| Summary: | In this study, we examine how intonation and formulation markers are used by a speaker to produce a controversial discourse in order to disqualify a commonly accepted point of view on human rights. The context The U.S. State Department published a report on human rights in Cameroon in March 2014. This publication occurs in a context especially marked by the security concern, precisely in the northern parts of the country. Newspaper headlines scream “kidnapping of a religious personality in the Far North Region,” “creation of the post of vice president.” This shows that the context in which the report appears is somewhat tense. Among the points of the report that are discussed through the media, one can retain control operation against corruption which led to the arrests of political figures, arrests deemed not to conform to judicial proceedings. The corpus and the method The corpus is made of an excerpt of a two-minute speech by Saint-Eloi Bidoung, a Cameroonian political personality taken from the popular TV show Canal Presse on Canal 2 international channel. This TV show brings together journalists and politicians to discuss issues which appeared in the newspaper during the week. In this excerpt, the politician Saint-Eloi Bidoung, from the ruling party, reacts to the question of the presenter, Bouba Ngomna, on how he welcomed the report of the State Department. Based upon the theory of spoken language analysis (Blanche-Benveniste, 2010, Morel & Danon-Boileau, 1998), the study takes into consideration intonation parameters such as the fundamental frequency (F0) or pitch, the intensity and the pause. These parameters are measured thanks to PRAAT which helps to get pitch and intensity curves. Intonation parameters, according to Mary-Annick Morel & Laurent Danon-Boileau (1998), play a major role in the functioning of spoken dialogue. This theory defends the hypothesis that, on one hand, the variations of the fundamental how the speaker considers the reception of his discourse by his listener while the variations of intensity point out the way he anticipates turns taking. Some results The discourse presents a regular structure with significant pauses separating segments which mostly are reduplicated. The role of F0 and the pauses is of highlighting these regular segments. When analysed in intonational paragraphs, the discourse of Saint-Eloi Bidoung reveals two type of structuring. First, we notice a binary structure (“préambule + rhème”) reduplicated twice. Then another type of discursive organisation follows: “préambule + rhème 1 + rhème 2 + rhème 3. The reduplication of a single type of segment (“rhème”) is part of an enunciative strategy based upon a consensus previously established or perceived as such by the speaker with his interlocutors. This consensual minimum acquired, the speaker strives to enhance his only differentiated perspective. This discourse structuring, as well as intonation patterns, is part of an enunciative strategy. Focalisation As a major enunciative operation, focalisation is regularly used by the speakers to draw the attention of their interlocutors on certain issues. In lively conversations, focalisation is consistently associated with a disqualification. It is a very recurrent phenomenon in media debates which consist in a strategic process of discrediting a person or a point of view. We identified eight segments set as focus in our corpus. Their intonative characteristics always show a fairly clear demarcation between the segment and the focus postfocus segment. The pauses Pauses are easily remarkable in this discourse. They hit both by their number (35) and their length (253 centisecondes for the longest, 31 centisecondes for the shortest). The place and duration of the pause participate in discourse structuring and the construction of the meaning. M.-A. Morel & L. Danon-Boileau (1998: 14) consider pauses of between 40-80 centisecondes to have a conventional discurive value. By multiplying pauses, the speaker stresses on the segments of his discourse, and therefore manages to focus attention on particular aspects of his indictment of western human rights policy. Reduplication The speaker operates large reduplication of structures which are clearly perceptible at intonation level. He resorts to reduplications as enunciative strategy. Saint-Eloi is aware that there is that popular opinion which considers the United States as a model of human rights and freedom land. He then got down enumerating the facts and put the very people who are most often presented as the "paragon." Naming places such as Alcatraz, Miami, Guantanamo and a person such as Pablo Escobar is enough to question that image of perfect model. Reduplication therefore works on the memory, in the domain of the shared knowledge by the interlocutors. It seems that all these language resources, intonation and discourse markers, are involved in one and the same enunciative operation: disqualification.
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