Benoît Hamon and Manuel Valls during the debate before the second round of the primary to the left, on January 25, 2017. – Bertrand Guay/AP/SIPA
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The last debate of the primary on the left between Manuel Valls and Benoît Hamon has offered a clear opposition between two projects of society. But at what point did they talk to each at the heart of their(s) electorate(s) ? A professor of literature at Stanford and member of Cevipof, Sciences Po, researcher Cécile Alduy has released the January 19, What they say really (Threshold), sub-titled ” policies taken to the words “. She analysis for 20 Minutes the lexical field of the two contenders for the socialist nomination in this ultimate debate.

What have been the key words of the candidates ?

Everyone had a verb repeated as a fetish. Benoît Hamon spoke of” anticipating “, with a projection into the future : “I want to draw a future that is desirable “. On the other hand, Manuel Valls wanted to ” accompany “, it was in the vocabulary of pragmatism. There is, behind it two different attitudes vis-à-vis the function it is running. To one side lies a hope, an imagination of the French society where it should go ; on the other hand, a “vision of the manager, entered in the present moment, the word “credibility” back in the loop for Manuel Valls.

Benoît Hamon said he was closer to Jean-Luc Mélenchon during this debate. Do they have common points in terms of employees ?

there is not much overlap, because they do not speak any of the same way. Benoît Hamon is a very quiet, serene, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon is in emphasis. The second speaks of ” fear “,” anxiety”, “suffering” at work, then that Hamon deals with concrete situations without dramatizing. There are thematic and the about common, but not the same rhetoric. All three, Valls understood, which speak of the inequalities, discrimination, secularism is also (more to the socialist Party than in France insubordinate). They share a vocabulary of values, but the big difference is on the word ” people “. Mélenchon puts forward. This is why it is often said of him that he is ” populist “, that he built his speech on the opposition between the people and the elites. This is one of his key words, that can’t be found at all in the framework of thought of Benoît Hamon and Manuel Valls, who speak either ” French “, or to sp ecific categories such as “youth,