La critique de cinéma comme activité rhétorique

Abstract

The paper discusses the discursive construction of persuasiveness in media language. Analysing the corpus consisting of eighty reviews of two French comedies “Intouchables” (2011) and “Qu’estce qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu? (2014)”, several invariant characteristics of the genre ‘film review’ are established in the light of its deliberative dimension which consists in using various discursive strategies of persuasion submitted to the phatic function based on the principle of movere and delectare. Since the mentioned strategies assume that the discourse aims at influencing the addressees’ will and decisions, they reflect some of the persuasive techniques used in advertising discourse, especially with regard to rhetorical means of interpretation, suggestion and evaluation such as colloquial expressions, questions, directive speech acts, collocative pronouns and generic quantifiers. Thus, the issues addressed in the study concern a set of parameters governing the attractiveness of the message in order to reinforce or weaken the recipient’s attitude towards the presented object. These parameters stem from shared values and convictions exploring automatic mental triggers connected with the peripheral route of persuasive influence.