Emmanuel Macron face à la Covid-19 : un Président en quête de réparation d’image

How can a political leader impose unusual demands in a democracy in the face of Covid-19 when he was already arousing a great deal of mistrust long before this crisis because of a distorted image that undermines his legitimacy and authority in the public sphere? This article identifies the discursive steps taken by the French President to repair his image in his first two speeches on the Coronavirus. His strategies of image repair are indirect and differ from those listed in the scholarly literature listed on the subject. For Emmanuel Macron, it is a matter of strengthening his weakened legitimacy as well as building positions of authority. These two concepts are clearly distinguished in the analysis proposed here and are important axes for the reworking of the ethos, whose objective is to increase the confidence of the French in the president and the measures announced to stem the pandemic.