From preliminary to discourse ethos as a woman empowerment strategy

Ethos is the character and the disposition that an individual sets for the sake of worth. This concept has two facets: preliminary ethos and the discourse ethos. The former one refers to what the audience known about the locutor before his/her performance. This version of ethos is sometimes defined as the negative view that the audience tries to raise. Whereas the latter alludes to what the locutor endeavors to build in order to have a positive view from the audience. This qualitative work intends to make an overtaking between both as to go from the preliminary ethos to the discursive one in order to rebuild the image of woman and re-orient her place in the society. On the basis of the theory of explicature and the excellence theory in the public relation, this analysis achieves in deciphering the importance of woman in the implementation of peace and security in Africa in Police Chief, a review of IACP. Through the sex-work women and the sergeant Birtch, we can see how the glide from preliminary ethos to the discourse one allows to reveal woman as the source of security, the trust builder and the security co-producer.

Autorentext

N'GUESSAN Kouakou Gervais Bienvenu : born on May 20th 1993 in M'Bahiakro, is a doctoral student in English linguistics at the Université Alassane Ouattara in Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire. For his doctoral studies, N'GUESSAN Gervais is working on polyphony as a pragmatic phenomenon in political discourse.