Monografico_6_EN_Doxa_31_The_Digital_Ecosystem

Pragmatic analysis of desescalada

It implies immediate optimism: ascent, climbing with equipment to reach a peak involves circumventing hazards. In contrast, descending from that peak, desescalada, implies a triumph, to wit, the reward for the effort made is the optimism with which one descends, after having managed to surmount the difficulties, and the return to a state of repose after such exertion.

The term displays and denotes an ideological bias that tends to lead the citizenry to believe that lockdown easing has been possible thanks to the use of the equipment necessary to reach the peak (continuing with the Spanish mountaineering metaphor), namely, a lockdown easing that optimises results. To meet a challenge successfully fuels optimism in the face of adversity, above all if one possesses the right equipment (rope, ladders, a compass, etc.) which allow for alleviating fatigue.

It implies improvement, progress, getting over something and freedom. The possibility of climbing a peak always involves a challenge insofar as the environment poses difficulties, while enduring and overcoming them implies the freedom of meeting it.

Its ultimate purpose is to transmit a sensation of control in order to alleviate or counter an unpleasant and precarious situation. Thanks to the fact that the unpleasant situation resulting from the public health crisis has been kept under control with the adoption of health and social measures, it has been possible to descend the ‘mountain’ and return to the situation prior to the crisis, thus helping to interpret reality, the vision of the surrounding world, in a coherent and orderly fashion.

It is disseminated via the digital ecosystem on a massive scale.

Source: own elaboration

According to Table 1, ‘Common characteristics of the vocabulary relating to the COVID-19 disease disseminated on digital platforms’, the word desescalada, stemming from the verb escalar, is an analogous euphemism.

As the noun desescalada and particularly the verb escalar have been employed during the pandemic in a way similar to the use to which they are put in mountaineering, they have taken on the same positive connotations of the analogous reality. Conceptual images of the world are elaborated by speakers in order to understand them. Escalar and desescalar are used as concepts applied to life and allow speakers to recreate reality as a great adventure in which it is essential to minimise risks and to concentrate on surmounting the adverse situation.

Lastly, as is common knowledge, the mass dissemination of positive concepts gives rise to outlooks in speakers which allow them to recreate reality in a more optimistic fashion.

4.3. The concept of desconfinamiento

As in the case of desescalada, since the English translation (lockdown lifting) bears no resemblance to desconfimamiento, the Spanish term will be analysed here. Desconfimamiento stems from the noun confinamiento (confinement, lockdown) which, in turn, derives from the verb confinar (to confine) to which is added the prefix des-.

Although the print version of the Diccionario Enciclopédico Universal (1990) does not include the verb confinar, it does indeed list the noun confinación (seclusion) or confinamiento (confinement), which is defined as follows: