Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study focuses on the presentation of political self in electoral media dialogue. The situated event of a presidential election forces the politician to construct an identity of president-to-be and therefore to create a persuasive relationship with the public hoping to have the perlocutionary effect of voting. The notion of commitment is defined from the intersubjective perspective as the accountability of the words and actions towards the co-participant. It manifests itself in the discursive positioning of the speaker in subjectifying expressions of commitment. The data analyzed are from a TV debate held in France in 2007 when two presidential candidates, Ségolène Royal and Nicholas Sarkozy, were elected for the second round. In her talk, Royal constructs a presentation of political self as an expert in social and political matters, whereas Sarkozy focuses mostly on his personal qualities that demonstrate he will be a reliable future president.

Keywords

commitment political self identity political representations electoral discourse intersubjectivity

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Benveniste, E. (1966). Problèmes de linguistique générale I. Paris: Gallimard.

Blanche-Benveniste, C. , & Willems, D. (2007). Un nouveau regard sur les verbes «faibles». Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, Tome CII, Fascicule 1, 217-254.

Bull, P.E. (2003). The microanalysis of political communication: Claptrap and ambiguity. London: Psychology Press.

Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, consciousness and time: The flow and displacement of conscious experience in speaking and writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Culioli, A. (1980). Valeurs aspectuelles et opérations énonciatives: L'aoristique. In J. David & R. Martin (Eds.), La notion d'aspects : Recherches linguistiques V (pp. 182-193). Metz: Université de Metz.

Ducrot, O. (1989). Logique, structure, énonciation: Lectures sur le langage. Paris: Editions de Minuit .

Duranti, A. (2006). Narrating the political self in a campaign for U.S. Congress. Language in Society, 35, 467-497.

Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London: Edward Arnold.

Fetzer, A. (2000). Negotiating validity claims in political interviews . Text, 20, 1-46.

10.

Fetzer, A. (2004). Recontextualizing context: Grammaticality meets appropriateness. Amsterdam: Benjamins .

11.

Fetzer, A. , & Johansson, M. (2007a, July). Political interviews in context: Hybridities across British and French genres. Paper presented at the Conference of IPrA, Göteborg.

12.

Fetzer, A. , & Johansson, M. (2007b). "I'll tell you what the truth is": The interactional organization of confiding. Journal of Language and Politics , 6, 139-162.

13.

Goffman, E. (1990). The presentation of self in everyday life. London: Penguin. (Original work published 1959)

14.

Kerbrat-Orecchioni, C. (1997). Enonciation. Paris: Colin.

15.

Lauerbach, G. , & Fetzer, A. (2007). Introduction. In A. Fetzer & G. Lauerbach (Eds.), Political discourse in the media (pp. 3-28). Amsterdam : Benjamins.

16.

Linell, P. (1997). Approaching dialogue: Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

17.

Moirand, S. (1999). Responsabilité et énonciation dans la presse quotidienne: Questionnements sur les observables et les catégories d'analyse. In Semen, 22, Enonciation et responsabalité dans médias (1999). Available from http://semen.revues.org/ (Online publication in 2007)

18.

Moscovici, S. (1984). Introduction. Le domaine de la psychologie sociale . In S. Moscovici (Ed.), Psychologie sociale (pp. 5-24). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

19.

Moscovici, S. (2000). Social representations: Explorations in social psychology. Cambridge, UK: Polity .

20.

Quéré, L. (1990). L'opinion: l'économie du vraisemblable. Approche à une approche praxéologique de l'opinion publique. Réseaux , 43, 36-58.

21.

Turner, G. (2004). Understanding celebrity. London : Sage.

22.

Vignaux, G. (1988). Le discours, acteur du monde. Enonciation, argumentation et cognition. Paris: Ophrys.

Presentation of the Political Self

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References