We start with the compliment of a listener who thanks you, Clement Viktorovich, for your column, “Between the lines”: “It’s smart and exciting, she writes. VSa allows us to learn to decipher the language of politicians and other speakers. I think your column could be used by high school teachers to teach students to read between the lines. “
Emmanuelle Daviet: What is the objective of your analyzes of political speeches?
Clement Viktorovich: Already, thank you very much. I am very flattered by this compliment. The first thing, of course, is to read through political speeches. Because we are in the midst of an electoral campaign, we are both bombarded with speeches from the leaders, and these speeches are not transparent. They can include shenanigans, little tricks, sometimes even manipulations, play on our emotions and play on deception.
And so, so that we can form the most enlightened judgment possible at this crucial moment in our political life, we must read between the lines of speeches and then, moreover, that also gives some keys to deciphering the rhetoric on a daily basis, because we all make rhetoric of it. And so, we also need to know when to let ourselves be convinced or not, by our relatives and our colleagues.
A listener believes you are playing politics in your column. I quote it: “On the pretext of reading ‘Between the Lines’, your columnist makes a personal judgment without contradicting opinions.”
Depending on the point of view we take, can we make a political statement say what we want through its analysis, and ultimately make politics through semantics?
Yes, it is true that this is a criticism that I often hear. Me, you know, I apply an analysis and reading grid, which is an academic grid which is rhetoric and, moreover, this grid, I do not keep it hidden for myself. I made it completely public in a book: Rhetorical power. So anyone can take this book and see that my analyzes are tool-based analyzes.
I don’t make speeches say what I want, I rely on material that exists, and you know, I used to read when I decode a speech by Jean-Luc Mélenchon that I would have become a macronist. When I decode a speech by Emmanuel Macron, I read that I would have become a melenchonist. And when I decode a speech by Marine Le Pen, I read that I would have become an Islamo-leftist. As long as I’m criticized by everyone, I think I’m doing my job well.
Another remark from a listener, here is his message : “I regularly listen to franceinfo, a radio station that I appreciate and I nevertheless wish to protest against Clément Viktorovitch’s column on ‘wokism’. This is normally a column on rhetorical techniques.
However, on ‘wokism’, his intervention was akin to a partisan discourse, very biased in favor of ‘wokism’, assimilated to a simple movement in defense of people suffering from discrimination. Opinion he is entitled to have, but which should not be presented as obvious in the context of a rhetorical presentation. Your listeners do not deserve this politically oriented treatment under the pretext of scientific objectivity. “
How do you respond to this listener?
Listen, I answer that I am an academic, so I have been watched and I have not seen a scientific conference in political science, in anthropology, in sociology. I have not seen a scientific conference on ‘wokism’. I haven’t seen any publications in peer-reviewed journals that analyze the ‘woke’ ideology, there is no ideological corpus.
So what I said, I produced this analysis, I said it was a portmanteau word, a disqualifying word to encompass all of its adversaries, as the term is, moreover, ‘Islamo-leftism’, a word that the CNRS itself said had no scientific content. But we could add another word that we hear a lot, it is the word ‘fascism’, or rather ‘facho’. So, of course, fascism is a political ideology.
Emmanuelle Daviet: This word is not new …
Clement Viktorovich: This word which has historical roots is a different word. But it is true that in a part of the political field, one is quick to qualify one’s adversaries as ‘facho’. And there, it’s the same. It’s called a scarecrow word. Again, all I just do is describe what I was observing: a rhetorical technique.