Geometric Discursive Paths and the Geometry of Discourse

Abstract

This article argues that, in electoral contexts marked by polarization, platformization, and disputes over disinformation, Linguistics must examine not only what discourse states, but also what it makes indirect, administrable, or less visible between concepts. From this position, it proposes the notion of geometric discursive paths: sequences of intermediate words connecting two anchor concepts in a vector space and filtered by a dimensional-persistence criterion. These paths are not treated as the endpoint of the argument, but as a starting point for a broader discussion of semantic mediation, technocratization, and discursive concealment. The article uses, as supporting evidence, the 2024 São Paulo mayoral debates and an online comments reference corpus, analyzed in separately trained spaces. The reading of five politically dense concept pairs suggests that institutional debate tends to cushion sensitive transitions through technical-administrative or institutional vocabulary, whereas the online corpus tends to activate events, antagonists, financial actors, and everyday economic chains. The central argument is that what may seem to be mere lexical difference can reveal different ways of making conflicts more or less nameable. The article's contribution is conceptual and methodological: it shows how a vector metric may support textual interpretation without replacing discourse analysis, and how politics appears not only in selected words, but also in the paths that connect one word to another.