The Polyphonic Discourse on Obesity

Abstract

The diktat of thinness, which no doubt appears today as one of the essentials in the Western world, seems to call for a dominant common opinion on obesity, which is strictly unfavorable. The negative way in which obesity is perceived finds its confirmation notably in the lexicon reflecting the way of perceiving and judging reality by the speakers. It should be noted in this connection that the existence of euphemisms to speak of a fact, even more than of dysphemisms, constitutes an undeniable proof of the negative way in which this fact is perceived within the community. This principle concerns especially the speech having an official character.Thus, in French in particular, a wide range of words and expressions concerning obesity and obese mainly carry a more or less strong, negative or positive assessment mark. The use made of it in the journalistic discourse expresses different points of view, which results in a polyphonic discourse, with heterogeneous enunciative voices, underpinned by the lexical choices of the speakers who euphemize and / or dysphemize their words, according to the case. In this article we pose the question of the precise role of euphemisms and dysphemisms in the discourse concerning a subject whose stereotype is only exclusively negative. A number of examples from the French press in the years 2014-2017 show that, in addition to the euphemising terms, dysphemistic terms can also be used in the context of convergent polyphony. On the other hand, both euphemisms and dysphemisms can be questioned under the regime of divergent polyphony.