Political Emotions: Confidence, Hope and Fear in Public Discourses of Peace Process between the Colombian Government and the guerrilla FARC-EP (2012-2016)

Abstract

This paper explores a relationship between emotions and political rhetoric, from an empirical perspective. That’s why 124 discourses and public opinion releases are systematically analyzed, since they were pronounced by Colombian Government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC–EP) in the peace process’ context, developed in Havana, Cuba, from 2012 to 2016. Which finished with the General Agreement for the Termination of the Conflict and the Construction of a Stable and Lasting Peace. The problematic is treated through five parts. In the first one, it is presented a Colombian context of the war and a synthesis of the peace process. The second and third one describe what social and political theory offer for treatment of emotions in politics and methodological tools use for identifying emotions in the discursive corpus. In the fourth part, there is an analysis of confidence, fear and hope as emotions related to certain temporality and with a clear political function. Finally, I make an emphasis in the usefulness and powerfulness of studying emotions in the field of political rhetoric.