Context, mental models, and topoi in the guilty verdict of Leopoldo López

Abstract

Van Dijk (2008) claims that context is dynamic and constructed by participants. I based my analysis of the text of the condemnatory sentence of the Venezuelan politician Leopoldo Lopez to fourteen years of imprisonment. This lead us to explain the opposite manner in which the prosecution and the accused value the same communicative situations. I studied the mental models of democracy, civil disobedience and of the movement called “La Salida”. The mental models of the prosecution, embracing the declarations of the prosecutors, of the judge and the linguistic expert contradict those of López. The result of the analysis of the condemnatory sentence does not reflect the communicative situation of a democratic trial.