El debate social sobre las fuentes de energía: Representaciones semánticas y gestión social de los conocimientos

Abstract

This paper examines the structure of the discursive space where the social debate about energy sources takes place. The space structure is configured by many factors as interdiscursive axes (risk/danger, prosperity, dirtiness, ecological alternatives for the future), main purposes of discourse practices (popularization, persuasion), textual genres and semantic representations involved in the shared knowledge and values (doxa) about the different energy sources: fossil, nuclear and renewable sources. Lexical associations, metaphors and euphemisms/dysphemisms are relevant tools to convey the points of view of every attitude taken in the frame of the social debate. The corpus of the analysis consists of books and articles about energies and their convenience of inconvenience for the planetary society, included texts devoted to the theory of Gaia and the programs of degrowth. A theoretical concept applied in this analysis is the notion of social management of knowledge, which implies not just the popularization of scientific-technological knowledge but also the mechanisms of argumentation and persuasion employed in the construction of the public opinion.