Le loup en tribunes: analyse comparée de deux discours argumentatifs sur une espèce controversée

Abstract

The recovery of the grey wolf population in France has generated numerous conflicts, which have been studied by many disciplines including the social sciences. Our paper shows that a discursive approach to these controversies can offer new insights and help to understand the continuing oppositions between the various actors involved. A comparative analysis of the argumentative discourses developed in two articles published by two national French newspapers, Libération and Le Monde, highlights two contrasting representations of environmental equilibria. The first aims at an equilibrium between livestock and nature (Libération), the second at an equilibrium between wolves and nature (Le Monde), each equilibrium being disrupted respectively by wolves and humans. The stability of the social-ecological community is based on the exclusion of one actor. Despite a similar formal structure, each article develops a specific authority through the interaction between the peritext and the text, and through the enunciative system in order to legitimate the author's representations. In the Libération article, we show that the scientific authority serves to objectify and thus legitimate the argumentative discourse, whereas in Le Monde, a militant authority subjectifies the discourse. In both papers, the authority is also closely linked to the identity of the country (France). Both articles have a polemical dimension, which is however more explicit in Le Monde where the opponents are clearly identified.