Communication politique et séduction à travers la Déclaration de politique générale du Premier ministre Idrissa Seck à l'Assemblée nationale le 03 février 2003

CHAPTER 4 : THE DISCURSIVE ETHOS OR IMAGE OF ONESELF

In the preceding chapter, we analyzed some elements of the prédiscursif ethos. In this chapter, we will endeavor to study the discursive ethos or the image of oneself, such as it develops through the Declaration of general policy of the Prime Minister Idrissa Seck. The plurality of the designs of the ethos and confusions which can result from this, require, on the one hand, that we make a historical background of the concept of ethos. In addition, we will specify the design of the ethos which we divide and who is used to us here as tool for analysis.

The concept of ethos is, at the same time, very old and very complex. It was development by Aristote in its Rhetoric. In the system rhetoric of Aristote, the ethos constitutes, with the logos and the pathos, the triptych around of which rests and spread persuasion. The ethos returns to the image of the speaker ; the logos represents the call to the reason by the means of rational arguments ; while the pathos refers to the processes rhetorics which aim to touch passions of the audience. It acts there, like A included/understood so well Jean Michel Adam, of « three poles more complementary than competitor of any argumentative movement (...) ». As the diagram (Adam 1999 suggests it : 102) according to :

LOGOS

ETHOS

PATHOS

ARGU-

MENTATION

The ethos is described by Aristote in Rhetoric (II, 1378a 6), as being it by what the speakers inspire confidence. Ekkehard Eggs translates this passage in the following way :

The speakers inspire confidence (A) if their arguments and their councils are qualified and reasonable, (b) if they argue honestly and sincerely, and (c) if they are interdependent and pleasant towards their listeners. (Eggs 1999 : 35-36)

These three components of the ethos that Aristote names phronésis (thought, reason, intelligence), edge (honor, virtue, courage) and eunoia (benevolence, complicity, sympathy), Roland Barthes summarized of fort good manners : « While it speaks and unrolls the protocol of the logical evidence, the speaker must also say unceasingly: follow me (phronésis), estimate me (edge) and love me (eunoia) » (Barthes 1985 : 125-126). They are these three qualities of the enonciator or the speaker who underlie and build the image that its listeners or Co-énonciataires are made of him. This image of oneself was, many time, confused with the real image of the speaker^36(*). It is rather about the image of oneself such as it is constituted by and through the speech. Indeed, we agree, with Domenica Maingueneau, that « the ethos is spread on the register of « shown » and possibly, on that of « known as » ». And that its effectiveness is to be sought in the fact « that it wraps to some extent the statement without being clarified in the stating » (Maingueneau 1999 : 77). In this same impetus, Ruth Amossy will support that « (...) it N `is not necessary that the speaker traces his portrait, details its qualities, nor even as it speaks explicitly about him. » Indeed, continues Amossy, sound « style, its linguistic and encyclopedic competences, its implicit beliefs are enough to give a representation of its person » (Amossy 1999 : 9).

In clearer manner, Oswald Ducrot precise :

It is not a question of the flattering assertions that the speaker can make on his own person in the contents of his speech, assertion which risks contrary to running up against the audience, but appearance which confer to him the flow, intonation, cordial or severe, the choice of the words, the arguments... (Ducrot 1984 : 201)

This historical and conceptual lighting of the concept of ethos, enables us to specify the methodological orientation of our research. It is not a question for us, here, of saying, how is the Prime Minister. We simply propose to see which image of him reflects its speech at the time of the Declaration of general policy.

1. « PHRONESIS »

Aristote (Rhetoric I, 1366 has 20) considers that the phronésis (reason practices) is a good intellectual provision which makes able to deliberate well on the goods and the evils [...] for happiness. This good practical provision returns to the good direction of the step and thus of its coherence and its relevance. We will thus study the phronésis under the angle of the method and the step adopted by the Prime Minister Idrissa Seck.

In his Declaration of general policy, the Prime Minister shows a methodical mind, as much in the manner of managing the businesses of the City, that in the manner of declining his program. We thus have there a double method as well in the remarks in the actions.

The method in the remarks returns to the organization and the clearness of the speech. It is an at the same time traditional and innovative method which makes it possible the audience to impregnate speech well that one is useful to him.

The method is traditional in the sense that the Declaration of general policy obeys the great principles rhetorics. Indeed, it comprises an introduction or exorde, a development and a conclusion.

In the exorde, the Prime Minister justifies initially his face-to-face discussion with the deputies :

The People, sovereign in his decisions, assigned you the mission of being the honoured medium by which I present to him humbly, today, my roadmap having to lead to the effective assumption of responsibility of its waitings, thus giving body to the policy of the nation defined by the president of the Republic. (Seck 2003 : 5)

Consequently, the Prime Minister made of the Declaration of general policy, one of strong times of the democracy, in the sense that it is the moment of a meeting with the People of which he is the servant. But following this general evocation, the Prime Minister contextualize his Declaration of general policy. With this intention, it registers it like the logical continuation of the actions which it always led to the profit of the Senegalese people. It is thus one « new mission » (Seck 2003 : 5) which comes following a preceding mission consisting in making reach its party the capacity.

A new all the more difficult mission as it intervenes following « recent tests » (op.cit. : 5) of which most current is consisted the shipwreck of the boat Joola. The Prime Minister takes the care to proceed to an eulogistic presentation of the assessment, mid- course, Alternation, before tackling the question of the shipwreck of the boat Joola. This dash of happiness of the beginnings of Alternation, temporarily stopped by the drama of the shipwreck, makes it possible to the Prime Minister to give to his keynote speech contours of a resumption in hand of the difficult situation that it found on the spot: « Beyond the tests, It will be necessary for us to be strong to take again our walk » (Seck 2003 : 5).

Following the exorde, the Prime Minister declines his program. A variation which will be centered around ten principal points : « rural world » (Seck 2003 : 10-14), it « education » (Seck 2003 : 14-16), it « health » (Seck 2003 : 16-17), it « employment » (Seck 2003 : 17-19), it « electricity » (Seck 2003 : 21-22), them « young people » (Seck 2003 : 22-23), the women (Seck 2003 : 23), them « old » (Seck 2003 : 23-24), it « safety » (Seck 2003 : 24-26) and it « decentralization » (Seck 2003 : 27).

The Prime Minister closes his speech by a bet on the man who requires a greater several liability and collective.

In addition to its traditional side, the Declaration of general policy innovates in more than one way. Indeed, the Prime Minister refuses to conform to the tradition:

In the place of the traditional formulas which give us rates and indices, I will have recourse to works of art like paradigm of presentation of the program of my Government. (Seck 2003 : 9) 

This preference for the image, to the detriment them figures, could return to a will to approach its audience, by emotional dimension and symbolic system of the image, opposed to the often abstract character of the figures. From where the recourse to visual aids using images and of charts projected on screens placed at the four corners of the hemicycle. This way, the Prime Minister confers on his Declaration a didactic and teaching dimension. This didactic and teaching concern being based on the symbol of the image more shapes with the use of two allegorical characters drawn from the artistic and social medium Senegalese, Goor and Ndioublang, which symbolize, the first, the axis of the good, the second, the axis of the evil.

* ³⁶ The Romans, in the wake of Isocrate, then of Quintilien, regarded the ethos as a rather social element (related on the social status and manners of the speaker), that discursive. This design will know an evolution at the traditional age with the introduction of the concept of manners oratories to indicate the ethos which one opposes to social manners. A distinction thus explained by the Gibert rhetorician Quoted by Guern (1977  : 284)  :  «  We distinguish manners oratories from with real manners. That is easy. Because that one is indeed honest man, that one has pity, religion, modesty, justice, facility with living with the world, or that, on the contrary, one is vicious, [...] they is what is called real manners there. But that a man appears such or such by the speech, that is called manners oratories.