Le présent travail porte sur l'hypothèse de la constitution d'un espace public avec le développement des débats télévisés au Cameroun. Il s’appuie sur un corpus de 227 émissions de Canal presse et Droit de réponse de 2012 à 2017 et sur des entretiens semi-directifs réalisés auprès des acteurs-invités et de présentateurs des débats télévisés. Les résultats obtenus révèlent que la constitution d’un espace public de débats télévisés camerounais est marquée par des logiques de « concurrence-coopérative » entre acteurs sociaux hétéroclites, et où la polémique émerge comme registre de prise de parole dominant qui gouverne les stratégies de mise en visibilité. Les résultats rendent également compte des dynamiques d'occupation de l’espace public des débats télévisés. Sur ce point, ce travail montre que les débats télévisés se formalisent autour d’un contrat de communication qui favorise l’accès majoritaire/prioritaire de certaines catégories d’acteurs, à l’instar des journalistes, des opérateurs politiques, des universitaires, des hommes de droit (avocats), des entrepreneurs de l’humanitaire et de la société civile. Enfin, les résultats de ce travail indiquent que les débats télévisés s’apparentent à des espaces de production de soi durant lesquels les stratégies de légitimation du discours, la recherche de légitimité et la captation du public s’enchâssent. L'originalité de ce travail réside dans le dépassement de la thèse habermassienne sur l'espace public. Ceci dans la mesure où l'espace public camerounais apparaît comme un enjeu pour la communication de l'État qui s'en sert pour y diffuser des informations gouvernementales, pour y dépêcher les médiateurs, pour normaliser les échanges dans une perspective de démocratisation et d'échange populaire. / The present work deals with the hypothesis of the constitution of a public sphere with the development of televised debates in Cameroon. It is based on a corpus of 227 issues of Canal Presse and Droit de réponse from 2012 to 2017 and on semi-structured interviews with invited actors and presenters of televised debates. The results obtained reveal that the constitution of a public sphere of Cameroonian televised debates is marked by "competitive-cooperative" logics between heterogeneous social actors, and where the controversy emerges as register of dominant speech which governs the strategies of visibilisation. The results also reflect the dynamics of the occupation of the public sphere of televised debates. On this point, this work shows that the televised debates are formalized around a communication contract which favors the majority/priority access of certain categories of actors, like the journalists, the political operators, the academics, the men of law (lawyers), humanitarian entrepreneurs and civil society. Finally, the results of this work indicate that televised debates are like self-production spaces during which the strategies of legitimation of discourse, the search for legitimacy and the capture of the public are embedded. The originality of this work lies in the surpassing of the Habermasian thesis on the public sphere. This insofar as the Cameroonian public sphere appears as an issue for the communication of the State that uses it to disseminate government information, to send mediators, to normalize the exchanges in a perspective of democratization and popular exchange.

The diploma thesis presents own research method for examination of speech formations. It focuses on examination of televised political debates. The method applied here may be characterized as an organized hermeneutic analysis of political discourse. Through the application of an analytical - philosophical approach (e.g. application of the theory of maxima, illocutionary acts evaluation, and analysis of arguments and verification of their truthfulness), the method allows us to establish objective facts of the debate as well as some personal features of debate participants. To examine texts, the theoretical knowledge of distinguished authors (J. J. Austin, K. Bayer, T. A. van Dijk, N. Fairclough, H. P. Grice, J. Habermas, J. Kraus, G. N. Leeche, J. R. Searl, and others) have been made use of. In addition to the literary survey, the thesis also includes the argumentation in respect of selection of the method, selection of talk shows, transcript of debates from TV records, transformation of the text into an analysable form, and research methodology. Accordingly, a specific communication model of programme is drawn up, the talk show discourse is analysed as a whole, and the styles and argumentation of selected participants are examined and analysed, which is followed by a comprehensive assessment of the...

Argumentation in interaction: The sequential structure of accounts in television debates Abstract This dissertation concentrates on the sequential structure of argumentation in spoken interaction. The point of departure is the concept of argumentation as linguistic action based on accounting for a controversial position with the purpose of convincing listeners of its acceptability or in order to defend it when it is challenged. The dissertation's specific aim is to describe the interactional context of argumentation using material from TV debates. The study utilizes ethnomethodological conversation analysis combined with elements of argumentation theory. The objects of empirical analysis are the types of linguistic action in argumentation interaction (e.g. the call for argumentation or the challenge to a position or argument) and the means of signaling argumentation. The research focuses on the analysis of the sequential organization of the TV debate, including the system of turn-taking, and on describing the sequential contexts of the argumentation in this genre. Attention is devoted to so-called argumentative sequences, i.e. series of mutual argumentative responses (problematizations) by the debate participants. Also examined are other types of linguistic action which initiate argumentation by...