Discourse is an area of study where social and linguistics theories get in contact as an interdisciplinary area par excellence. As van Dijk says Critical Discourse Studies are a precious way to study power as the central definition in Politics: the capacity to determinate someone behavior and the author emphasizes how it can be maid by the minds control of someone and how discourse is a powerful way to do so and claims that research results should be used to discuss social processes. The paper will explore this path using as examples conceptions of democracy in two political discourses in Brazil: one the new liberal taking emphasis in Collor de Mello and the democratic-participative present in some councils showing the roots of both conceptions and how they try to begin hegemonic. For the new liberal discourse it is clear that democracy came as one topic on a larger process where “modernity” and new patterns of State (against developmental ), relationship between State and Society, economy and development were the targets, being those the roots of this kind of discourse. For the democratic-participative project democracy seems to be the way where a new conception of society is the target with clear implications in participation and development. Which ones are the roots of both discourses? To understand this is to clear the way to understand hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discourses and political process.
