Working Politics: Juan Domingo Perón's Creation of Positive Social Identity

Charismatic leaders create social change through their discourse. Juan Domingo Perón, Argentina's president from 1946 to 1955, was a skilled communicator who extended a positive social identity to thousands of workers. This comparative study examines Perón's political discourse through metaphor theory, focusing specifically on Lakoff and Johnson's claim in Metaphors We Live By that "Much of cultural change arises from the introduction of new metaphorical concepts" (145). Also included are a socio-political background, a literature review, and a detailed description of Perón's one highly significant new metaphor, "politics is work."