Politics on the Flow Podcast: an analysis of the construction of ethos and pathos in President Lula’s discourse

Abstract

This article, based on the Semiolinguistics Theory, conceived by Patrick Charaudeau, analyses how is built the discursive ethos and pathos of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on the interview to Flow Podcast, vehiculated on October 18th, 2022, twelve days before the second round of the presidential election, disputed with the ex-president Jair Messias Bolsonaro. The research was theoretical and methodologically anchored in the concepts of ethos and pathos applied to the political discourse as a persuasion strategy, according to Charaudeau (2018). The analysis results revealed that predominated in Presidente Lula’s discourse the ethé which aim to arouse the audience’s trust, such as the figures of chief and virtue. The disqualification of his opponent, Jair Bolsonaro, was a strategy of construction of the pathos widely used by the president, in order to establish an image of savior before his interlocutor.