Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

Cultural Dialogue between France and Spain 75
by providing a motive. After this trial period, however, the worker was to be
given a permanent contract.
This proposal was met by a general refusal from young people, supported by
the left wing parties, the unions and little by little the whole of the French society.
This refusal, however, was basically against the manner in which the government
had presented the contract, rather than against its nature and implications. Indeed,
the French government had found a way to pass the contract without a prior
debate at the Assemblée Nationale.
The protest movements grew bigger and bigger until the March demonstrations,
and had its climax on the 16 th . These actions of rejection and contestation
succeeded in getting the law withdrawn in April.
4. The March 16 news on F2
4.1 The textual organization
The first general consideration is that this news item takes up almost the whole of
the program – other news stories are only briefly mentioned – and the events are
mainly broadcasted live, since at the time of the evening news, the demonstrations
were still going on.
The orchestrator of such a staging is the presenter David Pujadas (henceforth
DP), the conductor of the evening news at TF2. His talking head alternates with
images of the events (voiced by other journalists) and of some witnesses.
The first part of the news (the report of the events) is an account by DP of
what happened, his voice over the images. This report is very linear, it follows a
chronological order and it has a first evaluation – la manifestation a été plutôt
bien suivie (“the demonstration has been rather well attended”). The actors are
identified by their position in the confrontation: the students – distinct from the
rioters – are opposed to the police; in the same way, the actions are presented
binarily: sont descendus dans les rues / ont été dispersés par la police; interpellations
et affrontements (“went out on the streets/were chased by the police;
interpellations and confrontations”).
This first part continues in the studio, where DP evaluates the participation in
a modulated way (ça n’est pas un raz-de-marée “this is not a tidal wave”);
regarding the numbers, as usual, the police computations give a number of
demonstrators clearly smaller than the figures given by the participants themselves.
The second sequence – the facts – takes the viewers to the place of the events.
Over the images of the demonstration in Paris, another journalist narrates and
describes what is happening, highlighting the unity of students and trade unions
by the expression “together they have beaten the Parisian cobble stones”. The
speech is given to the actors and some demonstrators voice their opinion
(arguments against the CPE). We can spot the programme’s attempt to be plural
in the choice of the actors, since the witnesses are young women and young men,