Vaccinegate: a Discursive Analysis of Political Corruption in the Peruvian Press; [Vacunagate: une analyse de discours sur la corruption politique dans la presse péruvienne]

Yalta Gonzales E.M. · Boletin de la Academia Peruana de la Lengua (2024) · DOI: 10.46744/bapl.202401.011

Resumen

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Peruvian media reported an investigation, later called Vaccinegate, about the irregular inoculation process of more than 450 people, which included former President Martín Vizcarra and other important group of high-ranking officials of the government of the then President Francisco Sagasti. The aim of this paper was to analyze the discursive representation of political corruption around the Vaccinegate case in opinion-based journalistic texts of the Peruvian digital newspapers El Comercio, Trome and La República. Using the analytical-discursive tools proposed by Wodak (2001) in the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA), the results show that columnists deploy different linguistic and discursive strategies, such as nomination, intertextuality or attribution, to assign negative characteristics to the people involved, denounce the abuse of political power, and assume a culture of corruption normalized and historically forged in Peruvian society.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos