Abstract

The objective of this research is to analyze the topoi on which both stances for and against the admission of trans students to Chilean educational institutions are based. This study is inscribed, in general terms, in Cognitive Linguistics and addresses, from that point, Wodak's proposal about the discursive strategy of the topoi as a form to justify certain stances towards trans people. The corpus is composed by digital comments posted by readers on Facebook pages of following Chilean media during 2019: Chilevisión, CNN Chile and Cooperativa. The procedure followed these stages: a) pre-analysis, b) coding, c) categorization. The results show a predominance of comments that manifest a negative attitude towards trans and LGBTIQ+ people, through the six topoi, which contribute to the construction and circulation of social representations in our society.