SECOND PART :
RESOURCES
OF THE SEDUCTION : THE ETHOS
INTRODUCTION :
The universe of the seduction is more complex. Often it
sometimes happens to us to find without somebody alluring to be able to
include/understand it why of this attraction exerted on us. In the same way,
the mannequin which receives hurrahs, the actor or the singer whose service
causes fright and amazements always does not seize what, in its step or
service, charmed its audience. It is to say that the seduction, as an action on
others, is a whole. A composite whole, mixes erudite, whose balanced
interlacing of various components can, only, to allow the realization.
For Aristote, any speech is organized around a triptych
consisted the ethos, the logos and the pathos. And the seduction, which takes
part of the will of the speaker to conquer his audience, would concern a
psychological rhetoric. That which rests on the ethos and the pathos.
Without to evacuate the force of the rational argumentation,
returning to the logos, even less the emotional load conveyed by the pathos, we
will analyze mainly the tempting aimings of the Prime Minister Idrissa Seck,
through the concept of ethos. The ethos, according to Barthes, is consisted
(...) the features of character which the speaker must show
with the audience (it does not matter its sincerity) to make to good impression
(...) the speaker states information and at the same time he says: I am this, I
am not that. (Barthes 1966: 212)
Thus, the ethos appears like a construction of the identity of
an actor by itself and by « additives ». An identity
construction which rests, on the doxa, i.e. the probable one, which is
anything else only the idea that are done the others on ourselves.
Consequently, the ethos proves to be more complex. It integrates, on the one
hand, of the discursive and nondiscursive elements. The discursive elements of
the ethos return to the fact that the speaker builds an image of oneself
through his speech. It is a projected discursive image, which is not forcing in
conformity with its me real. In addition, the image represented of oneself can
concern practices other than discursive.
Indeed, it integrates all that
(...) contribute to emit an image of the speaker bound for the
audience. Your of voice, flow of the word, choice of the words and arguments,
gestures, mimicry, glance, posture, ornament, etc, are as many signs,
élocutoires and oratories, vestimentary and symbolic systems, by which
the speaker gives itself a psychological and sociological image ».
(Declercq 1992 : 48)
In addition, the methods of representation of the image of an
actor can be direct or indirect. They are direct when they come from the
character concerned, and indirect when they are carried by another agent which
we will name here auxiliary.
Lastly, in the public sphere, any individual who speaks, or
which intervenes, is, quite front even its speech, or his intervention,
invested of a certain number of qualities and defects, specific, real or
imaginary attributes.
We are there opposite representations that the opinion is made
each actor of the public sphere. This image which the opinion retains of the
social actor, well before his speech, is what one names ethos preliminary or
ethos prédiscursif. Consequently, to study the discursive ethos of a
speaker, initially amounts describing its ethos prédiscursif which
returns to the doxa, i.e. preliminary knowledge that the public has of
the speaker.
By doing this, in this second part devoted to the resources of
the seduction, we will study, in the first chapter, the preliminary ethos of Mr
Idrissa Seck in order to better see how this ethos preliminary undergoes an
attempt at rebuilding, before even the Declaration of general policy.
Initially, by the Prime Minister himself, through his « participative
step », and via national Television.
In the second chapter, we will see how the company of
seduction is worked out through a discursive ethos, or discursive
representation of an image of oneself attractive, even ideal. A representation
of oneself which borrows from the triptych aristotelician taken again and
brought up to date by the Pragmatic one and the specialists in the
stating : « pronésis » or the good direction,
it « edge » or the virtue and
it « eounoïa » or benevolence.
| 
