Rhetorical Motives of the Marcos Family in Select Media Statements

Abstract

The Marcos political comeback in the Philippines is intimately tied with collective forgetting and historical negationism. Due attention has been given to Marcos-related disinformation that features such content and which is often spread online with the use of influencers and social media pages. Yet, the Marcoses themselves are personally involved in defending, justifying, and negating the controversies of the first Marcos regime. A pentadic analysis of 158 statements from the Marcoses among select media content shows that the Marcos “script” tends to spotlight the actions of Marcos Sr. Their dominant pentadic ratio is Purpose-act, and the underlying motives surfaced from this ratio and in their statements include 1) attacking the opposition, 2) humanizing the Marcoses, and 3) negating and distorting history. Having turned to the political actors themselves, the study’s findings provide a more intimate understanding about how politicians and political families can use rhetoric to forward certain agendas. Since political statements, narratives, and stories are essential in giving direction to history, scrutiny of Marcosian rhetoric and the motivations inherent in them provide a view as to how they have framed and how they may continue to frame the legacy of Marcos Sr., especially in the context of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s rise to the presidency. Finally, by analyzing statements about a dictatorial regime, the study’s results contribute to the study of political communication in the Southeast Asian region and the Global South, where the appeal of liberal democracies is waning and, in its place, authoritarian interest is growing.