Common Ground or Conceptual Reframing? A Study of the Common Elements in Conflicting Positions in French Interactions - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 134

Fragment 1
S. Royal: But it is also true that [ ::: ] the ethics of politics [ ::: ] demands that politicians
account for what they do. I also know that what interests the French people is the future.
Nevertheless, Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, do you think you are partly responsible for the situation
in which France finds itself today?
N. Sarkozy: [ ::: ] Am I responsible for a portion of the government's record ? Yes, I
was Minister of the Interior for four years, I was faced with a situation that was catastrophic,
which, Ms. Royal, largely accounted for the defeat of your friends, the government to which
you belonged at the time 1 [ ::: ] Regarding the failures of the republic, the Left and the Right
are both partly responsible 2
liberation.fr
Let us reduce the conflict to its minimal expression from an informational
perspective. The sentences that I list here intend to respect a declarative form so
their translation into logical propositions should not be complicated, even if issues,
such as the eventual presence of deontic operators, may be taken into account (here,
p means [France finds itself in a critical situation]).
Royal's Position
(1) [Sarkozy is partly responsible for p ]
(2) [Sarkozy must account for p ]
Sarkozy's position
(3) ( a ) [The Left is partly responsible for p ]&( b ) [The Right is partly responsible for p ]
(4) ( a ) [The Left must account for p] & ( b ) [The Right must account for p]
Proposition p [France finds itself in a critical situation] is presupposed both by
Royal ( do you think you are partly responsible for the situation in which France
finds itself today ? ) and Sarkozy ( Regarding the failures of the republic, the Left
and the Right are both partly responsible ), hence it is a legitimate element of the
common ground of the interaction. This is unproblematic. But what I am interested
in is the fact that Sarkozy's position somehow includes Royal's position. So let us
look in more detail what both candidates say.
My description of Royal's position might seem debatable since she introduces
proposition (1) [Sarkozy is partly responsible for p ] using an interrogative sentence,
which does not denote a propositional attitude like “believe to be true” but rather,
in Fregean terms, denotes the suspension of judgment about the truth value of
the proposition (Frege 1918 ). However, from a pragmatic perspective, one could
1 Segolène Royal was a former minister in the government of Lionel Jospin, prime minister until
2002. The Socialists were eliminated in the first round of the presidential election of 2002 .
2 S. Royal : Mais il est vrai aussi que [ ::: ] la morale politique [ ::: ] demande que les responsables
politiques rendent des comptes par rapport à ce qu'ils ont fait. Je sais aussi que ce qui intéresse les
Français, c'est le futur. Malgré tout, Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy, estimez-vous que vous avez une
part de responsabilité de la situation dans laquelle se trouve la France aujourd'hui?
N. Sarkozy: [ ::: ] Suis-je responsable d'une partie du bilan du gouvernement ? Oui, j'ai été
ministre de l'Intérieur pendant quatre ans, j'ai trouvé une situation qui était catastrophique, qui a
compté pour beaucoup, Madame Royal, dans la défaite de vos amis, du gouvernement auquel vous
apparteniez à l'époque. [ ::: ] Sur les défaillances de la République, gauche et droite, confondues,
nous avons chacun notre part.