The unfolded imagining of Ségolène Royal

This paper investigates how two British newspapers, the Guardian and the Telegraph, construed the French Socialist Presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal. It explores how both newspapers employed lexicogrammatical choices to realize texts, which represented Royal as an inhabitant of worlds normally dissociated from politics. It shows that both newspapers through their choices of material and relational processes consistently represented her not only as an actor in a political world but also simultaneously represented her as an actor in a celebrity world and to a lesser extent as an actor in the private sphere of the family. By depicting her as a celebrity, the newspapers distanced her not only from ordinary life but also denigrated her gravitas as a politician. The article also examines the newspapers’ use of over-lexicalization in depicting Royal as subject in nominal groups and shows that both newspapers had difficulty in situating Royal, a 53-year-old unmarried mother of four, as a political figure. Finally, by examining intrusions into the texts, it shows how a metaphor ‘old is bad’ was evoked and used to deflect serious discussion of Royal's policies and views.