METÁFORA Y LEGITIMACIÓN EN EL DISCURSO POLÍTICO ARGENTINO CONTEMPORÁNEO. La metáfora conceptual en los discursos políticos de Mauricio Macri y Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Abstract

The objective of our work is to study how the conceptual metaphor is used by the Argentinian presidents Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Mauricio Macri with respect to the issues of poverty, security and unity, as a strategy to legitimize the measures implemented during their respective governments. We use the ACM approach to analyse the speeches delivered by the presidents during the first two years of their respective governments. The first step of our analysis is to identify the metaphors associated with the themes of poverty, security and unity in the transcriptions of selected political speeches. Then we examine the collected data and correlate the identified conceptual metaphors with cognitive and pragmatic factors in order to investigate the scope of the choice of certain conceptual metaphors in the construction of social representations. Finally, we explain and compare the function of those metaphors in the speeches of both presidents. Our study reveals that through the use of different varieties of conceptual metaphors both presidents manage to build a meaning that allows them to legitimize their government measures.