Social violence and venezuelan political presidential discourse: A Psychosocial Study

Abstract

The daily growth of violence and social insecurity in Venezuela are perceived as the most serious problems of this decade and a critical public health matter. The World Health Organization (WHO) classified Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela among the countries with the highest rates of violence in the world. Nevertheless, there is a less notorious aspect: symbolical violence. The aim of this study was to approach social violence as a psycho-socio-political-historical complex process, from a psychosocial discursive perspective. The starting point was the analysis of President Hugo Chávez's official political discourse. This is a documental exploratory and hermeneutical research: discourse analysis was the method applied on a corpus composed by two selected presidential allocutions published in the Internet. The results suggest that President Chavez's political discourse could reinforce and legitimize national social violence and provide fundamental elements to build emergent antagonist social identities.