Doury, M., 2014 : “How to make figures talk. Comparative argument in TV election night specials”, in H. Jales Ribeiro (ed.), Systematic approaches to argument by analogy, Dordrecht: Springer, p.151-169. [coordonnées actuelles :
[email protected] ; feel free to ask for a reprint] How To Make Figures Talk: Comparative Argument in TV Elections Night Specials Marianne Doury CNRS, Laboratoire Commmunication et Politique Email:
[email protected] Abstract: Typically, election night specials focus on announcing the results and commenting them. These comments reveal two argumentative stages: the first consists of assessing the scores (“it’s a good / poor result”); the second is explanatory (“this poor score reflects the voters’ disapointment of the outgoing president”/ “this high score shows the voters’ longing for change”). The present paper will focus on the assessment process. The observation of election night specials during the last decades in France suggests that an electoral result is not good or bad in itself, but is discursively constructed as such. For instance, the discursive evaluation of a result is often integrated within argumentative sequences that aim at justifying it. We will examine the function of comparison in such argumentative sequences. Based on the transcript of two TV specials after the first round of French presidential elections (April, 22d, 2012) from two TV channels (TF1 and France 2), we will show how the assessing of the scores relies on various comparisons: between the results obtained by the different candidates within the same election; between the results obtained by one political party in successive presidential elections; between the results obtained by the leaders of different countries confronted with similar economic crisis; between the results predicted by polling organizations and the actual results.