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),

Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse

2

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

POSITIVE

EVALUATION

SOCIAL/PERSONAL

NORMS & FRAMES

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.

Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse

4

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

Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse

6

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

Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse

8

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 9

M’a foutu en rogne (Fadela Amara) Driven me mad (coll.)

Foutu la honte (Fadela Amara) 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

leaders)

Scandalous acts

Actes inqualifiables (government, RW

leaders)

“Unspeakable” acts

Acte imbécile (Fadela Amara) Stupid acts

Agissements condamnables (government,

RW leaders)

Condemnable doings

Comportement indigne (government, RW

leaders)

Disgraceful/bad acting

Incidents scandaleux (government, RW

leaders)

Scandalous hitches

L’insulte faite à la Marseillaise

(government, RW leaders)

The insult to the Marseillaise

Pas tolérable (government, RW leaders) Intolerable, shocking

Inacceptable

Inadmissible (government, media)

Unacceptable

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

parents

People that have covered with

shame their parents Table 5-2. Evaluation.

Insults

(used by the government, the right wing political leaders)

Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse

10

French terms English translation

Voyou (Fadela Amara) Hooligan, hoodlum

Imbecile (Fadela Amara) Fool/stupid

Foules originaires du Maghreb (Jean-Marie Le

Pen)

Crowds from Maghreb

Masses étrangères (Jean-Marie Le Pen) Masses of strangers

Des Français de papier (Jean-Marie Le Pen) “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 Jean-

Marie 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.

Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse

12

FEAR oriented vocabulary and

marks (official and media discourse,

“public opinion”)

ANGER oriented vocabulary

and marks (“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”)

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.

Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse

14

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

Emotions as a Rhetorical Tool in Political Discourse

16

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).

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