FROM FALSE HARMONY TO FRANK SPEECH: VERBAL AGGRESSIONS IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTORAL CAMPAIGNS

ABSTRACT Relying on the theoretical framework of Discourse Analysis, under a Foucauldian perspective, this paper aims at investigating the mechanics and the possible intensification of verbal aggression in the last two Brazilian presidential electoral campaigns, in 2014 and 2018, which were considered utterly violent in the perception of the Brazilian people. In order to do so, we have relied on the concept of discursive event, which is closely related to the conditions of emergence of discourses once the statements are produced within a system of enunciability. These statements are inescapably inscribed within historical and social frameworks of its constitution, analyzed thereof, considering their formulation and circulation forms. The results indicate that, according to the analyzed excerpts - extracted from the broadcast debates of the 2014 and 2018 electoral campaigns -, the discursive construction of a false harmony tends to express a balance in polemic relations that are particular to the political discourse, especially in scenarios of electoral campaigns. The frank speech, in turn, under the mask of authenticity, - and, by extension, of the true-self - acts as a strategy of a political discourse, obliterating the possibility of a political game based on argumentative trades, which reveals its authoritarianism.