Abstract

CORTES RODRIGUEZ, Luis. The Architecture of the Discourse that Changed the Spanish Government (Although it Was Already a Foreone Conclusion). Anu. let. lingüíst. filol. [online]. 2020, vol.8, n.1, pp.35-68.  Epub Nov 29, 2021. ISSN 2448-8224.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.adel.2020.1.0002.

Among the different devices deployed by those who make political speeches are those of an architectural kind, which form the skeleton of the dissertation. These are certainly the least studied in the analysis of discourses of this kind, although its proper use is very often pivotal to better structured, more cohesive and more intelligible presentations. In this paper we concentrate on the speech given by Pedro Sánchez on 31 May 2018 on the occasion of a motion of censure presented by his political party, the Socialist Group, against the then president of the Government Mariano Rajoy. We segment this speech into three sequences: beginning, development and closing. The main focus of this article is thus on the structure of these sequences as well as those devices giving cohesion and coherence to the discourse as a whole, as signals of thematic shift, while also taking on board non-architectural strategies (e.g. highlighting, masking), which are closely connected with architectural ones.

Keywords : orality; political discourse; discourse structure; sequences; subsequences; topics.