Affectivity as a Discursive Strategy in Diplomacy from Venezuela to Spain

Abstract

In this paper we analyze affectivity in political discourse. We seek to answer the following questions: Does the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro uses affectivity in his diplomatic speeches with Spain? How does affectivity manifest itself in discourse and what are the functions it performs? We start with the theory of feelings by Castilla (2000), and the studies on the affectivity and discourse by Caffi and Janney (1994), Janney (1996), TenHouten (2007), Rovira (2017). We intend to expand our research on affective bonding in political discourse (Nieto, 2002, 2012; Hidalgo and Nieto, 2014) including negative polarity. To carry out this research we have selected a corpus formed by the diplomatic conflicts between Venezuela and Spain during the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (2013-2018), and we have classified them into five events in chronological order. We have been able to conclude that Maduro uses the three functions of the affectivity of Castilla (2000) in all events; builds Spain as an enemy, and also generates fear with the use of negative polarity.