ABSTRACT
This article explores 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 in these two correlated and often confused notions, the analysis uncovers a global "rhetoric of the coronavirus": staging of institutional legitimacy reinforced by the unity of the rulers (an all-encompassing "we") and building of authority by the argument of epistemic authority (experts);justification of anti-Covid measures by pragmatic arguments or by historical examples;construction of an ethos that ensures credibility. The analysis also reveals procedures specific to emergency situations: enhancement of an absolute and illusory political consensus, at the expense of open democratic deliberation;reduction of scientific discourse to the discourse of experts likely to provide certainty to decision-makers, transformed into managers;calls on the public to accept of its own free will measures already enacted. Finally, the article highlights the specificities of Merkel's speech on this occasion: the meta-discourse that tackles head-on the relationship to democracy, but also to argumentation, the insistence on human values considered superior to the democratic values violated, the posture of proximity supposed to contribute to moral legitimation and to strengthen the authority of the Chancellor. The ethical dimension of the discourse is all the more salient because it relies heavily on pragmatic arguments. Another characteristic of Angela Merkel's singular self-presentation is the confession of her own fragility, the image of a sensitive woman who unites reason and feeling, the emphasis on an ethic strongly imbued with affectivity that gives her a very human accent and calls for "solidary action" rather than for mere obedience.
ABSTRACT
This article examines the construction of political legitimacy and authority in the discourses of democratic leaders by attempting to distinguish between two often confused notions, and to identify the discursive and argumentative procedures that put them in place. It takes stock of a body of work devoted to the subject and proposes an original approach that emphasizes the centrality of argumentation in the process of legitimation and the construction of a leader's authority. Using the example of the first speeches of the heads of state at the time of the Covid-19 crisis, it proposes an analytical framework that can account for discursive and argumentative operations and their socio-political stakes in context.