El discurso alarmista en la televisión en Costa Rica: el discurso sobre la criminalidad en los textos informativos

Abstract

Discourse, Critical discourse analysis, Linguistics, Media, News. - According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the year 2005 among Costa Rican population there was a disproportionate perception of their chances of becoming victims of certain crimes, mainly against life. In addition, the results of a survey of 2, 270 people who claimed to watch news about crime, showed that 78.3% believed that Costa Rica is "poco seguro" (not very safe) or "nada seguro" (not safe at all). This leads to the conclusion that television and the manner in which criminal activity is presented plays a fundamental role in generating the sense of insecurity in the country. These findings led us to conduct a discourse analysis on crime in Costa Rican television news. The aim of our study was to analyze the discourse on crime and see if its composition may favor the generation of fear in viewers. In order to carry out this analysis, we built a theoretical constructivist basis (Neuroscience and Cognitive Science), which was the base for a new definition of the concept of discourse as a knowledge system, which, in turn, determined the method of analysis, a critical discourse analysis. From our constructivist (social) approach, the textual analysis turns out to be a very fine and very complex one. For that reason our corpus is composed of six television news pieces about crime from the most viewed TV channels in Costa Rica (Noticias Repretel and Telenoticias). These television news shows were transcribed in detail, for which we build a transcription system that allowed us to approach the texts as a whole unit. The main categories of analysis are propositions, implications, themes, actors, realce (similar to emphasis) and quotations. Among the most important findings we have that: a) The most widely watched television news in Costa Rica meet the criteria of sensationalism; b) The structure of television news is not characterized by narrative sequencies, because we found an argumentative or explanatory structure; c) The media present themselves as experts and judges, a strategy of self-legitimation; d) The discourse on crime presented in television news has enough features to (potentially) produce fear in society; and e) the discourse on crime can crack the foundations of society, so we can all be potential victimaries.