation” or intensification is frequently used, clearly linked to emotion. In this article, we will analyze the tendency to use these elements, and we will evaluate their function to introduce ideological orientation, argumentative force, or to frame what is said in a clearly emotive field, which leads us to consider if we are not falling into a fallacy, convincing not with reason, but through feelings. Or if we simply do not argue, but persuade.

The comparison between these two epochs of Spanish political discourse will provide us with very interesting conclusions for the knowledge of valuation as an expressive mechanism, and its strategic use in ideology.