Of semiotic processes, gender meaning production in politics: From model to political candidate in Mexico (2015)

This paper studies the semiotic processes, gender meaning production in Mexican politics through the case of pre-candidate Giselle Arellano to a seat in the local congress for the state of Zacatecas, Mexico, in 2013. This cultural phenomenon as a semiotic text includes several subtexts: 1) The negative answer of conservative political party, PAN, to grant the candidacy to model Giselle Arellano, on the grounds that she lacked an honest way of living. 2) Photos and video in lingerie of Arellano published in social networks. 3) Arellano’s lawsuit and protest in media regarding this result. 4) The conservative party, PAN, later authorization to Arellano to contend for a seat in the internal process to local congress. The theoretical framework draws from Juri Lotman’s notion of semiosphere and text in regards to the different layers of meaning construction in semiotic processes and also his views on the concepts of explosion, unpredictability, inflection point and predictability (1996, 1999, 2000, 2013). The event also offers the possibility to show the tension between socio-cultural semiotic modelling through discursive interaction, specifically gender (Lamas 2000). From a gender perspective, women in politics are discriminated against and excluded due to former types of jobs that patriarchal culture designates. Thus, this to say that when the potential politician, a woman, does not comply with the traditional social imaginary she is excluded.