Two institutional interviews: José María Aznar and Jacques Chirac on the Iraq conflict

Abstract

This article is an analysis of two institutional interviews which were shown on 10 March 2003 on the Spanish TELE5 and on the French channel France2. The interviewees were two political leaders, José María Aznar, Prime Minister of the Spanish Government in Spain, and Jacques Chirac, President of France. This was a few days prior to the date that the Coalition Forces attacked Iraq. We study how the function of inquiry and control is done in these interviews by the television media in each country and the verbal behaviour of both statesmen answering the questions. We also study each governor’s discourse of justification. The interviews present a clear parallelism, but the study reveals important differences regarding the rhythm of the exchange and the interlocutive behaviour of the participants. Furthermore, the justifications of the two governors are clearly opposite, as far as their discursive strategies and their conception of politics are concerned.