COnTEXTES

Revue de sociologie de la littérature

13 | 2013
L'ethos en question

Ethos and Critical Discourse

Analysis: From Power to Solidarity
CLAUDIO RAMÍREZ
https://doi.org/10.4000/contextes.5805

Résumés
English Français
Works within Critical Discourse Analysis tend to concentrate on the analysis of
institutionally reproduced power by dominant groups in society. Furthermore, focusing
on negative or exceptionally serious social or political events results in the transition of
the object of inquiry from the use of power to the abuse of power or at least its socially
negative consequences. Therefore, and despite the explicit aim of siding with non-
dominant groups in society, Critical Discourse Analysis focuses solely on the discourse of
dominant groups, paradoxically leaving the discourse on non-dominant groups
underexposed. Borrowing from French and Argumentative Discourse Analysis, the article
proposes the co-optation of the concept of ethos in order to alleviate this problem.
Specifically, ‘solidarity in discourse’ is presented as a useful approach to ethos within a
Critical Discourse Analysis framework. As an illustration of the concept of ‘solidarity’ in
discourse, the article presents an analysis of two texts from a very different
interdiscursive tradition: a military statement by the Zapatista guerrilla (EZLN) and a
newspaper column by the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.

Les études effectuées dans le cadre de la Critical Discourse Analysis (l’analyse critique du
discours) ont tendance à se concentrer sur l’analyse du pouvoir reproduit
institutionnellement par des groupes dominants de la société. En outre, le fait de mettre
l’accent sur des événements sociaux ou politiques négatifs ou exceptionnellement graves
aboutit à déplacer l’objet d’étude de la question de « l’utilisation » du pouvoir vers celle de
son «  abus  » ou du moins de ses conséquences sociales négatives. Malgré l’objectif
explicite de soutenir des groupes non dominants de la société, la Critical Discourse
Analysis se concentre donc uniquement sur le discours des groupes dominants, laissant
paradoxalement le discours des groupes dominés sous-exposés. S’inspirant de l’analyse de
discours (française) et de l’analyse argumentative de discours, cet article propose la
cooptation de la notion d’ethos afin d’aborder cette question. Plus précisément, la
« solidarité dans le discours » est présentée comme une approche utile de l’ethos dans le
cadre de la Critical Discourse Analysis. Illustrant la mise en place de la notion de
«  solidarité  » dans le discours, l’article présente une analyse de deux textes provenant
d’une tradition interdiscursive très différente  : un communiqué militaire de la guérilla
Zapatiste (EZLN) d’une part et une chronique journalistique du défunt président
vénézuélien Hugo Chávez d’autre part.
 Entrées d'index
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, Ethos, French Discourse Analysis, Argumentative
Analysis, Solidarity in discourse, EZLN, Chávez (Hugo)

Texte intégral

Introduction
1 Since the publication of Norman Fairclough’s Language and Power in 19891,
scholars from diverse backgrounds have gradually gathered around the
framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. Its practitioners share, on a
methodological level, an explicit multidisciplinary focus, mainly bridging the
humanities with the social sciences. The roots of Critical Discourse Analysis can
be found in Rhetoric, Text Linguistics, Anthropology, Philosophy, Socio-
Psychology, Cognitive Science, Literary Studies, Applied Linguistics and
Pragmatics2. Additionally, leading Critical Discourse Analysis academics seem to
specialise in specific types of discourse, particularly advertisement, media and
institutional discourse, including politics. Often scrutinised topics are social-
discursive phenomena such as sexism, racism, globalisation and, on a more
abstract level, ideology. Critical Discourse Analysis should not be considered as a
‘school’ in the academic sense of the word, but rather a programmatic approach
to language.
2 In practice, these common areas of inquiry come down to a strong emphasis on
the concept of power. The overwhelming majority of works within Critical
Discourse Analysis present an analysis of the use of power by dominant groups in
society. The other side of the coin, however, is mostly left underexposed, namely
the discourse of the dominated groups and of groups defying ‘hegemony’. In
other words, the efficiency of the ‘rethor’ in Critical Discourse Analysis seems to
be deduced from his or her institutional position (authority), much in accordance
with Pierre Bourdieu’s theories3. Pragmatists and discourse analysts from the
French speaking world, e.g. Oswald Ducrot, Dominique Maingueneau and Ruth
Amossy4, grant more importance to the discourse itself in the creation of the
image of the orator5, known as ethos. Claiming an Aristotelian pedigree, the
authors put ethos at the centre of the efficacy of discourse. Although the
‘sociological’ as well as the ‘rhetorical’ traditions clearly have a different focus,
there is potential for a more complementary approach. In the same vein, we
propose the co-optation of the concept of ethos in Critical Discourse Analysis in
order to alleviate the aforementioned blind spot towards the discourse of non-
dominating groups.

Power in Critical Discourse Analysis

3 The origins of Critical Discourse Analysis date back to the Thatcher era in Great
Britain, within the context of the dismantling of the Welfare State, the frontal
attack by the state on the power of workers’ trade unions and the growing
colonisation of social life by commercialisation. Under such circumstances, it was
clear that the triumphalist dominant discourse required the attention of the
critical analyst. The following years were characterised by a wave of racism
throughout Europe, institutionally translated in the success of extreme right
parties and the normalisation of part of their discourse, and an overwhelming
prevalence of a globalist discourse6 smothering democratic debate in the mass
 media. Focusing “upon a social wrong, in its semiotic aspect7”, as Fairclough
coined it, seemed to have become a necessity.
4 Within Critical Discourse Analysis there are several research strategies with a
very different theoretical and methodological background. The more prominent
ones are Ruth Wodak’s and Martin Reisigl’s Discourse-Historical Approach,
Gerlinde Mautner’s Corpus-Linguistics Approach, Theo van Leeuwen’s Social
Actors Approach, Segfried Jäger’s and Florentine Maier’s Dispositive Analysis,
Teun van Dijk’s Sociocognitive Approach and Norman Fairclough’s Dialectical-
Relational Approach8. A common trait among them is the attention to the
dialectic relationship between discourse and social structure. This connection is
linguistically explained by calling upon social theories about power and
ideologies, mainly Michel Foucault’s ‘orders of discourse’ and ‘power/knowledge’,
Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ‘hegemony’ and Louis Althusser’s ‘ideological state
apparatuses’. In an explicit attempt to overcome the risk of ‘structuralist
determinism’, Critical Discourse Analysis assumes that discourse is at the same
time socially constructive and a social construct9. Often cited authors to back this
claim are Pierre Bourdieu (Language and Symbolic Power), Jürgen Habermas
(Theory of Communicative Action) and Anthony Giddens (“Theory of
Structuration”).
5 The theoretical canon indeed suggests the existence of a bias towards
institutionally reproduced power as a defining characteristic of Critical Discourse
Analysis, programmatically translated as the “common interest[s] in de-
mystifying ideologies and power10”. As Jan Blommaert correctly observes, “[i]n
general, power, and especially institutionally reproduced power, is central to
CDA [Critical Discourse Analysis]11”. A common trait in Critical Discourse
Analysis  –  which can also be observed in French Discourse Analysis  – is that
often “studies tend to be confined to situations where relationships are based on
formal positions of authority, or where expertise and power gradients are clear,
as with doctors and patients or teachers and pupils12”.
6 A second characteristic – a consequence of the focus on institutional power – of
Critical Discourse Analysis is an overwhelmingly problem-oriented approach.
Although often explicitly refusing to limit the object of study to negative or
exceptionally serious social or political events13, in practice this kind of approach
results in the transition of the object of inquiry from the use of power to the
abuse of power or at least its socially negative consequences. In a work preceding
Critical Discourse Analysis by a few years, Van Dijk delimits much of what later
became its core program:

Instead of focusing on purely academic or theoretical problems, it

starts from prevailing social problems, and thereby chooses the
perspective of those who suffer most, and critically analyses those in
power, those who are responsible, and those who have the means and
the opportunity to solve such problems14 (our emphasis).

7 The bias towards institutionally reproduced power combined with a problem-

oriented approach, unintentionally leads to a problem of ‘voice’. Blommaert
aptly paraphrases Dell Hymes definition of voice “as the ways in which people
manage to make themselves understood or fail to do so15”. Hymes relates voice to
the “freedom to have one’s voice heard, freedom to develop a voice worth
hearing16” and he states that “[c]ertain voices are acceptable, even valued, in
certain roles, but not others17”. Although these approaches explicitly take sides
with non-dominant groups in society, they paradoxically solely focus –  albeit
critically – on the discourse of dominant groups, leaving the discourse of the out
groups out of consideration. Their voice may be present, but it is often limited to
a weak echo, a perspective at best, and is rarely explicitly and manifestly present.
 Ethos and Analyse de discours
8 Ethos is a concept borrowed from classical Greek Rhetoric. Isocrates, followed
later by rethors in ancient Rome, defined ethos as a pre-existing given based on
the moral and institutional authority of the speaker, such as reputation and
social status. For Aristotle, however, ethos was rather conceived as an intra-
discursive image: “trust must be the effect of discourse, not a bias about the
character of the orator18”. Ethos was part of the well-known rhetoric modes of
persuasion along with logos (discourse and reason) and pathos (emotion
activated in the audience).
9 A modern pragmatic-semantic notion of the Aristotelian ethos, as proposed by
Maingueneau, is prevalent in French Discourse Analysis. The extra-textual
character of ethos, in the tradition of Isocrates, is echoed in the notion of
prediscursive ethos (‘prior ethos’), although less relevantly. According to
Maingueneau, “the speaker does not express himself solely by a [social] role or
position, he also lets himself be understood as a voice and a body19”. This concept
of ethos closely ties in with the notion of ‘scene of enunciation’ (scène
d’énonciation): “the utterance occurs in a created space, defined by the genre of
discourse, but also by the constructive dimension of discourse20”.
10 Ruth Amossy’s Argumentation Analysis is closely related with French
Discourse Analysis and it shares many of its notions and theoretical premises. Its
merit, for the aim of this article, is its explicit attempt to reconcile Bourdieu’s
theory of Language and Power with pragmatic views of illocutionary force such
as Ducrot’s and Maingueneau’s21. For this undertaking, Argumentative Analysis
promotes prior ethos to a full-fledged element of the analysis and a potentially
decisive factor in the efficacy of the creation of the self-image of the orator22. The
dynamics between the prior and discursive ethos  –  a dialogue  –  offers an
opportunity to break with a social deterministic view of discourse:

Furthermore – and this point is crucial – It [Argumentation Analysis]

insists on the reworking of the prior ethos and the possibilities that it
offers to the speaker. […] Without this, we would be deprived of
every possibility to interact efficiently, condemned to immobilism
and forced to put a negative answer to the thorny question of
Spivak: can the subaltern speak?23

11 A recent evolution in Amossy’s work makes her approach more compatible

with Critical Discourse Analysis. While explicitly claiming the descriptive nature
of Argumentative Analysis in the past (“Argumentative Analysis does not set out
to denounce ideological biases, nor does it put on trial politically incorrect texts.
It aims at describing, not at judging24”), she is not as categorical in her recent
work. In a recent article Ruth Amossy and Roselyne Koren give an overview,
limited to the French-speaking world, of the research of argumentation in the
analysis of political discourse. Although not providing an answer, the genuine
open question presented to the reader is in itself revealing: “[M]ust political
discourse analysis be purely descriptive or in the contrary also normative; does it
have to stay neutral or must it be guided by ethical principles that lead to
critique, and even some times to denunciation?25”.

Ethos and Critical Discourse Analysis

12 In a book published in 2012 about political discourse, Isabela and Norman
Fairclough formulate an answer, probably without being aware of the
aforementioned question26: “We view evaluation of argumentation as an
appropriate grounding for normative critique and explanatory critique (including
critique of ideology)27”.
13 The authors share Amossy’s and Koren’s starting point, namely the
fundamentally argumentative and deliberative nature of political discourse.
What is more, ethos, within the French Discourse Analysis tradition, can be
effectively applied to analyse institutional power in discourse very similarly to
what Critical Discourse Analysis studies do without the notion of ethos28. This
kind of modus operandi of ethos in Critical Discourse Analysis is useful, but
would not help our aim to broaden the focus of Critical Discourse Analysis to the
discourse of the – at least partially – dominated.
14 In the French tradition of discourse analysis, ethos is clearly a multi-layered
concept. Maingueneau distinguishes prior and discursive ethos, closely tied to a
scene of enunciation with a clear social aspect. Amossy gives attention to the
notion of collective ethos as “a way which the I is extended and amplified to offer
a group image29”. Furthermore, ethos is fundamentally a social/discursive hybrid
notion. It is a “socially evaluated behaviour that can not be understood outside of
a specific communicational situation, itself integrated in a specific socio-
historical conjuncture30”. Mapping the concept to the three dimensions in the
analysis of discourse as often conceived in Critical Discourse Analysis31 opens up
possibilities far beyond a strictly text-linguistic stance.
15

Illustration 1. Ethos and discourse from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective

16 Linguistic features and organisation in concrete instances of discourse are
found in the discourse-as-text dimension: vocabulary, grammar, cohesion and
text structure. In Norman Fairclough’s view, these terms can be understood as
ascending in scale, accordingly “vocabulary deals mainly with individual words,
grammar deals with words combined into clauses and sentences, cohesion deals
with how clauses and sentences are linked together, and text structure deals with
large-scale organizational properties of texts32”. As pointed out before, at this
level ethos as such does not bring many new elements to the linguistic toolbox of
Critical Discourse Analysis. Nevertheless, the reconstruction of the discursive
ethos does bring coherence by grouping the findings at this early stage of
analysis. While some linguistic features will inadvertently be applied by the
orator, some will be very consciously put forward. This bundling of disparate
linguistic features can reveal part of the argumentative strategy of the orator.
17 The second dimension in the analysis is discourse-as-discursive-practice. This is
the dimension where discourse is produced, distributed and consumed in the
social space, including interdiscursivity (the heterogeneous origin of the
constituent elements of a text, including genre) and intertextuality (reworking of
specific texts). As Amossy puts it, “prior ethos, and the discursive ethos that
integrates and reworks it, are related to the authority derived from an exterior
institutional status33”. It is at this stage that much of the dynamic between prior
and discursive ethos happens. The dependence on the institutional authority is
important, but by no means absolute. A speaker from a dominated group, or with
a low social position, will have the task to overcome a less advantageous prior
ethos (by example the lack of institutional power). In order to do this, the orator
 must show his solidarity with the audience to gain credibility, not only at the
time of the utterance, but also by choices and actions external to it.
18 In order to progress to the next stage of discourse as seen in Critical Discourse
Analysis, we need to take a detour through the notion of doxa. As an inheritance
from their Aristotelian roots, doxa is a common concept in French Discourse
Analysis and especially important in Argumentative Analysis. Doxa holds a
similar place in these schools of discourse analysis as ideology or hegemony in
Critical Discourse Analysis34. Chaïm Perelman defines doxa as follows:

[A]ll argumentation depends, for its premises, as indeed for all

unfolding, on what is accepted, on what is recognised as true, as
normal, as believable, as valid: through that it becomes anchored in
what is social, the characterization of which will depend on the
nature of the audience35.

19 Ethos itself is closely tied to doxa. The orator, when creating a self-image, needs
to activate latent stereotypes36 as part of the argumentation and at the same time
adapt his discourse to the expectation of the public in a determined setting. Doxic
elements, including stereotypes, are “the ingredients of a dynamic interaction
that could not develop without pre-existing points of agreement and consensual
views37”.
20 In L’argumentation dans le discours, a seminal work within Argumentation
Analysis, Amossy contrasts her notion of doxa with Barthes’ view on doxa as
mystification38. She writes:

This negative vision on the dominant opinion closely associates it

with the notion of ideology in its double aspect of mystification of
consciousness and instrument of power. No doubt doxa makes it
possible to create a consensus, but only by enclosing the debate
within the limits allowed by the bourgeois system of thought in
order to better establish its domination39.

21 The downside of the concept of doxa, at least in Argumentative Analysis, is the

static character in the social field. Doxa appears to be treated as a deus ex
machina and ideology is removed from the range of discourse, instead of being
placed at the centre of it. Alternatively, doxa, in order to be integrated in Critical
Discourse Analysis, could be seen as a momentary and unstable result of the
struggle for ideological hegemony and, at the same time, the target for discourse.
This (attempted) change in hegemony could then be accessed through the angle
of interdiscursivity and intertextuality: “The way in which discourse is being
represented, re-spoken, or re-written sheds light on the emergence of new orders
of discourse, struggles of normativity, attempts at control, and resistance against
regimes of power40”.
22 Thus, re-evaluating doxa as a state of ideology permits us to integrate ethos, in
its close relation to doxa, in the third dimension of discourse according to Critical
Discourse Analysis: discourse-as-social-practice. This stage accounts for the
ideological effects and hegemonic processes related to discourse. The transfer of
ethos to the public and its transformation into a collective ethos goes beyond
persuasion by constructing a social reality: “it [collective ethos] tries to mobilise
the audience by leading it to adhere to a specific image of the community41”. The
successful creation of a collective ethos over a period of time by the consistent
reworking of the prior ethos reinforces the group identity and a particular
ideology. More specifically, a class or group is considered to be hegemonic when
it presents itself as realising the broader aims of the population42. This
contribution of the collective ethos to a new social reality leads to questions
about legitimacy and the struggle for power.
 Ethos and solidarity
23 ‘Solidarity’, which we define as a “loyal agreement of interests, aims, or
principles among a group43”, has the potential to broaden the object of inquiry of
Critical Discourse Analysis. For the reasons we presented earlier, Critical
Discourse Analysis embraces a problem-oriented approach to discourse analysis.
Notwithstanding, not all discourses that an individual analyst acknowledges as
important or interesting can be considered a “social wrong”. What is more, a
“social wrong” suggests the existence of a “social right”: discourse can be
emancipatory or at least contain emancipatory elements. Recent and not recent
evolutions around the globe entailed many successful discourses, often
marginalised in the past. Some discourses disappeared as fast as they took the
stage, but managed to reach a global audience, while other discourses became
locally mainstream when the movements they originated from gained state
power. Dominated groups, having their voices heard, open a window of
opportunities for social change: those groups successfully resisted, rejected and
transformed dominating discourses. An opportunity-oriented approach within
Critical Discourse Analysis recognises the importance of the discursive processes
of attempts for social change.
24 However, this does not imply a rejection of the importance of (institutionally
reproduced) power in discourse. The reasons for the core position of power in
discourse are still valid: all discourses are not created equal  –  or equally. The
mere existence of dominated groups underlines the relevance of power within a
framework of analysis: it is still the task of the analyst to identify pre-discursive
and discursive marks of authority that play a part in the creation, distribution
and consumption of texts and their social consequences. Furthermore, in the
social world, discourses have varied constituents, with complex sources of
authority and mixed relations to it. Hegemony is volatile, and discourse,
following Foucault, “is not simply that which translates the struggles and the
systems of domination, but for what, and through what one struggles, the power
which one seeks to capture44”. The inclusion of the adjective ‘loyal’ in the
definition of solidarity hints at the problematic relation with views on discourse
analysis as being purely descriptive. The tentative opening of Amossy and Koren
for widening (political) discourse analysis beyond a purely descriptive stance, is
much in line with the prevalent practice of Critical Discourse Analysis.
Evaluating the ‘loyal’ component of solidarity requires a level of interpretation in
the analysis. Furthermore, as Fairclough points out, “[d]escription is not as
separate from interpretation as it is often assumed to be. As an analyst (and as an
ordinary text interpreter) one is inevitably interpreting all the time, and there is
no phase of analysis which is pure description45”. As such, solidarity in discourse
involves more than the simple adaptation of a successful rethor to the doxa of his
public.

Illustration
25 In order to illustrate our view on ‘solidarity’ in discourse, we selected two
examples that also reflect the heterogeneous character of power in discourse.
The first example is an extract from a statement by the Mexican EZLN46 (National
Liberation Zapatista Army). On January 1st, 1994, the day that the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect, the Zapatistas (as the
EZLN is known worldwide) declared war on the Mexican government. NAFTA
resulted in the rapid acceleration of neoliberal economic policies that up to that
point had impoverished the popular classes in Mexico and in the rest of the Latin
America. Although deployed by an armed guerrilla movement, most actions of
the Zapatistas were defensive and/or non-violent. Their rather fuzzy discourse
and image entered popular culture far beyond the Mexican borders. The
 Zapatista discourse was rapidly embraced by a young anti-globalisation
movement, mainly in Western Europe and the United States. The excerpt from
the Zapatista communiqué is presented below:

Brothers: From the beginning of the year our being armed and
faceless has chosen the voice of a Mexican so through it our word is
spoken. Being the skin of this man fair and his walk from before
these lands, he became part of us. It is his indigenous heart as any of
our dead and he has a dark [morena] soul like the bowels of this soil.
He is no more what he was before. He is no longer him but us. He
doesn’t exist. He has no name anchored in the past. No face in
History. He does not have, by vocation, his steps for tomorrow. In us
he is him. We are all us and also him. His eyes are ours, our mouth
speaks on his lips, and in his steps are our steps. He does not exist,
we exist. He does not live, we live. He does not speak, we speak. So
our word wanted to reach you. So does our heart receive his
thinking from you.

Brothers: Today, 502 years after the power invaded our soil, the
powerful wants to corner us in our indian [indigenous] pain, that he
becomes deaf to the cry of the brother that, different in colour,
language and culture, is the same in the sad walk under the rule of
arrogance. We know that our being beneath everything is not
because of a skin colour or the curse of a language that is not ours.
There are those who have fair skin and dark pain. With these skins
walks our struggle. And there are some that have brown skin and
white arrogance; also against them is our fire47.

26 The second example is a fragment from a newspaper column series “Las líneas
de Chávez” (The [written] lines of Chávez) by the late left-wing Venezuelan
president. In 1989 the Venezuelan government sent in the Army to dissolve
growing popular protests against the price rises of oil-based products (including
transportation and cooking fuel) and other drastic neoliberal policies. Hundreds
of protesters were killed in the streets of Caracas (thousands according to Human
Rights groups) then dumped in mass graves. This sad episode not only
discredited the political system but was also of crucial importance for later
events submerging the Army in a deep ideological crisis (Venezuela did not
experience the far-right military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s as most of
the continent did). The massacre, known as the Caracazo, was the main
justification given by Chávez for his leading role in the 1992 military
insurrection. After two years of incarceration for the failed coup, Chávez was
pardoned. Running on a platform campaigning against the neoliberal socio-
economic policies and for a new more democratic constitution to end the
exclusive two-party parliamentary system48, he was elected president in 1998
with an absolute majority of the votes. The analysed fragment is included below:

Ever since the days when I was an altar boy in the humble church of
Sabaneta, when the tempestuous decade of the 60s of last century
started, my spirit was conquered by the whipping and flaming word
of Jesus, Christ the Redeemer of the oppressed peoples. I’ve found
since then the Sermon of the Mountain and its promise of justice for
the poor of the earth very exciting.

Mama Rosa used to tell us about “two thousand and beyond”, as a

future era in which, humanity either definitively follows the way as
pointed out by Jesus to live among equals and as brothers, or on the
contrary “the world would end.
 How far was Rosa Inés Chávez from ever reading the speeches and
the thesis of that other Rosa, the one that Clara Zetkin called “the
living sword of the revolution”, Rosa Luxemburg. But on its own
time, how close was my Old Mama to the thought of that great
revolutionary woman, masterfully condensed in her legendary
phrase: Socialism or barbarism49!! [sic].

27 Because of space limitations, we will not transpose to this paper the complete
analysis according a methodology within a Critical Discourse Analysis
framework50. Also, in order to be concise we will focus on the levels of discourse-
as-discursive-practice and discourse-as-social-practice.
28 In the Zapatista text – the first one we presented –, we can witness a delicate
construction of multiple and indexed ethè. Although nowhere explicitly named,
one ethos applies to Subcomandante Marcos, the well-known and eloquent non-
Amerindian spokesperson of the Zapatistas. His ethos is absorbed in a timeless
collective ethos of the indigenous populations of Mexico. “We” is not the EZLN
but the pre-Columbian people of Mexico and it is inclusive enough to encompass
even the potential sympathetic “fair skinned” reader. Chávez, in his writing,
reinforces the ethos of a “man of the people” reminding the reader of his humble
rural origins (in Sabaneta) and of the Christian background of his youth. In
parallel, there is a subtle reinforcing of his ethos as an outspoken sympathiser of
women’s rights and feminism in a cultural context of widespread sexism: the
wisdom is not his; he recollected it from his grandmother, the Marxist theorist,
activist and feminist Clara Zetkin and the revolutionary icon Rosa Luxemburg.
29 Despite the texts’ rather poetic language, both are ‘down to earth’. The
vocabulary and the themes ring close to home to their direct public.
Furthermore, both texts break radically with the conventions of genre. The texts
are far from the expectations for, respectively, a military statement and a text
from the head of state. As we have pointed out before, ethos is closely tied to
doxa. The description of traditional indigenous people and their thinking in the
Zapatista text are doxic. A common view on Amerindians is the one portraying
them as powerless and resigned victims, impoverished, with strong ties to the
land and a longing for a lost past. While never explicitly contradicting the doxa,
the text implicitly turns the tables, nota bene on the day of the 502th anniversary
of the conquest of America. The statement is not signed by the Mexican mestizo
Marcos, often wrongly portrayed as the highest Zapatista authority, but by the
CCRI-CG51 (Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command).
The military structure of the EZLN is subordinated to the CCRI-CG, which in turn
has the function of being the relay to the indigenous people and is as such
subordinated to the indigenous community assemblies. Notably, it is an
indigenous voice that absorbs the mestizo and accepts the reader as a brother in
their midst, skin colour and language notwithstanding. Marcos himself, known
for wearing a mask when speaking to the media, is presented as nameless and
faceless. To become indigenous means leaving a non-indigenous past behind and
completely blend with the collective, joining the faceless and powerless. The text
reflects a sad irony, despite the dramatic social conditions in rural Mexico,
through a game of mirroring and opposing formulas presented in the text52.
Furthermore, the use of personal pronouns (he-his-we-us) is applied incoherently
enough to cause confusion, probably on purpose. Also, a ‘grand narrative’, as one
would expect from a left-wing guerrilla movement, is not manifestly present.
These traits could be seen as conscious interdiscursive references to post-
modernism53.
30 In the excerpt from Chávez the power relations are understandably different.
The discourse of the political and social movements around Chávez experienced
the transition from being marginal and/or oppressed and completely excluded
from the political system, to the discourse of the state. While legitimised by
consecutive democratic elections resulting in an absolute majority, the discourse
of the Chávez government clashed with the discourse of conservative generals,
 industrials, trade union leaders54, high clergymen and most of the Venezuelan
private media that controls most of the television broadcasting stations55.
Abroad, Chávez’s antagonistic rhetoric became a recurring target for
conservative media. This was often the case for discourse concerning the
rejection of neoliberal policies of international institutions like the International
Monetary Fund or the consistent effort for the economic and political unification
of Latin America independently from the United States56. The conquest of state
power reflects the success of Chávez’s discourse, although until today it is often
defensive: its detractors and their discourse (through the private mass media)
are still very influential and often dominant. In a country with an extreme
conservative ecclesiastic hierarchy, doxic elements regarding religion often have
conservative contents. In this example, Chávez’s ethos as a Christian is activated
to emphasize the progressive and liberating aspects within the Catholic tradition.
In a light, but serious style, the president links popular wisdom (“Mama Rosa”,
his grandmother), with the progressive catholic Liberation Theology and Rosa
Luxemburg’s revolutionary socialism exclusively through the words of women.
Similarly to the Zapatista text, doxic elements are not directly contradicted, but
transformed. Interdiscursively, we hear the call of “liberté [as in “Redeemer of
the oppressed peoples”], égalité et fraternité” of the radical Enlightenment
philosophers57, which laid the basis for the modern view on democracy and
Human Rights58.

Conclusion
31 We introduced the notion of ‘solidarity’ in discourse in order to alleviate a
paradox in Critical Discourse Analysis where its practitioners explicitly take up
the defence of dominated groups in society while at the same time ignoring their
discourses. To accomplish this, we argue for a bridge between the paradigms of
Critical Discourse Analysis on the one hand and the one of French Discourse
Analysis and Argumentative Analysis on the other.
32 From French Discourse Analysis and Argumentative Analysis we co-opt the
notion of ethos, and by extension the notion of doxa. Ethos allows us to identify
solidarity in discourse and its interaction with doxa permits us to explore
intended changes in hegemony. At the same time, we acknowledge the
importance of power as a core element in the analysis. The shift from ‘power’ to
‘solidarity’ is not about simply changing focus, but rather adding new ones to the
analysis. The examples we presented show the flexibility of the notion of
‘solidarity’ even when studying very different social contexts and discourses
inscribed in different interdiscursive traditions. Although our examples are only
excerpts of isolated texts, they not only hint at the reworking of ethos, but also at
the reworking of doxic elements.
33 A bridge allows for communication in two directions. The re-evaluation of
doxa as a dynamic entity lets Critical Discourse analysis integrate ethos on all
three levels of discourse, including the higher level of discourse-as-social-practice
that accounts for ideological effects and hegemonic processes related to
discourse. We are convinced that work within Argumentative Analysis assessing
the departure from a purely descriptive stance reveals a common critical and
ethical concern with Critical Discourse Analysis. It is also our conviction that re-
evaluating doxa in Argumentative Analysis may prove to be a fruitful exercise.

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Notes
1 Fairclough (Norman), Language and Power, Harlow, Pearson Education, “Social Life
Series”, 2nd ed., 2001 (1989).
2 Wodak (Ruth), “What CDA is about - a summary of its history, important concepts and its
developments”, in Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, Wodak (Ruth) & Meyer
(Michael), eds., London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi, Sage Publications, “Introducing
Qualitative Methods”, 2001, p. 1.
3 Bourdieu (Pierre), Language and Symbolic Power, translated by G. Raymond and M.
Adamson, edited and introduced by John B. Thompson, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991.
4 Ducrot (Oswald), Le dire et le dit, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1984; Maingueneau
(Dominique), “L’ethos”, in Id., Le discours littéraire. Paratopie et scène d’énonciation, Paris,
Armand Colin, 2004, pp. 203-221; Amossy (Ruth), La présentation de soi. Ethos et identité
verbale, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, “L’interrogation philosophique”, 2010.
5 This focus should not be understood as a rejection of the importance of the institutional
position as such. For example, works of Maingueneau reformulate some elements of
Bourdieu’s theory of field, e.g. “Elle [la sociologie du champ] a beau faire, elle ne peut sortir
de l’opposition entre structure et contenu […] Une telle sociologie ne vise pas à articuler les
structurations des « contenus », l’énonciation et l’activité de positionnement dans un champ,
alors que c’est pourtant là le moteur de l’activité créatrice”, Maingueneau (Dominique), Le
Discours littéraire. Paratopie et scène d’énonciation, op. cit., p.  38. For a more elaborated
discussion, see Meizoz (Jérôme), “Introduction”, COnTEXTES, n°1, 2006, accessed 9 March
2013, URL: http://contextes.revues.org/83.
6 Globalist discourse is a discourse on globalisation promoting a neoliberal variant. See
Steger (Manfred B.), Globalisms. The Great Ideological Struggle of the Twenty-First Century,
Landham and Plymouth, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, “Globalization”, 3rd ed., 2009
(2004).
7 Fairclough (Norman), op. cit. (supra note 1), p. 167.
8 For an up to date overview see: Wodak (Ruth) & Meyer (Michael), “Critical Discourse
Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory and Methodology”, in Id., eds. Methods of Critical
Discourse Analysis, op. cit., pp. 1-33.
9 Blommaert (Jan), Discourse. A Critical Introduction, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, “Key Topics in Sociolinguistics”, 2005, p. 27.
10 Wodak (Ruth) & Meyer (Michael), art. cit. (supra note 8), p. 3.
11 Blommaert (Jan), op. cit., p. 24.
12 Oswick (Cliff) & Richards (David), “Talk in Organizations: Local Conversations, Wider
Perspectives”, Culture and Organization, 10 (2), 2004, pp. 107–123, cited in Wodak (Ruth),
The Discourse of Politics in Action. Politics as Usual, Houndsmill and New York, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011 (2009), pp. 54.
13 Wodak (Ruth) & Meyer (Michael), art. cit. (supra note 8), p. 2.
14 Wodak (Ruth), op. cit. (supra note 2), p. 1.
15 Blommaert (Jan), op. cit., p. 68.
16 Hymes (Dell), Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality. Toward an Understanding
of Voice, London and Bristol, Taylor & Francis, “Critical Perspectives on Literacy and
Education”, 1996, p. 65.
17 Ibid., p. 70.
18 Aristotle, Rhétorique, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1967, cited in Maingueneau (Dominique),
op. cit. (supra note 4), p. 204 (the translation is ours).
19 Charaudeau (Patrick) & Maingueneau (Dominique), Dictionnaire d’analyse du discours,
Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2002, p. 239 (the translation is ours).
20 Ibid., p. 515 (the translation is ours).
21 Amossy (Ruth), “Ethos at the Crossroads of Disciplines: Rhetoric, Pragmatics,
Sociology”, Poetics Today, no 22, Spring 2001, p. 1.
22 Maingueneau answers Amossy’s critique about his “réticence par rapport à la notion
d’ethos [pré-discursif (prior ethos)]”: “Je voulais seulement dire quelque chose qui me paraît
de bons sens: pour exploiter efficacement la relation ethos pré-discursif/ethos discursif on
doit prendre en compte le genre de discours concerné” Maingueneau (Dominique), Dhondt
(Reindert) & Martens (David), “Un réseau de concepts. Entretien avec Dominique
Maingueneau au sujet de l’analyse du discours littéraire”, Interférences littéraires/Literaire
interferenties, n° 8, 2012, p. 218, URL : http://www.interferenceslitteraires.be/node/162.
23 Amossy (Ruth), op. cit. (supra note 4), p. 72 (original emphasis, the translation is ours).
24 Amossy (Ruth), “How to Do Things with Doxa: Toward an Analysis of Argumentation in
Discourse”, Poetics Today, n° 23, Fall 2002, p. 466.
25 Amossy (Ruth) & Koren (Roselyne), “Argumentation et discours politique”, Mots. Les
langages du politique, no 94, November 2010, p. 18 (the translation is ours).
26 The authors do not cite recent work of discourse analysis in the French speaking world.
27 Fairclough (Isabela) & Fairclough (Norman), Political Discourse Analysis. A method for
Advanced Students, London and New York, Routledge, 2012, p. 242 (original emphasis).
28 For example, Charaudeau investigates populism using the concept of ethos, see
Charaudeau (Patrick), “Réflexions pour l’analyse du discours populiste”, Mots. Les
langages du politique, no 97, November 2011, pp. 101-116.
29 Amossy (Ruth), op. cit. (supra note 4), p. 159.
30 Maingueneau (Dominique), op. cit. (supra note 4), p. 205 (the translation is ours).
31 Fairclough (Norman), Discourse and Social Change, Cambridge and Malden, Polity,
1992, pp. 62-100.
32 Ibid., p. 75.
33 Amossy (Ruth), op. cit. (supra note 21), p. 8.
34 “On constate déjà qu’une bonne part de ce que recouvre traditionnellement la notion
d’idéologie se retrouve distribué aujourd’hui sur d’autres notions plus ou moins
concurrentes : ‘doxa’, ‘sens commun’, par exemple”, Maingueneau (Dominique),
“L’idéologie: une notion bien embarrassante”, COnTEXTES, n°2, 2007, accessed 9 March
2013, URL : http://contextes.revues.org/189.
35 Perelman (Chaïm), Rhétoriques, Brussels, Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1989,
p.  362 cited in Amossy (Ruth), op. cit. (supra note 21), p.  5 (translated by Amossy, our
emphasis).
36 Stereotypes are not limited to a negative and deformed representation of ‘the other’,
e.g. racist or sexist stereotypes. Stereotypes can also be necessary pre-existing cultural
schemes and ready-made images to facilitate the interpretation of reality, a cultural short-
cut in order to filter an infinite stream of observations and changing settings.
37 Amossy (Ruth), op. cit. (supra note 24), p. 467.
38 “La Doxa […], c’est l’Opinion publique, l’Esprit majoritaire, le Consensus petit-burgeois, la
Voix du Naturel, la Violence du Préjugé”, Barthes (Roland), Roland Barthes par Roland
Barthes, Paris, Seuil, 1975, p. 51, cited in Amossy (Ruth), L’argumentation dans le discours,
Paris, Armand Colin, 2nd ed., 2009 (2006), p. 101.
39 Amossy (Ruth), Ibid. (the translation is ours).
40 Blommaert (Jan), op. cit., p. 30 (our emphasis).
41 Amossy (Ruth) & Koren (Roselyne), op .cit., pp. 93, 158 (the translation is ours).
42 Laclau (Ernesto), “Why Do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?”, in Laclau (Ernesto),
Emancipation(s), London and New York, Verso, 2007 (1996), p. 43.
43 There are probably as many wordings of definitions as there are dictionaries. We were
inspired by the definition from the Longman dictionary because it corresponds with our
view on how solidarity is articulated in discourse. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English, 2nd ed., Harlow, Longman, 1992 (1987), p. 1003.
44 Foucault (Michel), L’Ordre du discours, Paris, Gallimard, 1970, p. 110 (the translation is
ours).
45 Fairclough (Norman), op. cit. (supra note 31), p.  199. For further discussion about the
descriptive, interpretative and/or explanatory character of discourse analysis, we refer to
Fairclough (Norman), “Critical discourse analysis in practice: interpretation, explanation,
and the position of the analyst”, in Fairclough (Norman), op. cit. (supra note 1), pp.  117-
139; the section “2.5 Pros and Cons of CDA” in Blommaert (Jan), op. cit., pp. 31-38; and the
section “The Interpretative Process: Understanding and Explanation” in Chouliaraki (Lilie)
& Fairclough (Norman), Discourse in Late Modernity. Rethinking Critical Discourse
Analysis, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1999, «  Critical Discourse Analysis  »,
pp. 67-69.
46 Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.
47 EZLN, Comunicado del 12 octubre de 1994, accessed 15 March 2013, URL:
http://palabra.ezln.org.mx/comunicados/1994/1994_10_12_b.htm (the translation is ours).
48 After the fall of the last military dictatorship in Venezuela in 1958, the social- and
Christian-democrats (and a minor party that later exited the pact) agreed on the Punto
Fijo Pact to share power by in practice excluding other parties.
49 Chávez Frías (Hugo), “Una cita con el futuro. 12 de febrero de 2009”, in Ministerio del
Poder Popular para la Comunicación y la Información, Las líneas de Chávez. Tomo I.
Números 1 a 56. Enero 2009  -  Enero 2010, Caracas, Publicaciones MCI, 2010, p.  52 (the
translation is ours).
50 As an example of the application of CDA to political discourse, we refer to Fairclough
(Norman), New Labour, New Laguage?, London and New York, Routledge, 2000.
51 Comité Clandestino Revolucionario Indígena-Comandancia General.
52 It could be a coincidence, but even the name of the high Zapatista institution, the
Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command, has an ironic ring to
it combining the most uncommon “Clandestine” with the more classic and pompous
“Committee” and “General Command”.
53 For a discussion of post-modernism in the Zapatista discourse we refer to Vanden
Berghe (Kristine), “Intertextualidad y parodia en Don Durito de la Lacandona”, in Id.,
Narrativa de la rebelión Zapatista. Los relatos del Subcomandante Marcos, Madrid y
Frankfurt am Main, Iberoamericana y Vervuert, 2005, « Nexos y diferencias », pp. 161-193.
See also Vanden Berghe (Kristine), “Idéologie et critique dans les récits zapatistas du Sous-
commandant Marcos”, COnTEXTES, n°2, 2007, URL: http://contextes.revues.org/208.  
54 We refer specifically to the CTV union, the dominant union during the pre-Chávez
years and an crucial element of the two-party state system. Chávez’s supporters created
the UNT union to counter its influence.
55 In fact, several highly placed representatives of this informal coalition of opponents
officially supported the far-right military coup against Chávez in 2002 by signing the “Act
of Constitution of the Government of Democratic Transition and National Unity” and thus
legitimising the new de facto government. Growing massive popular protests in the streets
of Caracas and the decision of the majority of the Armed Forces to respect the
Constitution, restored Chávez to his function after two days.
56 In our research we discovered that this is also the case for some media auto-
categorised as progressive, see Ramírez (Claudio), América Latina en la prensa de calidad
flamenca: el caso venezolano (1998-2006), unpublished Master’s thesis, KU Leuven, 2007.
57 A common trait in many of Chávez’s texts is an ethos based on the values of the
Enlightenment, see: Ramírez (Claudio), “Entre el ethos y la doxa: la literatura en los textos
ensayísticos de Hugo Chávez”, in Castilleja (Diana), Eugenia Houvenaghel & Dagmar
Vandebosch, eds., El ensayo hispánico: cruces de géneros, síntesis de formas, Genève, Droz,
2012, « Romanica Gandensia », pp. 119-129.
58 While out of the scope of the example, the discourse of Chávez very often makes
reference to the Independence revolutionary Francisco de Miranda, a radical
Enlightenment thinker. About radical Enlightenment and democracy we refer to Israel
(Jonathan I.), Democratic Enlightenment. Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights. 1750–
1790, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 7-8.

Illustration 1. Ethos and discourse from a Critical Discourse Analysis

perspective
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Claudio Ramírez, « Ethos and Critical Discourse Analysis: From Power to Solidarity », COnTEXTES
[En ligne], 13 | 2013, mis en ligne le 20 décembre 2013, consulté le 28 février 2021. URL :
http://journals.openedition.org/contextes/5805 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/contextes.5805

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Claudio Ramírez
KU Leuven

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