ATTENUATION, GENDER AND INTENSIFICATION IN MEDIA OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE: THE COMMITMENT TO CHASTITY AMONG TEENAGERS OF NUEVO LEON, MEXICO (2011)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the articles «Promueve alcalde ‘contrato de castidad’ entre jóvenes para evitar embarazos», by Luciano Campos Garza, Proceso, October 28, 2011, and «Campaña de valores electorales», by Felipe Díaz Garza, El Norte, October 31, 2011. Both texts deal with a statement done by Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, mayor of García, Nuevo León, México, in 2011. The focus is on the analysis of the pragmatic strategies of attenuation and intensification in argumentation (Zárate, 2012; 2015; Toulmin, Rieke & Janik, 1979; Gilbert, 1997), and also the possible relations between evidentiality and epistemicity (de Haan, 1999), as well as discursive control mechanisms (Foucault, 2008). As an example, the use of pragmatic strategies of intensification and the emotional mode of argumentation in the first text can be mentioned by «Alarmado por el incremento de embarazos entre adolescentes, el alcalde de García, Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, promueve entre los jóvenes una singular campaña de planificación demográfica: la firma voluntaria de un ‘compromiso de castidad’» (Campos, 2011). Discursive markers such as «alarmado», «singular», as well as «compromiso de castidad»’ express a high degree of argumentative emotionality, and at the same time question this mayor’s political campaign from a power position in media. This analysis also includes a theoretical gender perspective (Lamas, 2000; Lagarde, 2012), roles and social stereotypes in the sex-gender system discourse, sexuality and its duty to be (Estrada, 2012), symbolic violence through cultural and social mandates (Bourdieu, 1998).