It was indeed one of the political events of the weekend: the first major campaign meeting of Valérie Pécresse. We had received her on franceinfo during presidential mornings, and I had had the opportunity to tell her face to face how much her rhetoric, all in spun metaphors and games on sounds, could seem artificial, to my ears at least.
Since then, she has transformed her way of speaking… by further accentuating the features that characterized her! Sunday was a festival of assonance and alliteration, that is to say sequences of words containing the same sounds: “These 400,000 standards that pile up and prevent any project from seeing the light of day. Emmanuel Macron will have to be held accountable. Our hospital is at the end of its rope, held at arm’s length by heroic caregivers… A new France delivered of its chains that hinder the audacity of entrepreneurs and creators, builders of the future… France is a Marianne in a corset.”
“These chains that hinder the audacity of entrepreneurs and creators, builders of the future” : alliteration in R. “Emmanuel Macron will have to be accountable” : again an alliteration in R, coupled with an assonance in ON. Valérie Pécresse seeks at all costs to make the words resonate between them. This is what gives a lyrical and bombastic side to the speech. But the problem is that the process is so systematic that it becomes visible, and therefore potentially laughable.
But this is not the only process that could seem a little too visible. Valérie Pécresse was not content to play on sounds: she used this process to structure whole sections of her speech.
“I want to rebuild the France of innovation, not the France of precaution.”
“France is not a nostalgia, it is an energy.”
“Being French is not resigning, it’s getting up.”
“Security will be for you, insecurity for the thugs.”
“This name of France, I want it to resonate again, I want it to astonish, I want it to thunder.”
These are either assonances, that is to say plays on consonants (you / thugs), or paronomases, that is to say plays on whole words (resign / take up). But above all, these figures are used to structure antitheses, that is to say binary oppositions: “I don’t want this… but I want that”.
This assonance + antithesis scheme is interesting. In rhetoric, this is called a “clap trap”, i.e. an applause trap. It is done with elegance and subtlety, it almost guarantees us to be applauded. But when it becomes, as here, a formula used ad nauseam, you end up spotting it, getting tired of it, then making fun of it.
Valérie Pécresse recognizes this herself. She was this Monday morning the guest of RTL: here is what she said about her own performance: “If the objective is to really have a speaker, there are better ones than me. If the objective is to have a doer, who is going to do something, then I think I am the best candidate. In addition, I remind you that there was a candidate who had trouble holding rallies at the start of his political career: his name was Emmanuel Macron.
Valérie Pécresse herself therefore concedes that she is not the best speaker, and has difficulty in meetings. But at the same time, what she says can be heard: this election is not a contest of eloquence, but a political choice. But that’s the whole problem with rhetoric: it’s not enough to be right to carry conviction. If the best arguments, the most solid, the best documented were guaranteed to prevail against arguments of poor quality, we would not need rhetoric: it would suffice to work on one’s files. However, we know that this is not the case! Whether we like it or not, good talkers with glorious words often triumph over more laborious speakers.
Is Valérie Pécresse the best candidate? Everyone will judge. Is she a good speaker, on the other hand? For the moment no. And that’s not the least of his worries…