France`s Sarkozy Revels in Plain-Spoken Style

Critics often link his rough and ready spoken manner with the accusations of populism or the ´bling bling´ vulgarity.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's attack this week on a "crazy" financial system and its overpaid bosses gave the world a taste of an unvarnished style that is admired and detested in roughly equal measure at home.

Sarkozy has little time for the peculiarly rounded form of oratory that French presidents have traditionally specialised in, mixing up his tenses, sprinkling his speech with slangy and demotic terms and slipping readily into the familiar "tu" form.

"I am told 'We don't know who is responsible.' Oh yeah? Well let me tell you that when things were going well, we knew who got bonuses," he told a news conference in New York on Tuesday immediately after a speech at the United Nations.

Far from maintaining a stately presidential distance from the fray, Sarkozy has squared off against protesting rail workers and fishermen and, in one notorious incident, told a protestor at an agricultural show to "shove off, arsehole".

"You lose count of all the 'dunnos', "yeahs' and 'come ons' in his improvised remarks that give a populist colour to his appearances," linguist Louis-Jean Clavet wrote in a column in the respected Le Monde daily.

Sarkozy's attack on the well-endowed bankers who helped bring the world financial system to its knees echo similar blasts he has launched against groups ranging from young hoodlums to lazy benefit claimants.

But he has some unexpected defenders when it comes to his use of French.

RAW TERMS

"I don't think his use of language is incorrect, far from it, it's very precise," said Jean-Marie Rouart, a novelist and member of the Academie Francaise, the august body that is considered the guardian of the French language.

"He's a man who expresses himself in quite raw terms. You could make the criticism on the level of appropriateness but not on the level of the French language," he told Reuters.

Critics often link his rough and ready spoken manner with the accusations of populism or the "bling bling" vulgarity that sank his approval ratings earlier this year.

But even his political opponents concede he is a very effective speaker.

"It's Nicolas Sarkozy's strength," Pierre Moscovici, a senior member of the opposition Socialists told the left wing daily Liberation. "He speaks French badly, but he speaks to French people."

Jacques Seguela, the advertising executive who introduced Sarkozy to his supermodel wife Carla Bruni, said the president spoke directly, bringing the language of everyday France to the gilded halls of the Elysee Palace.

"It's spoken from the heart. It's a spontaneous, spoken not written language at a time of SMS and mobile telephones," he said.