Negative emphasis and meager informative coverage: two rhetorical strategies to compensate for the positive in the satirical press

Abstract

The satirical press attacks what journalists and cartoonists consider contradictions, abuses and blunders of politicians. It chooses a critical, exaggerated and distorted view, which is polarized toward the negative. In this article we focus on rhetorical strategies used by the satirical press when it refers to measures or statements by political leaders which are seen positively by public opinion. Our main interest is the presidential figure, a favourite target of the satirical press. The corpus analysed consists of headlines, articles and political cartoons which refer to President Jacques Chirac (1995-2007) in the French weekly Le Canard enchaîné. We consider six political events in which the Head of State had a direct involvement. We show that the newspaper generally adopts one of the two following courses of action: either it reduces its coverage in its pages, or it associates the popular measures or statements with negative actions or negative personality traits.