Mandetta x Bolsonaro

the social isolation in pandemic times

Abstract

In this work, we analyzed aspects of the polemics relating to social isolation, in April 2020, due to the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus. The research's corpus consists of three excerpts from the former health press conference, Luis Henrique Mandetta, on April 6, 2020, and for the pronouncement, in full, from President Jair Bolsonaro, delivered two days later. Our goal is to describe how polemics is constructed in the enunciative, generic, and semantic dimensions, constituting positions in political discourse. In this sense, we appreciate the research concepts of registration, positioning, and ethos (Maingueneau, 2010). The analysis points to the controversy as registration that permits the discursive units of political, scientific, and media fields and that presents moderately at the press conference, and the statement here analyzed. In the enunciative dimensions, the confrontation is more due to the discordances relating to the actions undertaken to confront the pandemic (or the lack of them) than by the presence of vehement style or manifest attacks. Already in Generic, the genres collective interview and pronouncement contribute to the construction of a more weighted controversial tone. Finally, in the semantic dimension, placements that adhere to or reject modern science guidelines to combat the Covid-19 epidemic.