文章基本信息

标题：Légitimité démocratique et autorité en temps de Corona : L’allocution à la nation d’Angela Merkel (18 mars 2020)
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作者：Jürgen Siess ; Ruth Amossy
期刊名称：Argumentation et Analyse du Discours
电子版ISSN：1565-8961
出版年度：2022
卷号：28
DOI：10.4000/aad.6053
语种：French
出版社：Université de Tel-Aviv
摘要：This article examines the discursive and argumentative procedures that build the legitimacy and authority of Chancellor Angela Merkel in her first TV address on Covid-19. Establishing a necessary distinction between these two correlated and often confused notions, the analysis brings out a global rhetoric of Covid-19: staging of institutional legitimacy reinforced by the unity of the rulers (an encompassing “we”); construction of authority by resorting to the argument of epistemic authority (experts), justification of anti-Covid measures by pragmatic arguments or arguments by the example, construction of an ethos ensuring credibility. At the same time, the analysis reveals processes specific to emergency situations: enhancement of an absolute, and illusory, political consensus at the expense of open democratic deliberation; reduction of the scientific discourse to the discourse of experts likely to provide certainty to decision-makers, transformed into mere administrators; displacement of democratic values from the plane of action to the plane of discourse; requesting the public to voluntarily accept measures already enacted. Finally, the article underlines the specificities of Merkel’s speech on this occasion: the meta-discourse which tackles the relationship to democracy, but also to argumentation, the insistence on human values considered superior to the violated democratic ones; the posture of proximity supposed to contribute to moral legitimation, and to reinforce the authority of the Chancellor. The ethical dimension of the discourse is all the more salient in that it relies heavily on pragmatic arguments. Another characteristic is Angela Merkel’s singular self-presentation: confession of her own fragility; image of a sensitive woman who unites reason and feeling, an ethic strongly imbued with affectivity, which gives the address a very human accent and calls for an act of solidarity more than for obedience.