Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

My study examines the discourse around globalization in the official Cuban Communist Party (CCP) newspaper, Granma. What political, economic, and cultural effects are associated with globalization in Cuba by CCP officials and journalists writing in Granma? And are these effects compatible with Cuban socialism which claims to offer an alternative to neoliberal hegemony by promoting economic democracy and the collective good? To answer these questions, I compile a corpus of Granma articles published in 2018 and conduct a computerized content analysis of them. Through word counts, frequency tabulations, and collocations, I examine terms related to globalization in the Cuban press to show whether or not this Cuban discourse constructs a world in opposition to multinational corporate power. My rhetorical investigation will be situated conceptually through the work of Foucault, Fairclough, Van Dijk, and Wodak. I also select one or two representative articles for qualitative examination using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). CDA is a multidisciplinary method of investigation, employing a wide variety of linguistic tools. Using CDA, I show how rhetorical devices such as implied audience, genre, style, and historical/contextual representations may hide power imbalances, erase subjectivities, and perhaps, unwittingly, naturalize corporate hegemony and exploitation.