Abstract

To scrutinize what the main factors and strategies are that guide the discursive construction in the criminal field within the context of current Costa Rican society, through the qualitative, correlational and exploratory use of a critical toolkit based mainly on ethnomethodology and social constructionism and nourished by the inputs offered by Michel Foucault and different authors, it allows us to establish that the logic of war is exerting a defining influence on the formation of the criminal legal discourse and on the consequent construction of the regime of truth in the national environment; therefore, with the intention of laying some foundations to promote a paradigm shift, this article makes a general examination of aspects such as the notion of permanent war that stands in the collective imagination thanks to the influence of the power centers, the value of legal discursive devices as a tool for social dichotomization and the perpetuation of power, the orbicular relationship between discourse, truth and power for the production of effects in the criminal field, as well as the use of collective fear and discursive intolerance as elements inherent in the primarily warlike notion that is being given to the criminal legal discourse in Costa Rica.

Keywords: Strategy; intolerance; fear; power; penal system.