Discursively studying public policies: The case of the right to gender identity for children and adolescents in Argentina

Abstract

In this article, we reflect on the contributions that critical and interdisciplinary discourse studies can make to the formulation, implementation, and assessment of public policies, based on a case study. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Legal Studies, we analyze two public policy documents that regulate, in opposing ways, the right to gender identity in Argentina: Law 26.743, passed by the National Congress in 2012, and Presidential Decree 62, issued in 2025. The methodology is qualitative and inductive, and analysis was conducted using argumentation theory and the Method of Convergent Linguistic Approaches. The article includes the following sections: 1) introduction, where we address legal aspects of the right to gender identity; 2) theoretical-methodological framework, where we explain the approaches and methods employed; 3) corpus, where we briefly describe the texts analyzed; 4) analytical results, where we present and exemplify the discursive representations that emerge from the analysis; and 5) reflections on the contributions of discourse studies to public policies. On this point, we argue that an important contribution of these studies is their effectiveness in measuring, assessing, and/or adjusting the adequacy between the meanings produced by the linguistic materiality of public policy instruments, the orientations and demands they respond to, and their outcomes. To achieve this, we maintain, it is necessary to deepen the intersectoriality between academia and politics through activism.