Is this capitalism? Ideological paratax, liberal discourse, and the constitution of the poor entrepreneur

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the term capitalism is discursively constructed in liberal discourse through the paratactic organization of utterances. Inserted in the theoretical framework of Discourse Analysis developed by Pêcheux in France and Orlandi in Brazil, the analysis is grounded in the question of how meanings acquire consistency and come to function as evidence for Subjects inscribed in ideological positions. Considering the political dichotomy between right- and left-wing positions regarding the role of the State in promoting social welfare, the article asks how subjects who rely on public services and social assistance may identify with meanings associated with the political right. To this end, the corpus comprises an interview published by the Spectrum YouTube channel and screenshots of discussions from the Facebook page Carobinha Acontece, the name of a low-income area in the West Zone of Rio de Janeiro. The analysis focuses on the circulation of meanings that privilege the notion of entrepreneurship within liberal discourse and on how these meanings are syntactically articulated in a paratactic form to sustain ideological positions. The analysis demonstrates that the articulation of utterances through processes of syntactic embedding and (dis)connection (Pêcheux, 2016), contributes to the stabilization of meanings while simultaneously maintaining flexibility for the preservation of ideological coherence.