Subjectivity in post-attack presidential speeches : Hollande’s and Macron’s speeches

In this paper, we propose a linguistic analysis of the post-attack speeches of Presidents François
Hollande and Emmanuel Macron, which were delivered in the aftermath of the international terrorism
wave that has challenged Europe since 2015. The discourse analysis here conducted demonstrates that
the political and social activities following these murderous events are based on a highly emotionallycharged
language, both at the micro-textual and macro-textual level. The analysis shows that the
presidential utterances contain discourse markers, such as personal pronouns or deictic elements, that
trace the speaker's presence as well as a subjective modality expressed by adverbs, modal verbs, and
subjective words that communicate the ethos and pathos of the speaker to the addressee. The paper aims
to highlight not only the discursive aspects common to both post-attack official speeches; but also the
differences in the ethical approach of the two Presidents.