• The Nice researcher Damon Mayaffre deciphers the speeches of politicians thanks to an artificial intelligence algorithm that he has developed.

  • He published Thursday the book

    Macron ou le mystère du verb

    (published by L'Aube) in which his computer could even imagine the outgoing candidate's speech for 2022.

For a little over 20 years, he has rummaged in the speeches of French politicians.

He analyzes every word, every sentence, every repetition, with the help of computers.

A long-term job that allows Damon Mayaffre to feed a little more with each release of our decision-makers the artificial intelligence algorithm that he created.

After having proposed an internet platform of “speech measurement”, analyzing all those of the candidates during the 2017 campaign, the CNRS researcher at the “Bases, corpus, langue” laboratory of the University of Côte d'Azur plunged into more precisely in the texts of the new president.

A work that he will publish on Thursday in his book

Macron or the mystery of the verb

(published by L'Aube) in which he was even able to imagine the candidate's speech for 2022.

What does your artificial intelligence algorithm consist of?

It is the very principle of

deep learning 

that allows the software to recognize the author of each word, by dint of storing it.

To get there, the computer must go into great detail.

We enter as much data as possible so that the system has as much as possible to compare.

This is why for this in-depth analysis of Emmanuel Macron's speeches, we are of course based on his [a hundred] but also on a thousand other Elyos speeches by all presidents since 1958. It is difficult to characterize a speaker without historical contrast.

This book is the result of almost four years of work.

What did you find out?

First, perhaps, that the speeches of the President of the Republic are most inspired by those of Nicolas Sarkozy, at 29%.

Then those of François Hollande at 26%.

In any case at least until the health crisis.

Since then, it is those of Jacques Chirac who have returned to second position.

And then come those of Georges Pompidou.

Emmanuel Macron very often evokes the liberation of work.

When he said, on December 31, 2018, 'you cannot work more and earn less', the computer initially believed that it was a quote from Nicolas Sarkozy.

A second theme also comes up often, more recently, that of authority.

And on the form?

Emmanuel Macron displays a somewhat pompidolian complex, of great literary, normalien.

He multiplies the lexicons.

There is a real lexical wealth.

He also makes longer sentences, especially compared to those of Nicolas Sarkozy.

How did you include the speeches related to the health crisis in your work?

I delayed the publication of the book just to be able to integrate them. Those of December 31, 2020 and the first of 2021 are included. But adding more might have ended up taking everything. This health crisis is a dramatic turn in the five-year term. It changed a number of the president's postures. He finds himself reeling in two or three of his strong beliefs, which were still difficult to clearly identify during the campaign. Emmanuel Macron notably resuscitated Saint-Simonism, a very strong faith in progress and science to pull everyone up and erase social inequalities. He had transposed it with a certain digitalism, by encouraging all new technologies. But this progress is not reflected at all in the restrictions currently taken,with a certain return to medieval rules, in the face of science and medicine which have not made it possible to avoid them. His European convictions are also undermined since he has had to resolve to close certain borders. Finally, at the level of the economy and his liberal conviction, of free enterprise, the health crisis would have had a very strong impact which is reflected in his speeches.

What do we learn from its logometry, the study of the recurrence of terms?

It uses a lot of words with the -tion suffix, many more than its predecessors. These are terms that translate the movement, not surprisingly for the founder of En Marche. He has notably said 'profound transformation' dozens and dozens of times. The 'transformation' can also be 'real' or even 'new'. Terms that aim to improve the name above. He also says that he will 'transform' without specifying what, whereas one would normally expect to find a COD afterwards. He plays on the mystery of this verb, hence the title of the book. It calls for adhering to a movement rather than a goal. He also adores the letter 'R' and the prefix 're'. He speaks of 'rebirth', of 'refoundation', he wants to 'recreate'. This makes it possible to please the right,with a return to the eternal past, and also to the left, to which he proposes a leap forward.

All this work has enabled your system to imagine the speech Emmanuel Macron could deliver to announce his candidacy for 2022 ...

To achieve this and be as exhaustive as possible, we added to the Elyos speeches already in the algorithm those of his campaign.

We of course boot the machine with a few words and it does the rest.

It will be interesting to confront this text with the real discourse.

Conversely, could discourse analyzes predict certain decisions?

I am working on it.

We want to offer an observatory for the 2022 election campaign, which will provide information to citizens live.

We can select a candidate and know everything about what is hidden in his speeches.

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