Political speech in times of crisis. Analysis of the speeches of Chilean President Sebastián Piñera during his second term

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reflect on the governability of the second term (2018– 2022) of former Chilean President Sebastián Piñera Echenique, by analysing the presidential speeches of fourteen speeches made during his second term, and linking them to the two most complex moments of his administration: a social outbreak in October 2019 and the onset of the global pandemic of Covid-19 in March 2020. The Chilean political system survived by processing both crises (one social and the other health) through democratic, institutional and political channels, and, particularly after the social outbreak, by establishing a timeline towards the drafting of a new constitution. This paper analyses the presidential speeches understood as signs of the governability of that period; but, especially, it characterises the symbolic character that the presidency wanted to imprint on the narrative of this mandate, the second centre-right mandate elected by popular vote after the re-establishment of democracy in 1989. This narrative was analysed through the pragmatics of textual cooperation and actan-cial analysis, as tools that helped to define a symbolic strategy anchored in concepts such as efficiency, confrontation, the family, the middle class, the homeland and God.