Excess, absence and disappointment of significations: An ethical and semantic reflection on a traumatic event in Argentine history

Abstract

The article advances, from the point of view of the philosophy of language and ethics, a critical refl ection on the political phenomenon of Argentine Peronism. It claims that each of the historical periods in this movement is marked by a different kind of discourse and enunciation: in the period of the rise to power, the excess of significations; in the period of exile, the absence of significations; and in the period of decay, a disappointment of signifi cations. The author proposes, in the light of Paul Grice’s theory of conversation, that these linguistic types of discourse have a meta-pragmatic character, since they go beyond the rationalist and moralist framework of this theory and involve affective and rhetoric elements that do not fi t the standard of “deviation from maxims”. The article contends that  Veron’s and Sigal’s analysis of discourse is more appropriate than the pragmatic approach to understand complex ethical and linguistic  phenomena such as Peronism.

Key words: signification, Peronism, ethics, pragmatics, Grice.