2.2.2.2 Mechanisms of
conditioning
We assist, by the means of the televisual speech, with an
attempt at conditioning of the public to the profit of the Prime Minister
Idrissa Seck. Several sequences attest some.
D `access, the passage devoted to the childhood of the Prime
Minister with, in particular, testimonys at its place at the time which one
insists on his Koranic training crowned with success. The choice of the words
stresses the performance thus achieved. Because instead of one
« control coran », the journalist speaks about
« its perfect control of the 6666 Koranic verses without
failing ». The noun phrase
« perfect control » proves to be a pleonastic
construction. Moreover, anteposition of the qualifying adjective
« perfect » vehicle the idea of an intelligence except par.
This idea is reinforced by the concern of the precision, with the noticed and
remarkable choice of the cardinal numeral adjective
« 6666 ».
In a laic company and yet strongly encrée in the monk,
this sequence is a wink launched to Senegalese who is mainly Moslem. It poses
the stakes of a moral contract between a Prime Minister with the fact of
religious morals and people mainly believing.
A second sequence will come to supplement this table. It tries
to stress the balance of the man who, certainly, can hope on his religious
knowledge to compel himself with an orthodoxe just and equitable management of
the businesses of the City, but will be able to be especially based on its
knowledge and its know-how D `eternal first of the class. With this intention,
nothing of such as interviewer his former professors, with the image of a
person in charge for the Holy College Gabriel, where the Prime Minister with
fact part of its school course, which will say : « it always
made a point of being 1st of its class ». This sentence in itself is
filled of direction. It informs about the intelligence of concerned, but
stresses especially its will, not to say its thirst, of leadership. And as if
the speech with him only were not enough, one calls upon the proof, by exhibant
the school register in which the notes of the pupil are consigned.
Thus is profiled, already, some of the structuring elements on
which will play the Prime Minister : knowledge and the virtue. However
these two components are not they not the principal attributes of the
philosopher-king ?
A third axis will be explored, that of the high feats of arms
of the Prime Minister whom the commentator will recall on the basis of his
statute of « young director of countryside » in 1988 with
that of « éminence grise of the PDS ».
But the work of legitimation is not summarized solely with the
development on the sides « positive » of the concerned one.
It is also déconstruction and refutation of the negative representations
whose the image would suffer from the Prime Minister and of which recurring is
that of a sufficient man, too imbu of its person. To destroy this image, one of
the reporters will point out the participative step of the Prime Minister who
took the care to meet the whole of the components of the company. A way of
showing its opening D `spirit, its direction of listening and its availability.
This need for being with the listening of the people is
legitimated by the report, in the form of microphone-pavement, by which the
word is given to the citizens by television, so that they express their needs.
A fourth sequence, more intimate, proceeds in the residence
even Prime Minister. The televiewer can thus have an idea of the house, his
taste etc to defer It decides to interview a young boy, wire of the Prime
Minister. The journalist asking to him whether it knew it to what will deliver
his/her father, it answers : « yes, it will make its speech with
the French National Assembly ; I congratulated it and
encouraged ».
This interference in the intimate circle of the Prime Minister
exposes obliteration borders between public sphere and private sphere. It takes
part of a will expresses D `to actuate family fiber, therefore sentimental, via
a son close and accessory to his father.
Another axis of legitimation is that tending to justify the
place of choice occupied by the Prime Minister near the Head of the State. The
comments of the journalists on this subject are extremely evocative :
« a Prime Minister in phase with the Head of the
State » ; « a leader of a music directed by the Head
of the State » etc
The process of legitimation on behalf of television will be
accompanied by a setting in scene of the event through the choice in framing,
the selection of certain sequences particular to the detriment of others. The
entry of the Prime Minister offers a relevant outline of this setting in
televisual scene. Thus, little before the beginning declaration, television
made us live the entry in scene of the Chief of the Government. The images of
television insist particularly on folk animation, the songs and cries with the
glory of the Prime Minister on behalf of militants present, for some, since the
day before. The stress is laid on the signs carrying of the slogans favorable
to the party with the capacity and the Prime Minister. In the same way, the
images are delayed on the vestimentary port of the militants present. Some of
them wear tee-shirts to the effigy of the Prime Minister Idrissa Seck and to
the colors of the PDS (blue and yellow), colors which one finds, partly, in the
vestimentary port of the Prime Minister. Indeed, it is equipped with a dark
costume with horse between the black and the blue of night, which is not
without making think of the principal color of Pds, blue. Thus, the impression
of a total fusion between the three entities which are the Prime Minister, the
party and the militants is given. This impression of fusion is reinforced by
the image, wholesale plan, of the Prime Minister sacrificing to the ritual
consisting in greeting the militants while raising time with others the arms
and in their gratifying of a smile as a sign of serenity and satisfaction. With
that, simultaneously the image of a crowd answers the angels. Restitution of
this entry « crashing to pieces » of Idrissa Seck is in
phase with the event which devotes, on the one hand, triumph of the Senegalese
democratic Party, by the presence of its persons in charge at all the stations
for being able, and on the other hand the rise of a man introduced like
providential.
The entry in scene is capital in a company of seduction. It
makes it possible the political actor to give the first impression to its
audience. This is why all is put at contribution : raised smiles, arms,
thanks, step etc Moreover, it is all the direction of the mobilization of the
militants whose role is of « to heat the room », to
encourage their leader, D `to intimidate its detractors if required and to
influence the public opinion.
All things which confirm the assertion according to
which :
The raw material of information ...... is never, in spite of a
generally accepted idea, an unspecified reality, but of the words, always, a
linguistic matter, representations which the social actors worked out
beforehand, which makes it possible to see in information the mirror, the scene
or the screen (according to the variables of the researchers) where the
direction is worked out, negotiated unceasingly by the aforementioned social
agents. (Tétu 1993: 715)
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