Social inclusion policies in Andalusia from a discursive and lexicometric perspective. A comparative analysis of the technical-political discourse

Abstract

Social inclusion policies have been analyzed from very different perspectives, but in this article we want to present their analysis from the framework of Discourse Analysis and Lexicometry. To this end, we have focused on the discourse of two of its main actors, those who design them (politicians) and those who execute them (technicians), collected through in-depth interviews and focus groups that were done in the field work of a broader research project on autonomous Social Policies funded by MIMECO in the call for R&D projects (2014-2017). For the analysis of discourse from lexical parameters we have used the Iramuteq software, which, through a system of coding and statistical multidimensional analysis, allows us to deepen and categorize the lexical worlds present in the discourse. In this case, we establish a comparison between the lexical worlds of politicians and technicians with respect to social inclusion policies in Andalusia. The result of the application of this methodology shows, at first, the opportunity offered by lexicometry as a first way of approaching the social representations of the different actors, which will later have to be analysed in greater depth with other qualitative methodologies. In a second moment, already centred on the case analysed, the research shows us the presence of two discourses on social inclusion policies according to the profile of the actor who enunciates them, proving in many cases the distance between the theoretical (political) perception and the pragmatic (technical) perception, as well as the need for both to be shared in order to improve the effectiveness of social inclusion policies.