The Pragmatics of Chaos: Parsing Bolsonaro’s Undemocratic Language

Abstract

This paper unpacks different layers of Jair Bolsonaro’s pragmatics of chaos - the name I give to a reflexive, ordered and laminated method of producing a permanent sentiment of agitation, murk, and discontent in political audiences while a conservative and free market agenda is radicalized in Brazil. The communicative layers are: history, exemplified by Bolsonaro’s early career in the military: from his union-like activity, to his imprisonment and to evidences of a terrorist plot; persona, indexed by the jocular, non-serious performances that made him famous as a federal representative and that have been mediatized in his executive action as president; text and talk, characterized by a general texture of incendiary framing, smoke screens, backtracking, and avoidance of debate; audiences, seen from the perspective of the digital, pedagogic and performative populism that accrued from his campaign, almost entirely designed for being engendered on the non-public space of WhatsApp groups and in public, algorithmic social media platforms.

Politics of fear in Brazil: Far-right conspiracy theories on COVID-19

“…Two recent examples can be found in Silva's (2020) historic outline of Bolsonaro's 'pragmatics of chaos' since the 1980s, and Borba's (2020) notable examination of Bolsonaro's efforts to increase discrimination against the LGBTQI+ community. These analyses are based on a semiotic tradition whose methodology reflect works such as Jan Blommaert's (2020) model of communicability in political discourse.…”

Populists and the Pandemic

“…Bolsonaro's rhetoric's virulence and violence are an integral part of his communication style, and during the pandemic, he just intensified this style ( Silva 2020). 1 He imitated people suffering from shortness of breath on YouTube lives and even used homophobic slurs against those who followed WHO recommendations ( Phillips 2020b).…”

Pensando com Marilda Cavalcanti: Reinvenção da linguística aplicada, grupos minoritarizados e complexidade sociolinguística

“…Nesse projeto recente, Marilda, em colaboração com Ana Cecilia, cruza duas emergências: a situação premente dessa minoria, epítome da precarização do refúgio e de grande parte dos sujeitos que migram contemporaneamente, com as semioses produzidas em contextos sociolinguisticamente complexos, cada vez mais situados no nexo online-offline (Blommaert, 2019). Esses trabalhos também contribuem para os esforços contemporâneos na linguística aplicada de entender as transformações nos cenários políticos das democracias, em especial dada a influência da digitalização na formação de novos afetos reacionários (ver, por exemplo, Blommaert, 2019;Borba, 2019aBorba, , 2019bCesarino, 2020Cesarino, , 2022Maly, 2020;Moita-Lopes & Pinto, 2020;Silva, 2020aSilva, , 2020bSilva, , 2020c.…”