'Madame Royal'. Eine kritisch-diskursanalytische Untersuchung zur printmedialen Repräsentation von Polit-Figuren im medialen Diskurs am Beispiel des französischen Präsidentschaftswahlkampfes

Abstract

The article illustrates 'nomination” as a special form of reference, containing an evaluative perspective of the language user on extra-linguistic entities (cf. REISIGL 2003. In the media discourse nomination referring to people appears as classification or as anthroponyms and can be instrumentalized. The corpus consists of the nominations of the candidates to the presidential election in France 2007, the nominations contained in the daily press of the 3 months preceding the election. In the field of nomination as anthroponyms it could be shown that in the media discourse the use of the family name alone and the use of both first name and family name can be considered as neutral, while the use of a nickname or the first name alone establishes a relation of inferiority, a phenomenon that could be observed only in the case of the female candidate Ségolène Royal. Nomination as classification of the other hand established the following representations: The hyper real figure of Nicolas Sarkozy was represented as an authoritarian, strong, experienced politician with a problematic character and a migration-background. Ségolène Royal was constructed as an emotional woman who is hardly known in the political landscape and has little political experience. François Bayrou was represented as a solid, Christian down-to-earth personality, at the third place behind the other two and Jean Marie Le Pen as extreme right wing and the oldest candidate behind the other three. It could be shown that nominations (as classifications or anthroponyms) construct representations of the candidates which correspond even before the elections to their result.