A semio-functional approach of relationship attacks-defenses for Presidential debates in Romania, from November 2014

IntroductionThe political televised debate is a complex television genre(Charaudeau & Ghiglione, 1997/2005)which contributes to the deliberative construction of political communication (Beciu, 2009). It isconsidered "superior to other communication forms" (Pfau, 2002, p. 251), the media event of political confrontation (Dayan, 2010) and a key element of the election campaign (Benoit, Hansen & Verser, 2003). Mass-media primarily exploits the televised debate's spectacular dimension and is more interested in candidates' performance (Lemert, et al., 1991). Candidates perform the role of 'President' in a more or less credible way. They are 'characters' in front of a large public, attending mise en scene of especially political event (Leon, 1993; Schwartzenberg, 1995). According to Fortin (2006), paradoxically, the tendency of transforming the televised debate into a show could represent a threat for the democracy. The effect of such a mediating approach is the decrease of the citizens' interest towards politics. Fortin explains this effect throughout the decline of argumentation speech in favor of a type of seducing speech. However, the televised debate remains one essential form of communication for democracy (Coleman, 2000; Beciu, 2009) and could be an important opportunity for candidates to establish an interpretation of reality, to impose control and symbolic representations of the situation in the political field. Therefore, stimulating debates is related to the freedom of speech in a society (Wachsmann, 2003). Therefore, TV debate is considered a symbol of democracy (Lochard, 1995). Candidates have the opportunity to support their position on issues of public interest in a particular situation of communication. Compared to other forms of electoral communication, the debate facilitates conflicting interactions, expressing views, and to unfiltered accessto the public. Televisual device configuration allows a certain freedom of speech construction, which indicates the speaker's aggression for the audience. Thus, the public has a clearer picture, better defined portraits than those proposed by other forms of communication campaign, such as campaign speeches or TV spots (Schrott, 1990). Therefore, televised political debates represent the ideal communication place where the public can deconstruct candidate's aspects which could indicate new ways of social reality construction.The reality effect (Fiske & Hartley, 2002) is amplified by television deliberative appearance, and the conflictual nature of televised debate. It is just one of the possible explanations for which the debates are among the few television formats which attract large audience (Carlin, 1994), and can help voters to get more insights related to candidates (Pfau, 2003) by stimulating acquisition of political information among the mass public (Holbrook, 1999). On one hand, the TV debates allow the public to observe the ideological conflict between candidates (Rowland, 2013) directly, unfiltered, and on the other hand to engage actively in debate through televisual environment, or other means of communication (new media). Also, the debates can affect the image of the candidates (Maier & Faas, 2003), more important than ideological message (Pop, 2000). Nevertheless, TV debates could increase efficiency in policy and promote civic engagement (Chaffee, 1978). Prominent themes from the public sphere (e.g. the topic of elections in diaspora) may constitute serious constraints in elections, running and performing discursive scenario of candidates (Boydstun, Glazier & Pietryka, 2013). The ability of the candidates to focus on the strategic dimension of the political themes messages is tested. This may be one of the reasons for which the influence of the TV debates is defined by the "contextual dynamics of the campaign" (McKinney & Carlin, 2004, p. 210). Voters seem to assess candidates by updating with new information revealing during the campaign (Lodge, Steenbergen & Brau, 1995). …