“Get busy living or get busy dying”: os signos do discurso de ascensão social em Suits

Abstract

This study analyzes the discourse of social ascent within the neoliberal order by tracking discursive sequences extracted from the series Suits, drawing on French Discourse Analysis (Pêcheux, 2014). The research focuses on the mythification (Barthes, 2010) of market-society signs through pivotal-terms. Bibliography based on Mises, Foucault, and Friedman proved essential for understanding the capitalist ideal. Expressions referring to luxury consumer goods, such as Macallan, and constructions that reinforce agreements among equals (e.g., to owe you, to give you my word) were organized into tables. In extracting discursive sequences from the scripts, the AntConc software was used as a tool, enabling the syntagmatization of subjectivating mythifications inscribed in utterances such as “if you want it, you can achieve it” or “to be a successful person,” whose recurrence accompanies Mike Ross’s narrative trajectory. Supported by Corpus Linguistics, the study aimed to identify how practices reproduced in the television program reinstantiate myths through jargon that shapes the discourse of social ascent in the neoliberal context. The results show that the neoliberal ideologies in the series construct a subject position grounded in the “entrepreneurialization of the self,” whose indispensable meanings are (self)confidence and performativity. This position further consolidates itself in the signification of friendship structured around the rationality of exchange. Through this articulation between individual and enterprise, a sense of family emerges.