TY - BOOK AU - Vitale,María Alejandra TI - Ethos in the "Conversationalization" of Public Discourse. The Inaugural Speeches of the Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner PY - 2014///. N1 - 25 N2 - This article revisits Norman Fairclough’s (1992, 1995 a) use of the concept of ethos in the context of Critical Discourse Analysis??”a concept he explicitly borrows from Dominique Maingueneau (1987). It also examines Fairclough’s (2003) reflections on social identity and personality. These are closely linked to same topic even though this later work does not use the term ethos. The article then analyzes the inaugural speeches of Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in 2007 and 2011. It shows that the “conversationalisation” of public discourse resulting from the “informalization of identities” (Fairclough 1992, 1995 a, 1995 b, 2003) is linked to the president’s construction of a militant ethos (Vitale 2013). This can be seen in the way Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner violates the conventions of the inaugural address genre (Chumaceiro 2006, Chumaceiro and Alvarez 2007, Campbell and Jamieson 2008). These conventions include formal language and adherence to protocol, and the construction of the audience as a national community by avoiding controversy and affirming those values that unite the country. In contrast, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner builds a militant ethos both verbally and non-verbally through the facial gesture of smiling, which increases the impression of informality as well as the controversial nature of her utterances UR - https://shs.cairn.info/journal-langage-et-societe-2014-3-page-49?lang=en&redirect-ssocas=7080 ER -