Word formation in the service of the media: French presidential elections

Matyushenko M.

The presidential election in France is a landmark social event, which is preceded by multiple events, including election campaigns, allowing you to adjust the mood of voters and win their impression in favor of a certain candidate. One of the main modern manipulative tools is the mass media, which allow for a long time before the election to form a certain image of a potential president and his opponents. To attract the maximum number of readers and maintain their own competitiveness among a large number of serious publications, journalists use neologisms reflecting current trends in politics. In particular, due to the fact that most of the publications are published on the Internet, and the bulk of preventive censorship is carried out automatically using algorithms and SEO specialists for keywords, new words and phrases help reduce the likelihood of publication being banned. In French, certain methods of word formation are used, which are discussed in this article with examples from French periodicals. Articles of such popular central newspapers as ‘Le Figaro’, ‘Le Monde’, ‘Libération’, ‘Les Échos’, ‘Nice-Matin’, ‘Le Huffington Post’, ‘Le Point’ for 2021-2022 served as material for the work.

Keywords:word formation, presidential elections, press, France, mass media, newspaper, French publications, neologisms.