Vote for me. Don’t vote for the other one

Abstract

Abstract The French presidential election takes place in two ballots. The second round opposes the two leading candidates at the end of the first. Between the two ballots, since 1974, the two finalists take part in a TV debate along the lines of the US presidential debates. This presentation analyses the texts of these six debates (136,000 words). A library of more than 6000 political texts – and nearly 13 million words – provides some benchmarks. This paper presents the statistical indices proposed for the analysis of the communication within a situation of interaction. These indices are derived from theories concerning the presentation of actants in the speech, the expression of the speaker’s subjectivity and the speech modalization. The application of these indices allows to bring a new perspective on these debates and it defines, for each of these indices, its scope, limitations and possible improvements. The first part analyses the tendency of the speakers to personalize. These indices are broken down into the following dimensions: the relative importance given to the speaker, to the other and to the real message recipients (the listeners). The second part measures the fundamental choice in favour of the verb and, within this part of speech, between the accomplished ones (verbs to be and to have) and modal verbs (possible, desirable, obligation, knowledge). Finally, the greater or lesser density of the negation highlights the real scope of discourse. The study leads to interesting conclusions about electoral discourse and the evolution of French political discourse over the last 40 years. Finally, it emphasizes the usefulness of vast corpuses of texts and of lexicometry for language studying and teaching.