Emotions as a rhetorical tool in political discourse

CHAPTER 4 EMOTIONS AS A RHETORICAL TOOL IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE GEORGETA CISLARU [Cislaru, G., 2012, « Emotions as a rhetorical tool in political discourse”, in Zaleska, M. (ed.) Rhetoric and Politics, Cambridge University Press, 107-126] Introduction This paper aims at showing the way emotion is integrated in the political discourse and may contribute to enhance its efficiency. I argue that emotion is a rhetorical tool used by politicians, by media discourse and also by citizens in order to impact on the opinion or to build it (see Brader et al. 2011). I define a rhetorical tool as means of influencing the addressee in order to impose a point of view and to determine acting, i.e. a tool having a performative potential. A rhetorically strong discourse is a discourse that may generate power and thus sustain politics (cf. Salavastru 2005); from this point of view, the analysis of the political discourse is concerned with the evaluation of its rhetorical efficiency. I adopt the point of view of Discourse Analysis (cf. Pêcheux 1975, Van Dijk 1995 and 2006), considering that the institutional discourses like the political and media discourses occupy a dominant position in the process of ideological constructions and at the level of the performative effects. The analysis of emotionally charged linguistic units and of their potential/real discursive effects through some concrete cases not only helps to understand the way political rhetoric functions but also questions the relationship between politics, power, media and lay public. Since Damasio’s (1995 [1994]) seminal work, it is widely assumed that emotions and reason are not separated, and a series of authors have shown that argumentation implies emotion (see, for example, Plantin 1999, 2004). I am concerned with the place of emotions in political discourse at several levels: politician discourse; media discourse; public opinion discourse (a communitarian consensus, cf. Kaufmann 2002), 2 Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse through web comments on media topics. Indeed, it is interesting to observe the interpenetration of rhetorical strategies through various discourse genres. I mainly study such emotions as fear and anger, inasmuch as both are superposed in contexts like sanitary risks (swine flu, mad cow, GMO, etc.) or terrorist attacks (September 11, London and Madrid attacks). I assume that other political contexts may also be concerned by this superposition in rhetoric and propose to verify this hypothesis on the above-mentioned corpora. I will analyze the following discourse phenomena: insults, aggression, naming/expressing emotions, and devices able to produce emotions (Ungerer 1997, Plantin 2003). Dealing with Emotions Emotion and evaluation: from persuasion to argumentation Following Frijda (2007), I consider that emotions are the result of a competent evaluation of a situation. Each salient fact or event is assessed from the point of view of social and personal norms and frames, and this appraisal may arouse various emotions—psychologists distinguish positive (like joy, happiness, etc.) and negative (anger, shame, fear) emotions (Plutchik 1994). Appraisal determines human behavior and reactions to events. EVENT SOCIAL/PERSONAL NORMS & FRAMES EVALUATION POSITIVE NEGATIVE POSITIVE EMOTIONS NEGATIVE EMOTIONS ADAPTED BEHAVIOUR Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse 3 Fig. 5-1. Emotional appraisal. This conception relates emotions to decision-making, and also suggests that emotions presuppose a social axiology: they are not to be confined to a private domain but considered as manifestations of a social paradigm, inasmuch as the evaluative frames are socially defined (this fact does not interfere with personal sensibility to such and such event or risk, due to previous experiences, for example). From a pragmatic point of view, this conception implies that a discourse able to arouse emotions acquires a performative value, due to the action-oriented nature of emotions. If pathos is usually associated to persuasion and distinguished from logos and argumentation (identified to rationality, logic), one may see that emotions are inextricably connected to argumentation and may configure argumentative strategies (Plantin 2004). The political discourse acquires a specific rhetorical force by means of using emotions, which eventually helps it “persuade A that X” (see Plantin 1990, 145). This rhetorical force is not easy to measure, but it may be partly evaluated by observing the way the political discourse is transmitted by the media discourse and also by studying the discursive reactions of the media and the “public opinion”. Sometimes acting is observable, like voting results in response to an election campaign or the number of vaccinations in response to the WHO/World Health Organization recommendations (and accompanying political discourses). Emotion configuring political discourse From the point of view of Discourse Analysis, the linguistic data to be taken into account are of various orders. Rhetoric distinguishes logos, ethos and pathos. In written discourse, logos and pathos could hardly be distinguished, inasmuch as emotions are represented by various linguistic strategies: emotion terms, evaluative modalities, apposition (reiteration), punctuation marks, etc. Thus, logos and pathos are necessarily related. Besides, speakers often use logos, but also pathos, in order to construct their discursive ethos (Amossy 2008, Załęska this issue): for instance, N. Sarkozy, the President of France since 2007, generally tries to show empathy toward victims and then use the “emotional ethos” (i.e., the construction of an emotional identity) in political discourse aiming to justify various political decisions and law making. The emotional ethos is a political tool that goes far beyond the state politics dimension; some of the data mentioned below may be applied to other domains than the rhetoric of politics. 4 Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse Negative emotions seem to be more frequently expressed in political discourse. Recent research has pointed abusive emotional use in political discourse; they show how some topics, like September 11, for instance, are treated through a “discourse of fear”, until reaching a topic-as-fear configuration (Altheide 2002, 2006). While catastrophes, conflicts and crisis are especially concerned, various political events may be impacted by the rhetorical use of the emotions; it is the case of the 2002 presidential campaign in France, where the “security-topic” was fear-oriented. Positive emotions are also used; one may recall Obama’s discourses of hope at the beginning of his mandate. Anger, and even hatred, are also very present in political discourse, especially during campaigns, when political leaders and candidates express their indignation, reprobation towards the acting and opinions of the opposition. It is not rare that insults, insinuations, etc. be publicly used: let’s recall the accusations of Muslim fundamentalism, communism, and fascism against Obama during the election campaign, the campaign for the Social Security reform and recently the “Healthy, hunger-free kids act”. Anger and fear in politics and social life: an overview Fear is a “social concern” in our contemporary societies: for instance, Duhamel (1993) lists several “French worries”—mainly from a political point of view—like crisis, Europe, immigration, inequalities, city (urban), reforms, information, democracy, History. Delumeau (1978) explains some of the western “fears” by religious constraints and distinguishes spontaneous/visceral fears, those of the large majority of people (hunger, taxes, war, plague, werewolves, sea, etc.), and reflected fears, those of upper levels, and mainly of the Church (Jew, Muslims, women, witches, etc.). The last ones were meant to substitute (to) the first ones through centuries. Delumeau’s point of view suggests that socially constructed emotions, on which discourse has a strong impact, tend to become dominant in contemporary societies. Dillens (ed., 2006) shows that a politics of the fear is currently practiced in our societies. A culture of fear has been built recently, mainly due to globalization, according to Moïsi (2008): Je pense qu’il existe un lien entre le processus actuel de mondialisation et le fléchissement de l’idéal démocratique. Ce lien peut être ainsi récapitulé, au risque de choquer : la culture de la peur réduit le fossé qualitatif qui existait autrefois entre les démocraties et les régimes non démocratiques, car elle pousse nos pays à violer leurs propres principes moraux, fondés sur le strict respect de l’Etat de droit. (Moïsi 2008, 151) Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse 5 I think there is a connection between the globalization process and the falling-off of the democratic ideal. This connection may be resumed in the following terms that risk to shock: the culture of fear reduces the gulf between democracies and non democratic systems, because it drives countries to infringe their own moral principles, founded on the strict respect of the Rechtsstaat (state of rights). [my translation] Building a discourse of fear is a common place in contemporary politics (see Altheide 2002). Various topics are used to produce a discourse of fear, which installs fear-as-topic (by means of using personalization strategies, naming the emotion in subject position—“panic is knocking at our doors”, etc.); finally, the concerned topic is identified with fear (topic-as-fear). Anger functions in a different way in politics, while bringing comparable political benefits. Ost (2004) proposes to reconsider the place of emotions in politics and analyzes the way anger may become a political tool. Are emotions a “mob phenomenon” the official politics needs to deal with in order to contain mass movements? Obviously not. Political discourse aims at not simply containing, but (re)orienting social dynamics: “there are always grievances out there capable of being mobilized” (Ost 2004, 238). Riot and anger against social, economical or even natural events may perfectly guide people’s reactions and behaviours. Provoking such emotional reactions through political discourse, furnishing elements for appraisal that may conduct anger is the best way to ensure the events are submitted to the expected categorisation and they may produce the expected outcome in terms of action or positioning. Ferrari (2007) shows for instance that G. W. Bush exploits anger as a pivotal emotion, in addition to fear, in order to justify the Iraq War. As an extreme example one may recall the principles of the dictatorial political discourse, that seek to identify two enemies—one external, one internal—that should polarize the mass revolt. In formally democratic societies, enemies are ideologically built in accordance with the doctrinal principles of the governing parties; according to Ost (2004), the new enemy of the Right wing parties is the regulated state. Sharing emotions Important events usually trigger social sharing of emotions aroused by these events. Social sharing of emotions is based on a general premise that every emotional experience is designed for being shared with other members of the community (cf. Rimé 1989). This sharing may take days, weeks and even months after such events like earthquakes, terrorist 6 Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse attacks, child kidnapping, etc.; the experiencer uses a “socially shared language” in order to get his/her feelings across. Various discourse mechanisms are exploited: conversation, discourse circulation, reiteration of linguistic segments, intonation, vocabulary, etc. According to Rimé (2005), the process of sharing implies a specific enunciative schema, the experiencer and the interlocutor assuming specific prototypical roles that presuppose the existence of a clear social representation of what means experiencing such and such emotion. Both positive and negative emotions may be shared, but basic emotions (Ekman 1980) like fear, anger, joy, sadness are mainly concerned (Rimé & Christophe 1997, 133). Fear and anger note a good score of sharingness from both points of view (up to 50-57%; the best score being 60%, for guiltiness), that of the experiencer’s choice and that of the interlocutor’s empathy capacity: interlocutors easily “mirror” these emotions during the sharing process. The “principle of sharing” points out the social sensitiveness of emotions, among them fear and anger. It also enhances the relationship between emotions and events, and gives discourse a crucial role in the emotion circuit and representation. Political discourse simply capitalizes on a situation by using the basic principles of sharing emotion process: the appropriate language and the appropriate emotion. Data and methodology This study exploits French discursive data dealing with sanitary risks (swine flu, mad cow, GMO, etc.), terrorist attacks (September 11, London and Madrid attacks) or some minor political events (like whistling La Marseillaise). Three discursive genres are concerned: political discourse, newspaper discourse and Internet discourse, the last being identified with the public opinion, a kind of “voice of the people”. I use the media databases (Factiva) and Internet archives in order to collect these corpora. Very often, the Internet discourse is constituted of surfers’ reactions to political or media discourse. The two principles of corpus collection are i) an event that is easily identifiable in the public sphere; ii) discourse productions at three levels (officials/political leaders; media; public opinion/internet) commenting and evaluating this event; this principle permits to access polemical discourses and to test out the immediate impact of the political and media discourse on the “public opinion”. An additional criterion is the type of emotion the event may produce—I have given priority to events that may Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse 7 cause anger or fear either due to the dangers or to the infringement of social rules they imply. Although several different events and accompanying discourse productions have been observed, I detail in this paper only three corpus studies, based on two types of events: sanitary risks (dioxin and swine flu) and social/symbolic violence (stadium whistles) and covering roughly a period of eight months, from October 2008 to June 2009. This selection has been determined by the specific rhetoric conflicts or harmony going across the three discourse genres. The analysis aims at identifying the ways emotions like anger and fear are expressed or represented in these discourses and how these discourse strategies contribute to the rhetoric configuration of the texts. Emotional terms (cf. Galati & Sini 1997), insults, highly sensitive vocabulary (cf. Plantin 2003, Ungerer 1997 for the use of such vocabulary in newspapers) and evaluations ((de)coding the emotional topos, cf. Eggs 2008, Wierzbicka 1996) are collected and classified in order to underline the emotional mechanisms of discourse. Genres are differentiated at this level of the analysis (cf. Cislaru 2009) and interpretation is based on the principle that political or official discourse is the point zero of the circuit, followed by the media discourse and by “public opinion”. However, this chronology does not entirely determine the emotional dominance, as the data presented below may confirm. Is the Political Discourse “Pathetical”? In order to capture the emotional features of a discourse, it is a good idea to focus on events. Events structure political discourse and thus facilitate the classification of speeches and the identification of the context that may be considered as generating emotions. Elections, wars, catastrophes, attacks, crises, etc., are sources of emotions and emotional discourse. After September 11, 2001, newspapers were proposing emotional images, like “people running in a panic” (Libération, 12.09.01). Describing people’s emotional reactions during or after such events, reporting their emotional discourse, and even ascribing them emotions that are “socially adapted” to such situations are current techniques of political and media discourse. Political leaders may also express their own emotions or formulate speeches able to arise emotions to the listeners. Charaudeau (2008) mentions, for instance, the populist political discourse as emotionally-oriented. However, populist discourses are not the sole type of pathetical political discourses: many recent studies underline the inexorable emotional charge of political discourse. Moreover, they point 8 Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse out the fact that emotion determines the efficiency of political discourses especially during election campaigns (Westen 2007); this feature looks perfectly coherent with the role of emotion for decision making (Damasio 1995): emotion guides votes. However, emotions are not oriented the same way at the level of political discourse, newspaper discourse and “public opinion” discourse, even in cases when the same emotions are exploited and a similar vocabulary is used by the three types of discourse. Evaluation is not based on the same values and categories, and thus the emotional impact of the political discourse fails. Finally, it seems that is not the emotion solely that has the capacity to structure the discourse and give it a pragmatical force: emotion needs to be in tune with norms and evaluations that are coherent with the social context. Corpus A The corpus A is composed of 25 newspaper articles published in October 15–30, 2008 (French Press on Factiva archives) and of the Web reactions to these articles and news; it also contains the interview with Fadela Amara, the French Urban policy secretary in 2008 (October 15, 2008). All these texts deal with the act of whistling La Marseillaise during a football match. Recently, La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, was repeatedly whistled during football matches. In October 2008, after a match between France and Tunisia, the French political leaders decided to firmly condemn the act of whistling. The vocabulary used in their speeches is marked by emotions that mainly concern the domain of anger. This negative emotion is expressed or suggested in various ways: emotional terms, insults, evaluation. The emotional terms aim at representing personal experience and thus exploit the possibility to share a bunch of negative emotions. Due to the social and political status of the speakers—who represent the nation—, naming the experienced (or not) emotions tends to provide social frames for event evaluation. Emotional terms / speech verbs (used by the government and the right wing political leaders) French terms English translation En colère Angry Choqué Shocked Ulcéré Sickened Écœuré Disgusted Indignation Indignation Me choque Shocks me Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse M’a foutu en rogne (Fadela Amara) Foutu la honte (Fadela Amara) 9 Driven me mad (coll.) Shameful Table 5-1. Emotional expression. The evaluation of the acts or actors is more directly oriented towards (provoking) an emotional experience that may determine action and behavior: Evaluation of the acts (used by the government, the right/left wing political leaders, and the media) French terms English translation Actes scandaleux (government, RW & LW Scandalous acts leaders) Actes inqualifiables (government, RW “Unspeakable” acts leaders) Acte imbécile (Fadela Amara) Stupid acts Agissements condamnables (government, Condemnable doings RW leaders) Comportement indigne (government, RW Disgraceful/bad acting leaders) Incidents scandaleux (government, RW Scandalous hitches leaders) L’insulte faite à la Marseillaise The insult to the Marseillaise (government, RW leaders) Pas tolérable (government, RW leaders) Intolerable, shocking Inacceptable Unacceptable Inadmissible (government, media) Honteux (government, RW leaders) Shameful Choquant (government, RW leaders) Shocking Blessant (government, RW leaders) Hurtful, offending Désolant (government, RW leaders) Upsetting/depressing Insultant (government, RW leaders) Insulting Evaluation of the actors (mainly used by the government, the right wing political leaders) French terms English translation Les fautifs (media) The culprits Les délinquants The offenders (criminals?) Ces fauteurs de trouble The troublemakers Les coupables The culprits/guilty part Des gens qui ont foutu la honte à leurs People that have covered with parents shame their parents Table 5-2. Evaluation. Insults (used by the government, the right wing political leaders) 10 Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse French terms Voyou (Fadela Amara) Imbecile (Fadela Amara) Foules originaires du Maghreb (Jean-Marie Le Pen) Masses étrangères (Jean-Marie Le Pen) Des Français de papier (Jean-Marie Le Pen) English translation Hooligan, hoodlum Fool/stupid Crowds from Maghreb Masses of strangers “Paper” French Table 5-3. Insults. The strongest terms are used by Fadela Amara, the Urban policy secretary1. But the President Nicolas Sarkozy, the Prime Minister François Fillon, several Ministers and right-wing political leaders also intervene. For instance, I have included in the category “insults” the words of JeanMarie Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right party “le Front national”. The four categories of terms I propose to study here represent two poles of the emotion construction in discourse. On the one hand, political leaders express their real or fake emotional experience and thus orient the addressees’ interpretation and potential emotions. On the other hand, they evaluate and qualify the acts and the actors in accordance with their emotional experience. The first strategy aims a persuasive impact, due to the sharing-emotions mechanism that leans on intersubjectivity and empathy reactions of the addressee and potentially leading to mirrored emotions (see above). The second strategy has an argumentative characteristic, aiming at justifying the reactions and emotions expressed by the political leaders; evaluation and qualification acquire the status of arguments. This emotional construction is reported by the media, but only partly adopted. If newspapers qualify the whistling as inexcusable or revolting deeds and the whistlers as culprits, they also speak, in more neutral terms, of spectators, young people, or perpetrators of the whistling. Following the schema in figure 1, one may notice here that the evaluation of the event (negative) does not inexorably lead to an emotional experience: the event may not be seen as worthy of generating emotions—it is a “non-event”, in fact. Moreover, newspaper discourse rather quickly evaluates and qualifies the political reactions, in negative terms: bustle, political storm, and even dangerous strategy, irresponsible attitude, absurd and ridiculous reaction, idiotic remarks, demagogy, bachelotades (cf. “bushisme”; malapropisms of Roselyne Bachelot, Minister of Health, Youth Affairs and Sports). Some of the categories used by the political discourse to qualify the acts or 1 In charge with suburbs’ problems, where generally live “Maghreb-native” people—in fact, French born in France—that have whistled La Marseillaise. Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse 11 the actors are here employed to qualify the political discourse itself (like “idiotic”). The “public opinion” on the forums uses nearly the same categories or vocabulary, but oriented against the political leaders and more precisely against Fadela Amara: her discourse is judged disgusting, shameful, insulting, pathetic, shocking, dogshit. Anger is oriented against the person that has claimed being angry against the whistlers…; Fadela Amara fails in sharing anger with the public opinion. Instead, her reaction is interpreted as a discursive event subjected to evaluation. The pragmatic evaluation, through discourse analysis, of the governmental political discourse on the whistling suggests it is not a success, inasmuch as its emotional charge is not mirrored/shared by the media and the “public opinion”. Instead, the official discourse is analyzed and evaluated, and this situation is opposite to the expectations of a persuasive strategy. It seems that, in this particular case, the social norms concerning the acceptability of official abuses are stronger than those concerning the acceptability of the anthem whistling. Corpus B The corpus B contains 28 newspaper articles published in December 6–10, 2008 (French Press on Factiva archives) and some Web reactions to these articles and news; it also contains the EFSA declaration concerning the risks of dioxin in Irish pork. In December 2008, the media mention the risks of dioxin in Irish pork. It is an “imported” crisis, the first days only the reactions of the Irish political and health leaders are mentioned. The discourse of the French political leaders is either absent or soothing: “there is no risk”. The EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) announces that the situation is “not worrying”. Despite this official position, the newspaper headlines repeat, in a continuous loop, the term “alert”, which belongs to the emotional field of fear. Two words that may trigger fear (cf. Plantin 2003), are regularly employed in the articles: “carcinogenic” and “pollutant”; and two others appear occasionally: “toxic” and “risk”. Very quickly, the media evoke the anxiety of the consumers. But this emotional frame is not developed by the “public opinion”: the dominant emotion on the forums seems to be not fear, but anger, due to the negative evaluation of the political leaders and their discourse (however, anger is not directly named, this emotion finding various other ways of verbal expression; see Table 4 below). Once more, the political discourse itself is subjected to evaluation instead of, or following the evaluation of the event. 12 Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse FEAR oriented vocabulary and marks (official and media discourse, “public opinion”) Alert (mainly media and officials) Worry (mainly media and officials) Cancer Poison Chernobyl Massacre plot (public opinion) Danger Deaths Control (conspiracy theory) Catalogues: dioxin in meat, Italian mozzarella, dangerous toys, polluted milk, melamine (“public opinion”) ANGER oriented vocabulary and marks (“public opinion”) Exclamation marks Capital letters (= shouting) Evaluation of the political leaders/officials and of their discourse: not scrupulous, hypocrisy, not credible, liars, lies, appalling, manipulators Evaluation of the industry: human perversity, guilty, bitchy businessmen, sharks Table 5-4. Fear vs. anger oriented marks. Memorization and solid association of events and event-names (like “Chernobyl”) to some emotions like fear or anger (see Cislaru 2011) may explain the fact that the “public opinion” is very sensible to the dioxin risk and produce sometimes violent discursive reactions. These associations mark event categories globally, and comparative constructions are rather frequent in such discourses (see the catalogues above, but also the “as/like/remember” constructions): (1) Enfin, bien sûr, et comme pour les semence OGM (Jan. 2008, forum Le Figaro) Well, of course, like for GMOs… (2) - l'une des dernières fois où l'on nous a endormis, ça a donné la vache folle : "mais non, les vaches aiment manger des farines animales !". One of the last times they have duped us, it has led to the mad-cow disease: “oh no, cows adore to eat meat-and-bone meal!” (3) Après la vache folle anglaise, voici le porc irlandais (Dec. 2008, forum Libération) After the English mad-cow, here is the Irish pork! (4) Souvenez-vous du nuage de Tchernobyl qui s'est arrêté à la frontière, du sang contaminé etc... (forum Marianne, 18/12/09) Remember the Chernobyl cloud that stopped at the borders, the contaminated blood, etc. Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse 13 Emotional evaluation is double-oriented: to past events and towards expected events or outcomes. This strategy builds up series of events opening to predictions that steer argumentation2. As noted by Riddle Harding (2007), such evaluative stances toward counterfactual events may produce rhetorical effects and thus enhance the persuasive impact of the discourse. In such conditions, political discourse is discredited if it does not take into account the event series and possible predictions (to some extent, the precautionary principle is neglected). But the mechanism of the emotion construction, memorization and reactivation may be fully exploited by the political discourse on different other topics in order to direct the emotional appraisal: September 11 and terrorism; subprime mortgage crisis/1929 crisis and financial risks; Spanish flu/bird flu/swine flu and vaccination (in France especially), etc. It is then even easier to produce the “right and necessary” emotion in the “public opinion”. Corpus C The corpus C contains about one hundred newspaper articles concerning the “swine flu” published between April 20–June 30, 2009 (French Press on Factiva archives), and some Web reactions to these articles and news; it also includes the WHO (World Health Organization) website. The “swine flu” episode is very interesting from this point of view. Beginning in March 2009, the panic about the H1N1 virus expands throughout the world within several days. Official discourses are held by the WHO, by governments and health experts. The vocabulary of emotions is limited in these discourses—yet, “alert” is the title of an important column on their website; besides, statistics and data are copiously employed, and the frequency of the official declarations, accompanied by the reevaluation of the risks on the official scale, may contribute, together with the medical discourse on protection, to arouse fear or, at least, worry and anxiety. Media discourse plays a very important role during this event, by reporting, commenting, sometimes amplifying the political discourse and its emotional charge. Fear is clearly expressed, described or provoked through these discourses. In this corpus, like in the discourses about September 11, the vocabulary of fear is very rich and frequently used, either while evaluating the event itself, qualifying the reactions to the event or describing the global situation. Here is the list of the vocabulary used by the media: 2 Chateauraynaud & Doury (2011) insist on the argumentative force of evoking precedents. 14 Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse Terms evaluating the event Alarmist Anxiety-producing Stressful, worrying Terrify Terms qualifying reactions or people Anxious Be afraid of Mad, terrified Worried Terms describing the situation Alarmism Dread Fear Fright Panic Psychosis Worries Usually, media discourse plays on speech verbs and thus attribute emotional discourse to officials and political leaders. Experts are most frequently attributed worries and the reported discourse sounds as an alert capable of producing panic or psychosis: (5) Les spécialistes craignent que ce virus ne passe chez d’autres espèces comme les lapins. The specialists are worried by the possibility that this virus transfer to other species like rabbits. (6) Les autorités sanitaires asiatiques redoutent une flambée du nombre de contaminations. The Asian Sanitary Officials are afraid of an increase of contaminations. Emotion terms serving to evaluate the event represent a new step in the appraisal strategy, emotional hints being more direct: a terrifying event should provoke fear or terror. This strategy helps to categorize the situation in emotional terms (panic, psychosis) and thus easily leads to “topic-as-emotion” representations (Altheide 2006). However, if the emotional terms are frequent and numerous, there is a hesitation between confirming the risks and enhancing panic or questioning and negating the danger. Sometimes this hesitation produces Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse 15 strange sentences like “the WHO was not afraid to declare level 5” (Libération 02/05/09) together with “the WHO is afraid the virus will revenge in the autumn” (Le Monde 04/05/09) on the one side and “has the virus of fear contaminated the WHO?” (Libération 04/05/09). Using the metaphor of contamination, one may say that the emotional discourse contaminates all the points of view, and the same emotion is evoked in order to represent the evaluation of the situation, sometimes ironically. But does irony change the rhetoric orientation of the discourse in such cases? It is not sure that confirmation and negation of the potential danger are clearly distinguished, and the persistence of the same emotion in the discourse tends to consolidate its rhetoric orientation. It is difficult to synthesize the emotional colour of the public opinion. Some are in a panic, some are skeptical. What appears to be more unanimous is the anger due to the evaluation of another event: the vaccination campaign organized by the French government. Discussion and conclusions Altheide (2002, 2006) on the basis of political discourse, Soldini-Bagci (2008) on the basis of literary discourse show that fear becomes a social emotion based on a socially-grounded topos concerning prototypical scenario of danger (see also above). Socially-grounded is often synonymous to “artificial” in these works, inasmuch as it modifies not the real security conditions of the person, but his/her feelings about the reality of the danger and the evaluation of security/insecurity norms. Fear is constructed and anger may be easily provoked. These two principles are crucial for the rhetoric of political and media discourse. Political and official institutional discourse on “sensitive” events is often either fully and assumingly emotional, political leaders or experts expressing their own emotions and commenting on them, or emotionally provoking, both in a way that seems to be argumentatively oriented and to pursue performative effects: they expect people to condemn, vote, vaccinate, etc. Media discourse, which generally carries, if not promotes, the political discourse, may associate to or dissociate from these aims: emotion is present, but not always focused on the same way— representation substitutes expression and thus potentially reduces the impact of the emotion. Sometimes, on the contrary, emotion is entirely accepted, but opposed to the one expressed by the political leaders, like in the corpus A. The “public opinion” expresses little adherence to the emotional orientation of the political discourse in the three analyzed corpora. But this may be different from one event to another: evaluating 16 Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse the event implies in fact evaluating the emotional reaction to it and its conformity to the social interpretive frames. At the surface level at least, the successfulness of a political discourse based on emotions—i.e., its impact on the surrounding discourses/public opinion and its capacity of sharing the same evaluations and emotions— depends on the coherence of evaluations and reactions, on the good identification of the topics and frames that determine the interpretation of the event. However, at a more profound level, the “public opinion” is not absolutely self-contained. Indeed, one may observe that the same emotions circulate in the three genres, sometimes despite the opposed points of view on the event. In such cases, the emotional appraisal is either based on different norms, or concerns different events. For instance, when the “public opinion” evaluates a discursive event (the reactions of the political leaders) instead of the original event (the whistling), anger is the emotion assumed by the newspaper readers as well as by the political leaders, but the target of the emotion is not the same one. Otherwise, anger may be a response to fear (swine flu corpus) or “lack of fear” (dioxine corpus). This emotional hatch acquires some autonomy and crystallizes new frames and topics: discourse always leaves traces; something remains and stabilizes long-time after the instant of the discourse production and circulation and may influence the decision-making of the citizens in rather complex and unpredictable ways. My hypothesis is that the emotional force, the reiteration of the discourse (or the occurrence of similar mundane or discursive events) and the post-event evaluation may contribute to enhance or to reduce the rhetorical force of discourse. There is place for negotiation, although emotional traces are not erasable from the circulating discourses and collect in the minds and memories. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the anonymous readers of a previous version of this article for their useful comments, and Erin MacMurray for her comments on the English version. I also thank my colleague Maria Candea for the collection and transcription of Fadela Amara’s interview (corpus A). References Altheide, David L. 2002a, “Traking Discourse”, in Culture in mind edited by Karen A. Cerulo, 172-185, New York: Routledge. Altheide, David L. 2002b, Creating Fear, New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Altheide, David L. 2006, Terrorism and the Politics of Fear, Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse 17 Amossy, Ruth. 2008, “Dimension rationnelle et dimension affective de l’ethos”, in Emotion et discours, edited by Michael Rinn, 113-125, Rennes: PU de Rennes. 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