UCLA

Grand corruption occurs when high-level officials take advantage of government positions to benefit themselves or their cronies. Corruption scandals sometimes give us a glimpse into these acts and associations. Yet due to their illicit nature and secretive arrangement by members of political and economic elites, little is known about the everyday procedures that situatedly organize grand corruption in practice. The dissertation applies conversation-analytic methods to investigate the role of language and social interaction in framing and shaping allegedly corrupt acts exposed in Peru’s 2018 “CNM Audios” scandal, a notorious case of grand judicial corruption. Using audios from police wiretapping circulated by investigative journalists as a sui generis source of observational data, the dissertation describes a constellation of speaking practices - a “pragmatics” - whereby alleged conspiracy and influence trafficking are talked about and concertedly organized as favor-doing between friends. By analyzing how allegedly corrupt behavior is situatedly embedded in mundane practices and structures, like gift and favor exchanges across informal networks, the dissertation shows the work of everyday talk in both realizing and obfuscating illegitimate deals and associations.

The dissertation is organized in five chapters. Chapter 1 situates the research project among extant sociological scholarship on corruption obfuscation and everyday morality in social interaction. The chapter also offers an overview of Peru’s “CNM Audios” scandal and a description of the data and methods. Chapter 2 explores the category amigo (“friend”) in describing and referring to persons in associates’ networks, showing the practical operation of the ordinary category to obscure ties and talk in allegedly corrupt undertakings. Chapter 3 describes “doing ‘being close’” as a practice for displaying a relational and affective stance when greeting associates over the phone and explores its work in furnishing a communicative situation that is conducive to making personalized arrangements and requesting favors. Chapter 4 examines a set of phone calls in which associates request help with institutional matters to showcase the delicacy of doing and exchanging allegedly corrupt favors in the scandal. Lastly, chapter 5 offers a summary of findings, discussing the obfuscatory work of the constellation of speaking practices as a “pragmatics” of corruption, and highlights the dissertation’s contributions to corruption scholarship, economic sociology, and conversation analysis.