El menosprecio y la burla como armas de ataque en el debate electoral. Caracterización funcional y configuración discursiva

Abstract

This work, part of a larger research project about impolite attacks inelectoral debates, develops the analysis of two strategies of impoliteness thatprove to have a particularly interesting effect in these discursive events: scornand mockery towards the opponent.Taking as a reference the last televised face to face top-level debate held inSpain so far, involving A. Pérez Rubalcaba and M. Rajoy in the campaign forgeneral elections in 2011, we analyse: a) the functional value of these strategiesand the features of their different variants, b) the linguistic-discursive patternsthrough which they are implemented, and c) their nature from the theoreticalpoint of view of linguistic impoliteness.The work is also contextualized within the research framework to which itbelongs, a comprehensive analysis of the use of impoliteness in the aforemen-tioned debate. This analysis pinpoints a list of strategies of impoliteness, car-ries out an inventory of the linguistic-discursive mechanisms that come intoplay for their implementation and describes the characteristics of the attacksfrom the theoretical prism of impoliteness.