1.

Introduction
This paper deals with the case of Gerard Depardieu, his renouncing of French citizenship and
receiving the Russian one. Throughout the media from different countries, we will get the full
picture of how Gerard Depardieu is seen and how his act is described. Thanks to newspaper
articles from France, Russia and England, we can conclude how each of them describes his
act and comments on his interviews related to this case. Several newspaper articles from
different countries are used and will be analysed. The most important thing above all is that
newspapers are from different countries, so that we can conclude by ourselves what approach
to this specific case is closely to reality. In the first place, French newspapers that strongly
condemned Depardieu, then Russian one that welcomed him with open arms, and after all,
English newspaper that are probably the most objective one. Corpus served for the analysis
consists of two articles from French newspapers- Expatica and France24, two articles from
Russian newspapers- Pravda and Russia Today, and two articles from English newspapersThe Guardian and The BBC. Theo van Leeuwens theory of social actors is used to analyse
the articles mentioned above. It is probably the most appropriate theory to use in this case.
Faircloughs theory is also used to analyse these articles because in that way, we get wider
approach to the matter.

2. Corpus
Corpus that served for the analysis consists of six articles. Two of them are from French
media- Expatica (online) and France24, two of them from Russian media- Russia Today (RT)
and Pravda, and two of them from English media- The Guardian and The BBC.
Those from the Russian media date from January, 3 rd and January, 4th, when Gerard
Depardieu already took the Russian citizenship and got the passport. They are written by Lisa
Karpova (Pravda) with the title Welcome to Russia, Gerard Depardieu!, and the other one is
named Welcome to Russia: Putin grants citizenship to Depardieu, but the name of the person
who wrote this article is not mentioned.
Two articles from English media date from February, 23 rd (The BBC) and January, 14th (The
Guardian). The article in The Guardian is written by Miriam Elder and named Gerard
Depardieu praises Vladimir Putin and attacks Russian opposition. The other one from The
BBC is entitled Gerard Depardieu registered as Russian resident, but there is no name signed
below this article.
Finally, the last two articles from French media date from January, 1 st (Expatica) and May,
18th (France24). Names of persons who wrote these articles are not mentioned. The article
from May, 18th is included in this corpus in order to see that France could not agree with

Depardieus decision even though several months past. The article from Expatica is named
Russians mock Kremlin decision on Depardieu passport, and the article from France24 is
named Depardieu likens Putin to John Paul II.
All the articles date from the time when Depardieu already received the Russian citizenship
because throughout this paper it will be shown how different media represented him after
renouncing of French citizenship and receiving the Russian one. In the following lines it will
be said more about each of media mentioned above.
Pravda (English- Truth)- is one of the most prominent political newspapers in Russia. It was
founded back in 1912. by the Russian Revolutionaries before World War I and for many years
it had been a leading Russian newspaper. Although it was closed because of economic issues,
the Communist Party of the Russian Federation started it again in 1997.
(www.britannica.com).
Russia Today- is the international television network available in several languages. It is
founded by the Federal Agency on Press and Mass Communication of the Russian Federation
in 2005. It was intended to improve the image of Russia abroad. (Julian Evans, 2005).
The Guardian- previously known as The Manchester Guardian, was founded in 1821. It is
the third most published daily paper in Britain, and the second most popular website. The
Guardian was a local newspaper in the 19th century, but it became one of the most prominent
national papers in the present.
The BBC- The British Broadcasting Corporation- was founded in 1922 by the British General
Post Office and six telecommunication companies. It has television, radio and web portal
services and it is transmitted worldwide. Its main goal is to provide public service
broadcasting in the UK, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. (BBC Press Office, 2010.)
France24- is the international news and current affairs television channel founded in 2006. It
is completely owned by the French government since 2008. It is aimed to inform about
current international events from the French perspective and to convey French values
throughout the world. (www.france24.com)
Expatica- founded in 2000, is an online news and information portal. Its main purpose is to
provide information for people from English speaking countries and the international
community. It is a social networking site to some extent because it helps expats in Europe to
get news and information in English language. (www.expatica.com)

3. Methodology
The articles from newspapers on this case will be analyzed according to the features
introduced by Van Leeuwens and Faircloughs theory for Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).
The reason for opting for Van Leeuwens theory is that the actors in this case are looked at
from a social standpoint. The criterion for the analysis according to Van Leeuwens theory
are: inclusion, exclusion, activation, subjection, assimilation, individualization and others that
will be mentioned. It will be analysed how social actors are represented in the corpus and
how they determine overall picture that we get about the case of Gerard Depardieu. It will be
shown how can Sayers be represented- impersonally, or personally, individually or
collectively, by reference to their person or their utterance, etc.- without privileging any of
these choices as more literal than others, and without thereby also privileging the context or
contexts in which one or the other tends to occur as more normative than others. (Van
Leeuwen, p. 33) In the following lines it will be said more about each criterion of Van
Leeuwens theory of social actors.
Inclusion/ exclusion- social actors are sometimes omitted or backgrounded to serve certain
purposes.
Activation/ passivation- social actor can be activated or passivated, i.e. represented as
undergoing the activity or as being the recipient. Passivated social actors can be subjected or
beneficialised.
Functionalization/ identification- functionalization occurs when social actors are referred in
terms of what they do; and identification occurs when social actors are defined in terms of
what they are.
Impersonalization- can be realized through abstraction or objectivation.
Nomination- is realized by proper noun, which can be formalization, semi-formalization or
informalization.
Individualization/ collectivization- first one occurs when social actors are referred to as
individuals; and the second one occurs when social actors are referred to as groups.
The role allocation is also one of the most important points in Van Leeuwens theory. These
are the roles that social actors are given to play in representations. Van Leeuwen distinguishes
between the agent and the patient (actor and goal), respectively who and why is represented
as one or the other in the text. As Van Leeuwen says that there need not be congruence
between the roles that social actors actually play in social practices and the grammatical roles
they are given in texts. Representations can reallocate roles, rearrange the social relations
between the participants. (Van Leeuwen, p. 43)
Faircloughs theory on CDA was also used in the analysis. In his approach there are three
stages of discourse analysis: description of text, interpretation of the relationship between

text and interaction, and explanation of the relationship between interaction and social
context. (Fairclough, p. 109) In Faircloughs words, there are many choices one can make
when analysing the text referring to vocabulary, grammar and textual structures in the text.

4. Analysis
A) Van Leeuweens theory
One of the important criterions in Van Leeuwens theory is the concept of assimilation. As
mentioned above, individualization is when social actors are referred to as individuals, but
when social actors are referred to as group, in that case we speak about assimilation.
Individualized social actors are seen as more important factors for the discourse analysis.
There are two types of assimilation: aggregation and collectivization. In the articles that made
this corpus, it is often seen that the name of Gerard Depardieu is often substituted by the
French actor, the film star, the recent recipient of Russian citizenship, the former Oscar
nominee, etc. In the other hand, there is a figure of Putin whose name is substituted by the
president, the ex KGBs agent, etc. In the Russian newspapers articles it is obvious that
Putin is named by his full name- Vladimir Putin, while in English and French newspapers, his
name is substituted by Russia and Moscow. From these examples, the concept of
assimilation is obvious.
The terms of nomination and categorization are also seen throughout these articles.
Categorization is a representation of social actors in terms of identities and functions they
share with others. (Van Leeuwen, p.52). There are two types of categorization:
functionalization and identification. Functionalization occurs when social actors are referred
in terms of an activity or in term what they do. (Van Leeuween, p.54).
One of the subclasses of identification is relational identification. Relational identification
represents social actors in terms of their personal, kinship or work relation to each other. The
intrusion of such relations into the sphere of public activities may be branded as nepotism
and corruption. (Van Leeuwen, p.56)
Putin also said that he has long had kind, friendly, personal relations with the leading
light of French cinema. (Kroth,2013)
From this example, we can see that Russia Today wants to show good relations between Putin
and Depardieu. Gerard Depardieu is in this case represented as the leading light of French
cinema.
When all social actors are not included, we then deal with the concept of exclusion.
Representations include or exclude social actors to suite their interests and purposes in
relation to the readers for whom they are intended. (Van Leeuwen, p.38) There are also two
types of exclusion: suppression and backgrounding. Supression is a kind of exclusion that

leaves no reference to social actors, while backgrounding is a less radical method where
social actors are mentioned elsewhere in the text, but not immediately related to the given
activity. (Van Leeuwen, p.39) In the articles from the Russian newspapers Pravda and Russia
Today, it is obvious that Putin is represented as a very strong, respected public figure. There
is no negative picture portrayed about him, while in the other hand, France and its president
and government are represented in the very negative light, named like French regime,
manipulators, etc.
In the following example, we will see the concept of inclusion, role allocation and its main
principle.
The French regime furthermore pays enormous sums of money to finance terrorists, sent to
the Socialist Arab Republic of Syria, in order to terrorize the Syrian population and
assassinate the Syrian President, Dr. Bashar Al-Assad. (Kroth, 2013)
In this example, we can see how France is represented as the French regime, and the whole
sentence shows France in a very negative, bad light. The words as terrorists, terrorize and
assassinate gives us very threatening picture and one can conclude that all that France does
is related to terrorists. This sentence has nothing in common with the case of Gerard
Depardieu itself, but the Russian newspaper used it very cleverly to make the readers feel
afraid of France. In the following sentence, the French regime is used related to Gerard
Depardieu.
Maybe Grard Dpardieu does not approve of how his hard-earned millions are being
abused by the French regime? Maybe the star does not want his money to be transformed
into bombs and drones, killing civilians, among them thousands of small, innocent children?
(Kroth,2013)
Gerard Depardieu (his money) is in this sentence represented as a victim of the French
regime, in the same way that the Syrian population is the victim of it in the previous example.
In the other hand, one can conclude that everything that the French government does is
financing people to buy bombs and drones and killing civilians and small, innocent
children.

B) Faircloughs theory
According to Faircloughs theory, one can make several choices in the discourse analysis,
referring to vocabulary, words, grammar, textual structures, etc.
President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to French film
star and tax exile Gerard Depardieu, who is renouncing his French citizenship to search for
an easier tax climate outside of his native country. (Russia Today,2013.)

From this example we see that the reporter calls Depardieus rejection to pay taxes and
coming to Russia- exile. In this way he/she wants to show that Russia welcomes him warmly
and that he went through exile from France.
Unlike the previous example from the Russian newspaper where France is represented in the
negative light, the following example from the French newspaper describes Depardieu as the
hulking actor:
The hulking actor received his new citizenship during a dinner with Putin -- object of scorn
from Russia's youth-driven opposition movement -- in January after getting into a fight with
the French authorities over a new 75-percent tax on the super-rich. (France24, 2013)
The reporter also described Gerard Depardieus refusal to pay taxes as a fight with the
French authorities, so the reader may get the picture of war between Depardieu- new
Russian citizen- with the French authorities, which may lead to the notion of war between
France and Russia.
The word regime, whether French or Russian is mentioned several times throughout the
corpus in order to represent both states as negative. Moreover, the word regime is a feature
of non-democratic society, so in that way France and Russia appear to be non-democratic
states. In the article from the website expatica.com, it is written that the Russian opposition
does not believe in democracy in their state and they actually make fun of Depardieus
statements about Russia as a great democracy.
"He is impressed by our democracy -- he has completely lost his marbles," wrote one
Facebook user, Vladimir Sokolov. (www.expatica.com.2013)

In The Guardians article, there are sentences about Azerbaijans situation in society and its
culture. Although unrelated to the topic itself, the reporter mentions it only because
Depardieu gave an interview for the Russian television from its capital city- Baku.

On Saturday, police arrested hundreds of Azeris who came out for a rare protest against the
government's refusal to deal with hazing in the country's conscript army.
Depardieu praised Azerbaijan's culture and said it was "part of the culture of the larger
Russia that was created by Catherine the Great", according to Rossiya's translation.
(Elder,2013)

Depardieus love towards Russia, its people and history is mentioned several times in the
Russian newspapers while in the French and English, one looks at his love with the certain
dose of sarcasm, because they think he does not like Russia as much as his money.
he (Depardieu) "loves money more than motherland. "Let's give our passports to
everyone who has lots of money and doesn't want to pay taxes at home!" (expatica.com,
2013)

5. Conclusion

Throughout this paper, it was shown how the case of Gerard Depardieu is seen through eyes
of different media from different countries. The attempt to represent France as a very
negative and its authorities as a regime, was very successful in the Russian newspaper
Pravda, while Russia Today gave the objective picture without personal opinions.
Newspapers from France tried to blacken Russia and its president and gave a very negative
picture of Depardieu saying that he loves his money more than his homeland. While
Pravda describes Depardieu as a victim of the French regime, the English newspapers
express their rather negative opinion about his act. Both the English and the French
newspaper have a common opinion that Putin uses Depardieu to promote Russia in a better
light in the world. However, the people who wrote these articles are naturally affected by
political and social background, so everybody reports from their own perspective. In that
way, one can come to her/his own conclusion about the case of Gerard Depardieu.

References

1. Fairclough, Norman. Language and Power. Longman Inc., New York, 1989. Print.
2. Van Leeuwen, T. The Representation of Social Actors. London: Routledge, 32-69.
1996. Print.
3. Kroth, O. Welcome to Russia, Gerard Depardieu! Pravda 4 Jan 2013. Web 9 Feb
2013
4. France24. Depardieu Likens Putin to John Paul II, May 2013
5. Expatica.com Russians Mock Kremlin Decision On Depardieus Passport, January
2013
6. BBC News. Gerard Depardieu Registered as Russian Resident, February 2013
7. Elder, Miriam. Depardieu praises Vladimir Putin and attacks Russian opposition,
The Guardian, January 2013
8. Russia Today. Putin Grants Citizenship To Depardieu, January 2013
9. www.britannica.com
10. Evans, Julian. Spinning Russia. Foreign Policy, December 1, 2005