Mapping the Political Discourse in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies: A Multi-Faceted Computational Approach

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.21897v1
• Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:46:33 GMT
• Title: Mapping the Political Discourse in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies: A Multi-Faceted Computational Approach
• Abstract summary: We introduce a scalable and generalizable computational framework that combines diachronic stylometric analysis, contextual topic modeling, and semantic clustering of deputies' speeches.<n>We apply this framework to a large-scale case study of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, using a corpus of over 450,000 speeches from 2003 to 2025.<n>Our results show a long-term stylistic shift toward shorter and more direct speeches, a legislative agenda that reorients sharply in response to national crises, and a granular map of discursive alignments.
• Score: 0.18567307896771823
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Analyses of legislative behavior often rely on voting records, overlooking the rich semantic and rhetorical content of political speech. In this paper, we ask three complementary questions about parliamentary discourse: how things are said, what is being said, and who is speaking in discursively similar ways. To answer these questions, we introduce a scalable and generalizable computational framework that combines diachronic stylometric analysis, contextual topic modeling, and semantic clustering of deputies' speeches. We apply this framework to a large-scale case study of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, using a corpus of over 450,000 speeches from 2003 to 2025. Our results show a long-term stylistic shift toward shorter and more direct speeches, a legislative agenda that reorients sharply in response to national crises, and a granular map of discursive alignments in which regional and gender identities often prove more salient than formal party affiliation. More broadly, this work offers a robust methodology for analyzing parliamentary discourse as a multidimensional phenomenon that complements traditional vote-based approaches.

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