Immigration in French political discourse

This dissertation explores the analysis of political discourse in France focusing on the theme of immigration in electoral campaigns. The study examines how politicians construct their discourses through argumentative and rhetorical strategies in order to influence public opinion. The author analyzes a corpus consisting of the speeches of five major candidates in the 2017 presidential election: Emmanuel Macron Marine Le Pen François Fillon Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Benoît Hamon. Using a qualitative approach and discourse analysis the study sheds light on enunciative marks discursive strategies and different representations of immigration according to political positioning. The results show that each candidate adapts his or her discourse to his or her target electorate playing on a variety of registers: security economic identity or humanitarian. The analysis also reveals that despite their ideological differences some candidates use similar rhetoric particularly in terms of framing the debate and persuasive argumentation.