« Dire vrai » et rugby

Écrire le rugby dans la presse quotidienne nationale non spécialisée (1987–2007)

Abstract

Writing about rugby also means writing about rugby in the generalist daily newspapers, such as Le Figaro, L'Humanité, Libération and Le Monde. Between 1987 and 2007, both had to tackle a big crisis, the latter faced a huge loss among its readers while the former (rugby) had to deal with its professionalization as early as 1995. This article is about to show how writing about rugby has evolved during this double crisis thanks to the concept of “Truth-Telling” (“dire-vrai “), developed by M. Foucault. There are three different ways of telling the truth about rugby for those journalists: the “Truth-Telling” of the prophet; the “Truth-Telling” of the teacher and the “Truth-Telling” of the expert. The triumph of the experts’ “Truth-Telling” has shown the victory of the neoliberalism way of thinking in the speech as the total professionalism has become the rule on the field.