COMMENT UNE CONVICTION PEUT-ELLE SE TRANSFORMER EN UTOPIE ? ANALYSE DISCURSIVE ET HERMENEUTIQUE DES DISCOURS DE DAVID CAMERON RELATIFS AU REFERENDUM SUR LE BREXIT

Abstract

The political rhetoric mobilized by the British Prime Minister on the occasion of the Brexit referendum has revealed a discursive operation based on epidictic stylistics.Threatened by the rise of Eurosceptics within his Conservative party, Cameron deployed an argumentative machine aimed at defending a personal, wellestablished conviction, that of keeping the UK within the EU. The combined resources of discursive argumentation and hermeneutics have made it possible to show that the argument for maintaining membership is inscribed in the discourse in an explicit epidictic scenography where the audience's doxic baggage is constantly solicited by the various stylistic effects summoned by the speaker. However, Cameron's persuasive strategies may contain inferential utopian ingredients that work to inflect the initial position, thereby making the present reality, that of Brexit, a contingency open to the game of the possible.