« Le patriotisme populaire euh c’est fier d’être français » : le détournement de la définition dans les interviews politiques »

This article analyses explanatory phrases in political interviews, trying to answer the following questions: are these phrases really definitions? How close are they to a definitional prototype? Political discourse in the media is founded on a certain vision of the world that needs clear-cut and well defined concepts, but most and above all of striking formulas and of denominations that often simplify a reality which is complex and difficult for the public to fully understand. These language units are “discourse objects” that attract the interlocutor’s as well as the public’s attention, that are based on an inter-discursive or pre-discursive memory and that crystallise, within the interaction, around designational or definitional paradigms. Our article analyses a corpus of transcription of radio and television programmes: Le franc parler (March 2006) and Le temps de choisir (May 2007). We reach the conclusion that definitions in media political discourse seem to shape on lexicographic definitions for their structure, but to move away from them as far as their semantic mechanisms are concerned: the search for originality (which is contrary to the principles of lexicographic definition) stretches semantic coherence to its extreme limit. It is precisely in this respect that our definitional phrases can be compared to projective metaphors: thanks to their power to shed a different light on the definiendum. Nevertheless, as this discourse has essentially a pragmatic aim, the innovation carried along by this projective power quickly fades because of the repetition effect.