DE L’USAGE ARGUMENTATIF DU PASSÉ
ON THE ARGUMENTATIVE USE OF THE PAST

Summary/Abstract: The evocation of the past is considered, in the rhetorical tradition, an essential strategy, which obliges the speaker to undertake attentive work of discursive construction. Whoever speaks on the public stage is supposed to integrate and revalorize the collective memory, not only by evoking past events, but also by using the symbolic force of the images preserved in the language. The task proves difficult, if we consider that political discourse is addressed to an often indeterminate audience, placed in the most diverse contexts of reception. Furthermore, supporting arguments from the past, whatever their nature (evocations, examples, values, etc.), aims not only to found reasoning, but also to arouse emotions, to engage in polemics, to counter negative representations of a sometimes painful history.Our aim will be to examine more carefully to what extent the discursive imprint of the past is present, through its linguistic traces, in a recent political discourse which serves as our starting point. We will emphasize the functions of some processes through which traces of history are recovered, semiotically reinvested and rendered as an argument.

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