>> No! It's exactly the opposite!!! I've complained about this exact thing before on this list. In French, "inscribe...within the horizon," is just ordinarily good, educated speech.
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> Oh yeah, we don't do "good, educated speech" on TV talk shows here, either! I loved that little controversy the other week over whether Obama's oil spill speech was over the heads of the audience, since it was written at a 10th grade level. Good presidential speech, apparently, is supposed to be at the 7th grade level.
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One of the interesting things about the Sarkozy phenomenon - maybe JC Helary can say more - is that apparently part of his whole politics of "rupture" was using a kind of demotic and inelegant everyday type of speech that the French (but not Americans) are unaccustomed to hearing from politicians, especially presidents. (He didn't explicitly signal he was doing this.) Mitterand's speeches were often composed like literary essays and Chirac, in his lunk-headed way, aimed for a high style. I was surprised to realize that Sarkozy actually doesn't speak English at all, I assumed he had gotten the idea from America, like he got everything else, including his embrace of affirmative action and communautarisme. My understanding is that there was something of a backlash and he's now toned this down.
SA