« Mes chers compatriotes » : stratégies discursives de l’interpellation des électeurs dans les professions de foi

• Main Author: Françoise Rigat
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cercle linguistique du Centre et de l'Ouest - CerLICO 2014-04-01
• Series: Corela
• Subjects: address forms; ethos; ideology; political speech; relationships
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/corela/783

This article deals with the address forms found in the manifestos issued by the candidates participating in the recent national and local elections in France. These forms are believed to be trivial and all-purpose; far from being so, they actually reveal the candidate’s ethos, his or her way of imagining the electors and of instituting a relationship with them. In particular, in many addresses which feature various forms, this relationship appears to be really complex. Tensions are indeed often found between on one hand the varied qualities which the candidate has to demonstrate in order to gain support, and on the other hand the constraints related to this kind of texts. This analysis allows us to study how the candidates’ political views, the type of election and the type of ballot, weigh on the selection of an address form and eventually how the act of addressing the electors fits to the way in which the manifesto is laid out.