On Monday, April 29, 2024, words revealed their ability to create and transform the politics of a country. On this day, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, who had promised to communicate his "decision" of continuity (or not) to the citizens, has resolved the question about his future that he himself had raised five days earlier.

It is naïve to think that politics is constructed, above all, on the basis of concrete measures and laws: politics is founded and transformed above all by what political actors say (or remain silent), not only about the world, but also about themselves and others.

The events of the last few days in Spain are a perfect example of this. A text, a letter to the citizens from President Sanchez dated April 24, 2024, becomes a political action of unexpected magnitude. In this text it is anticipated that there will be another speech, an appearance before the media on April 29, 2024, which will resolve the question posed in the first one.

The protagonist plays with silence, the public sphere explodes
Between one speech and the other, the author of both plays the game of silence (public and media silence). Meanwhile, the public sphere (political, media, institutional, citizen) explodes in words: political reactions, journalistic gatherings, speculations, bets, conspiracy theories, national and international headlines, slogans in rallies, hashtags #PedroQuédate or #PedroDimite, according to taste, and private conversations. All of it is speech, it is language. It is all words. Politics is, above all, words.

That is why it is crucial to focus on them alone from time to time and let them speak for themselves. This is what we linguists do, fascinated as we are by the myriad ways in which words influence people's lives, creating or destroying bonds, channeling emotions and reasons.

In this task of examining and dissecting words, those of us who are dedicated to the analysis of public discourse are fortunate to have automatic text processing instruments, also known as corpus analysis tools. These make work much easier for us. An example of this is the set of tools integrated in the Sketch Engine.

Corpus linguistics, in its aspect of analysis of large quantities of texts, allows us to compare specific texts or speeches with each other. For example, the words of Pedro Sánchez today can be compared with the general language , that is, with a very large set of texts of any genre and author, which is considered representative of the general way of speaking in a language. This comparison usually reveals which linguistic features are striking in the text under comparison. Such features are, so to speak, the DNA or the National Identity Card of a text. That which distinguishes and characterizes it, which makes it what it is.

Lexical analysis: "mud, insidiousness, defamation, unreason, hoax...".
Let us apply a brief analysis of this subject to the speech offered by Sánchez in his appearance on Monday 29th, focusing only on the lexicon (vocabulary) that the president has employee in a statistically significant way. This "differential" lexicon is usually called core topic words or keywords of a text or set of texts.

At Sketch Engine, a comparison of Sanchez's speech with a huge general corpus of language Spanish Web Corpus, esTenTen, 2018 edition tells us that the most characterizing lexicon of the Spanish president's appearance is the following.

Most significant vocabulary from President Pedro Sánchez's speech . Inés Olza based on Sketch Engine tools, CC BY-SA

Of the 30 words core topic or keywords provided by the comparison, 17 have a clearly negative valence (emotional charge): "mud, insidious, defamation, unreason, hoax, with impunity, discredit, convulsive, perversion, regressive, irreparable, falsehood, disconcert, rude, indiscriminate, afflict and disastrous".

Three other terms, "unimaginable, colonize, admissible", can be emotionally oriented in various directions (positive, negative or neutral valence). But in this context they also serve to emit a negative evaluation : "not usually admissible"; "the slime colonizes political life with impunity"; "unimaginable toxic practices". In contrast, only five words have a positive or neutral-positive emotional valence: "required subject, superimpose, regeneration, firmness, serenity".

With these few data in front of us, if we dare to describe today's appearance of the President using a light metaphor, what Pedro Sánchez has said at the doors of the Moncloa is not a speech with chiaroscuros, but a speech with many more darks than lights. The intensified rhetoric of negative polarity has predominated in his words.

Intensified negative polarity
It is here that we linguists and analysts of speech draw attention to the words themselves to characterize those who use and interpret them and to better understand the social dynamics that motivate them.

What has Sanchez told us in his speech? That he will remain in government despite the "toxic practices" that populate the public sphere and have ended up directly affecting his life staff.

How did he tell us? By employing the same subject of words, the same discursive tone of intensified negative polarity that he himself has come out to condemn.

Let us not believe that Pedro Sánchez is new or original in this respect. There are many researchers who, in recent years, have been scientifically examining the unstoppable dynamics of discursive polarization in the public sphere. For example, the project PODDS team at the Autonomous University of Madrid and the University of Alcalá. They know well that polarizing rhetoric is generated and fed in a vicious circle. Politicians and social agents accuse others of polarizing and manipulating, using themselves an equally polarizing and distorting rhetoric.

And, bad news, the vicious circle is fed from one side and the other, from all political signs, here and in other countries around us. The European Commission's report Radicalisation Awareness Network, 2023 makes this clear.

The work necessary to stop the mud and unreason becomes everyone's business.

This article was originally published in The Conversation. Read the original.