ETHOS SEMI-AGENTIF : INTERVENTION DE SEGOLENE ROYAL SUR LES CENTRALES NUCLEAIRES
SEMI-AGENTIVE ETHOS: INTERVIEW OF SEGOLENE ROYAL ON NUCLEAR PLANTS

Summary/Abstract: A political discourse differs from other types of discourses by the double status of the speaker who represents less him/herself than the community he/she belongs to. This article mainly aims to find out the agentivity and responsibility of the speaker. The analyzed corpus is an interview that took place in the TV news at 8 p.m. of TF1 of 7th March 2016, presented by Gilles Bouleau with Ségolène Royal, the then minister of environment and energy. The debate is about the possible closure of a nuclear plant, in accordance with the commitments of the Socialist Party that was in power. Although it is an interview, the methodology used is not conversational analysis but discourse analysis. The saying and the said of the minister have been analyzed in order to put forward how her discursive ethos is constructed around an ecological problem. Even though she has the legitimacy of speech, of decision and of action, the minister is being rather reluctant in front of a decisive solution. Instead of giving an accurate answer, she chooses for a conditional answer which is highly modal. She delegates her responsibility to others. This is how her discursive ethos appears to be near-agentive or semi-agentive.

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