Capable or incapable voters? Construing voter identities in the Colombian Peace Agreement Referendum

Transcription

1 Marte Reenskaug Fjørtoft Ph.D. Candidate NHH Norwegian School of Economics Department of Professional and Intercultural Communication Capable or incapable voters? Construing voter identities in the Colombian Peace Agreement Referendum Introduction After decades of conflict, the center-right Santos government in Colombia initiated new peace negotiations with FARC 1 in 2012, which resulted in the 2016 Peace Agreement. The agreement was put to popular vote on October 2 nd, 2016, and its popular rejection was framed as a shock and surprise in several media, 2 sparking the interest of newsreaders, as evident in the high number of online comments in the aftermath of the referendum. The present paper considers this event as an opportunity to look at how participatory processes at the national level, and more specifically, the use of referendums to solve and legitimize contested political issues, are interpreted and framed in online comments. The focus is on people representations of the role of citizens as voters, investigated through an analysis of the construal of voter identities and the storylines in which they are embedded. The paper illustrates, first, how certain ways of construing voter identity has relevance across participatory events, and, second, how different framings of a referendum affect the potential ways voters may be positioned. The paper contends that analysis of people s unsolicited reactions to democratic practices can be a fruitful way to better understand contemporary attitudes towards democracy. Historical and political context Colombia has suffered a 52 year long armed conflict between the state and guerrilla groups, the largest of them being FARC, which also was a negotiating party in the Peace negotiations in Havana, Cuba (November August 2016). Juan Manuel Santos, the current president of Colombia, initiated the peace process after the former government of 1 The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia/ Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia 2 See for example El País: and Clarín: 1

2 Álvaro Uribe failed to defeat FARC military 3. Within Colombia, the decision to negotiate with FARC has been highly contested, and Uribe, currently senator and leader of the party Unión Democrática, has continued to speak against the peace process initiated by Santos. In order to gain support, Santos promised that the people would be able to participate in the decisions through a popular referendum on the Peace Agreement. One week before the vote, the negotiating parties signed the Peace Agreement in Havana. The question posed to the people was «Do you support the Final Agreement for the termination of the conflict and the construction of a stable and long-lasting peace?» ( acuerdodepaz.gov.co, 2016) % of the electorate voted, 50.2 percent voted against the agreement and 49,8 percent voted in favor of it. 5 Theoretical and methodological framework This study investigates peoples negative and positive evaluations of citizens in the role of voters. It is situated in the field of linguistic discourse studies of politics, where questions revolving around citizenship and identity in their many forms are long held topics of interest. Communicative oriented studies of citizenship start from the premise that citizenship is enacted through communication, and as such can be studied through linguistic analysis of interactions (Hausendorf & Bora, 2006). Rhetorical analysis of citizenship focus on how citizens actually deliberate (Kock & Villadsen, 2012 p. 6) across public and personal spheres, and poses questions such as [ ] what form of participation does a particular discursive phenomenon encourage, and by whom? (Kock & Villadsen, 2012 p. 6). The present analysis of citizen to citizen interaction is realized with the help of the positioning triangle, proposed within the framework of Positioning theory (Harré & Langenhove, 1999; Moghaddam & Harré, 2003). The positioning triangle is a meaning making model that evolves around «the narrative structures used to organize or give meaning to an event» (past, present or future) (Slocum- Bradley, 2010, p. 33), that is the storyline, the identities «that can be meaningfully evoked» (Slocum- Bradley, 2010, p. 33) within the storyline and their related rights and duties, and last, the social force of an utterance, that is, what people do with words, or in Austin s terms, the type of speech act 3 Juan Manuel Santos was part of the Uribe government, where he, among others, was minister of defense. 4 Apoya Usted el Acuerdo Final para la terminación del conflicto y la construcción de una paz estable y duradera? 5 A new agreement was negotiated with the participation of the opposition and ratified by congress th of November, The present research is based on people s first reactions to the outcome of the plebiscite, that is, further negotiation progress was unknown. 2

3 that is realized (Slocum- Bradley, 2010 p. 33). These meaning-making devices are mutually dependent, for example, the storyline affects what type of subject positions can be ascribed/adopted, and the subject position influence what type of social force any utterance has. Through these resources, people can be said to make sense of episodes and situate interactants and others in relation or opposition to themselves, their in-group and other evoked social categories. The model below is from Harré & Langenhove (1999, p. 18), where the components that make out a position is made more clear, as argued by Slocum-Bradley (Slocum-Bradley, 2010). Position (Identity + Rights and duties) Speech act/social force The Positioning triangle Storyline To categorize different types of evaluative judgements of people s behavior, I draw on Appraisal theory, in particular the system Affect (Martin & White, 2005). Martin & White distinguishes between inscribed evaluations (e.g. easily confused, stupid) and invoked evaluations (Ah, referendums!) (Ibid, p ). The categories included in the judgement framework are normality (how normal peoples actions are), capacity (how capable people are), tenacity (how dependable people are), veracity (how honest people are) and propriety (how ethical people are)(ibid, 2005, p. 53). The ways we judge other people s behavior range from the positive to the negative, and can be graded along a scale. In the category Capacity, for example, people can be judged as smart (positive) vs stupid (negative), which can be graded, for example as a bit smart and somewhat stupid. These categories are applied to analyze on what ground people s behavior is judged. The text annotating tool the UAM Corpus Tool is used as an aid in the analysis (O Donnell, 2007). Material The data material consists of texts from online newspapers, government webpages, images from the campaign, and interviews with politicians. The corpus that will be used in the linguistic analysis is still under construction, and consists of more than 5000 comments at the present, from Colombian and non-colombian newspapers, published the day and the day after the referendum. The analysis I present here is a pilot study of 1680 comments 3

4 from the Guardian, commented on an article presenting the results of the vote. The comments in the complete corpus, which consist of different newspapers in Spanish and English, do vary in content, and the results of this pilot study is not assumed to represent the complete corpus. Results Discourses about the plebiscite - some general observations The discourses surrounding the Colombian referendum are complex and multifaceted, and the online comments mirror this. In Colombia they consist of multiple competing storylines rooted in different social and political controversies related to experiences with and attitudes towards FARC, questions of political leadership and partisanship, the geopolitical situation in Latin America, political ideologies, in particular right/left dichotomies, religious adherence, and so on. These issues make their way to newspapers outside of Colombia, but here people participating in online debates also frequently draw on events and experiences from their own political environment, making the discursive terrain even more complex. Fascinating as these aspects are, they cannot be accounted for in a full and just way in this short paper. The results I present here represent some of the central storylines about democracy and voters in the material, and the presented findings should be considered as illustrative, not exhaustive. Colombia said no to peace In general terms, the online comments in The Guardian consist of multiple speakers and multiple storylines, some making broad generalizations or exclamative remarks about Colombians, referenda or democracy, while others seek to better understand the event and why people voted as they did. Throughout the discussion, a main topic of contestation is the use of referenda, and who should be able to participate in them. The overarching storyline through which these issued are construed is Colombia said no to peace ( the peace storyline ). This framing can be traced to the Government campaign, centered around the slogan Sí a la paz / Yes to peace. The storyline forces a moral interpretation of the event, where people who agree with the posed question, i.e. yes-voters, are in the moral right and people who disagree are in the wrong. In terms of rights and duties, the storyline imposes the duty not only to secure peace, but to avoid war. The latter is reinforced through Santos statements that there is no plan B, leaving it up to the people to 4

5 secure stability for the country. This storyline is challenged in the material through different storylines. One way is to reframe the result as a vote against the agreement, not against peace. Here, no-voters are repositioned as pro-peace, but not under the proposed conditions. This is done through different storylines, the most common of them that Colombia wanted justice, i.e. the justice storyline. This framing of the vote can be traced to the oppositions campaign, led by Álvaro Uribe, where one essential component was the question of impunity. The justice-storyline, similar to the peace-storyline, imposes a moral frame, where people have the right to seek justice for the victims/and or Colombian society, and the duty to seek that justice. This duty is construed as more important than securing peace at any price. Interestingly, while the peace storyline poses a moral frame for positioning actors, it does not only serve as a frame for judgements of propriety (how ethical someone s behavior is), but it is the most important base for judgements of voter s capacity in reactions to the Novictory. I will now present some of the findings of judgements of capacity in the material. Capable or incapable voters? Within the peace storyline, Colombians are positioned as irrational, uninformed and unfit to vote, evident in the many inscribed and evoked judgments of capacity. Close to 500 negative judgements of Colombian voters capacities are identified in the material, both inscribed (e.g. Stupid, incapable etc.), and evoked judgements (e.g. Waah ban referendums ). Some examples of negative capacity are the following: Positioning of voters within the peace storyline Capacity (-): The decision appears irrational [ ] based on mob sentiment Entirely irrational Beyond rationality Idiots We need IQ testing A whole new level of dumb Easily confused (people) Generally don t understand shit (people) 5

6 Not really involved with the issues (people) Example of stupidity Did they understand the goal of the referendum? Primitive and uneducated Colombians People voted with their heart instead of voting with their brain Waah ban referendums Such negative positioning of voters often occurs in relation to an attribution of power to a chosen part of the population, or to politicians, e.g. Sometimes politicians should make the tough decisions when they know what is right / and Only clever people should be allowed to vote. Through negative evaluation of voters, the use of referenda is either completely rejected, or, some people lose the right to participate in referenda. Furthermore, positioning voters as incapable is frequently done in analogy to Brexit, for example through comparison; [ ] just like what happened with Brexit, people voted with their heart instead of with their brain / The are strong similarities here with an uneducated Brititish population voting to leave the EU, or through metaphors of disease; it [stupidity] has become contagious / It s gone airborne / Brexit contagion. The influence of Brexit on the ways that the Colombian plebiscite is made sense of is substantial throughout the material, and in particular in terms of negative evaluations of voters. However, this way of interpreting the event is also continuously challenged, and so are the negative evaluations of voters. First, this type of identity construal is countered with storylines known from the opposition s campaign. Through the justice storyline, voters are repositioned as taking a rational and reasoned decision, just based on other criteria than the ones imposed by the yes side. Seeking justice is more important, and equally good as seeking peace. Voters are construed as well-informed (+ capacity) about the contents of the agreement, and not easily fooled/manipulated (+ Tenacity). These positions are challenged, typically through negative tenacity, i.e., voters are easily manipulated. The real problem was that people didn't even know [neg capacity] what the agreement said. So they voted according to what the politicians said [neg tenacity] (which was all a lie). For example, the people from FARC that didn't told all the truth were going to be punished and, if they told everything, they had to do a sort of community work. But people didn't know that [neg capacity] because the opposition to the government told them lies about it so Santos wouldn't achieve what the opposition couldn't years before. (Comment, The Guardian) 6

7 In response to the peace storyline, repositioning Colombian voters as capable is also done within a Communist threat storyline (but this appears less frequent). In this storyline voters, referred to as The Colombian people, are smart (+ capacity) and brave (+tenacity). The Colombian people are not the cubasuelan people. Fidel's Bogotazo, like his Caracazo in Caracas, didn't work in Bogotá. The Colombian people are a proud people, and smart. [ ] Uribe is in large part the hero here. God bless him and the brave Colombian people, who refuse to be slaves to the commie dirt. (Comment, The Guardian) More frequently, negative evaluations of Colombian voters are challenged within storylines that value democracy and citizen participation no matter the outcome. This type of repositioning is done in various ways, one of them through sarcasm: «You are sooo right. We should change the electoral laws around the world. Uneducated cannot be trusted to take sophisticated decisions. They should be reserved exclusively to the enlightened upper classes». (Comment, the Guardian) God forbid that the electorate have any involvement in the running of the country, except once every four or five years, tss [ ]. (Comment, the Guardian) In these storylines, voters are not necessarily repositioned as capable, but as having the right to participation regardless of capabilities. As such, the many negative characteristics of citizens (evoked through reference to Colombians/Colombian voters or voters/people in general) function as a catalyst for discussions about democracy and citizen participation, which from a deliberative perspective can be seen as a good thing. On the other hand, the use of explicit negative vocabulary to describe citizens in the role of voters is far more frequent than explicit positive evaluations of voters, which makes them somewhat easier accessible than positive evaluations. The examples that are given in the present analysis demonstrate how the construal of voter identity, that is, to what extent voters are capable and trustworthy, is at the core of many different storylines that are drawn upon to make sense of the Colombian plebiscite. Moreover, they illustrate how negative positioning of others is related to expressions of attitude towards participatory processes. Concluding remarks 7

8 The analysis presented is exploratory, and it is too early in the research process to draw any conclusions. The preliminary findings however, do suggest that there are interesting findings that can be made when applying a linguistic discursive perspective to analyze how people construe other citizens in debates about participatory events. In particular, the relation between the framing in advance of the referendum and how citizens are evaluated as participatory agents can be interesting to pursue. Moreover, it is interesting to see how discourses about previous participatory events influence the interpretation of new events, and to what extent citizens are conceives of as capable when acting as voters in participatory events. If construing voters as e.g. manipulated, incapable, uniformed/unintelligent is accepted to be a hinder to democratic deliberation, and that it may, in the long run, influence people s attitude toward democratic participation, it is important to investigate what type of environment leads to this type of categorization. Therefore, this paper argues that a discourse oriented analysis of the construal of participatory events can be useful to understand current attitudes towards democracy and people as democratic agents. 8

9 References acuerdodepaz.gov.co. (2016). Retrieved March 19, 2017, from Harré, R., & Langenhove, L. van (Eds.). (1999). Positioning Theory. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Hausendorf, H., & Bora, A. (2006). Analysing Citizenship Talk. (H. Hausendorf & A. Bora, Eds.). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kock, C., & Villadsen, L. S. (2012). Rhetorical citizenship and public deliberation. (C. Kock & L. S. Villadsen, Eds.). The Pennsylvania State University Press. Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. R. (2005). Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hampshire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Moghaddam, F. M., & Harré, R. (Eds.). (2003). The Self and Others: Positioning Individuals and Groups in Personal, Political and Cultural Contexts. Westport: Praeger Publishers. O Donnell, M. (2007). UAM Corpus Tool. Slocum- Bradley, N. (2010). Identity Construction in Europe: A Discursive Approach. IES Working Paper, 2. 9