La stigmatisation comme argument: entre dénonciation et légitimation de la loi contre la burqa

With regard to the press debate on the full-face veil law (2009-2010), this article concerns "stigmatisation" as an argument by which some denounced and others justified the legitimacy of this law. By means of a semio-pragmatic approach centred on the pragmatic meaning of argumentative utterances, this study intends to comprehend the way political and religious actors appropriated and resignified the argument on "stigmatisation" in press debate about the full-face veil as it was presented by the newspapers Libération, Le Figaro and Le Parisien. Our main line of inquiry is the imbrication of verbal violence and argumentation which feature media controversy. We are interested in rhetorical strategies used, as well as in the semantic and pragmatic functioning of discourse on stigmatisation and full-face veil. Our aim is to understand linguistic construction of verbal violence as speech acts likely to dammage the public image of the Other (muslim) and to provoque the loss of face and unconfortable being.