The use of personal deixis as an ideological instrument in Spanish political discourse

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate the relationship between personal deictic expressions and context in political discourse. The focus is on the contextual cognitive and social processes that are involved in conceptualizing deixis as an instrument of ideology and persuasion. The data consist of the transcription of a TV panel discussion between the two principal candidates to the 2008 Spanish general election. The quantitative analysis displays the speakers’ preferences with respect to the use of pronouns. The qualitative analysis describes the speakers’ discourse spaces (Zupnik 1994) in order to discuss the contextual references of personal deixis. The results display the politically strategic use of pronouns by the candidates in order to achieve persuasion.