Ethos is a complex
and crucial element in political discourse. Its complexity is evident in the
construction process, which requires the speaker to consider the social
imaginaries and cultural context of the audience. Building ethos based on one
or more imaginaries allows a politician to secure the audience’s adherence, as
the imaginary “is based on judgments, ideas, even images, propagated without
being examined or critically appropriated by the subjects who receive them” (Lamizet,
2011: 28). This paper aims to analyze a set of imaginaries mobilized by
political figures within a media corpus of Moroccan televised political
debates. Specifically, we examine how ethos, imaginaries, and culture intersect
through an analysis of several episodes of the televised debate series Daïf
Al Aoula.
