O funcionamento metafórico no discurso político: uma investigação sobre a metáfora conceptual como recurso persuasivo

Abstract

This study proposes an argumentative analysis of the use of metaphors as a persuasive resource in the inaugural speeches of three contemporary political leaders - Donald Trump (United States, 2017), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil, 2019), and Javier Milei (Argentina, 2023). The investigation is grounded in the assumptions of Cognitive Linguistics, with a focus on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), as proposed by Lakoff and Johnson ([1980] 2002), who view metaphors as fundamental cognitive structures for the organization of thought and language. The theoretical framework is further enriched by the works of Charteris-Black (2005), with his critical approach to political metaphor, Ferrari (2011), who examines the foundations of cognitive linguistics and metaphor, and Carneiro (2009, 2014), who focuses on metaphor and its functioning. The adopted methodology is qualitative, interpretative, and documentary, combining argumentative-cognitive analyses with the categorization of conceptual metaphors based on official inaugural speeches. The corpus consists of inaugural speech texts obtained from widely circulated journalistic sources such as G1.com, UOL.com, and CNN Brasil. This selection is justified by the relevance of this discursive genre in establishing political agendas and constructing inaugural governmental narratives, allowing the identification of metaphorical strategies aimed at legitimizing the mandate and symbolically mobilizing the audience. The general objective of this research is to analyze, both argumentatively and cognitively, the use of metaphors as a persuasive resource in political discourse. The results indicate that inaugural speeches, although situated in distinct socio political contexts, share recurring metaphorical structures, especially those that present “politics as war,” “the nation as a body,” and “crisis as disease or collapse,” revealing common patterns in contemporary populism.