La construction discursive de la légitimation : le Cahier des doléances et réclamations de Madame B… B… 1789

• Main Author: Jürgen Siess
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: University of Tel-Aviv 2018-10-01
• Series: Argumentation et Analyse du Discours
• Subjects: audience; ethos; feminine gender; legitimation; reason
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/aad/2576

How can a speaking subject legitimize a right to public speech that is not institutionally guaranteed? This is what this paper explores through a case study: the Cahier de doléances (list of grievances) sent to the États généraux (Estates General) by a woman who is not allowed to speak out in the public sphere. My starting point are two legitimation procedures described by T. Van Leeuwen and R. Wodak, authorization and moral evaluation. Their discursive and argumentative modalities and the function they fulfil in the text are the object of an in-depth analysis. In the second part, I examine the author’s ethos construction meant to turn her into the spokesperson of the feminine gender, as well as to prove reasoning capacities that legitimize her intervention in France’s public affairs. Although the author did not win the deputies’ recognition, one can conclude that beyond the 1789 addressee, Madame B… B… turns to a “universal audience” in front of which she intends to justify her undertaking, while enabling herself to resist.