Contenu du sommaire : Mémoire, histoire, langage, sous la direction de Jean-Jacques Courtine

The Fabric of Memory : Historical Perspectives in Language Sciences. This article introduces the different contributions to this issue and tries to open new perspectives on language and memory to historical work in language sciences. It offers a brief survey of the main historical trends in French linguistics in the last 20 years, discourse analysis and history of linguistics. It weight the results of these traditions in the light of recent historical work on the question of memory. It highlights the scientific as well as political and cultural aspects of an interdisciplinary work on language and memory.

The European Linguistic Memory. This text was first delivered and published as the opening lesson of Professor Weinrich's teaching at the College de France. It takes place in a global project of redefining certain aspects of contemporary linguistics — especially textual linguistics — from the viewpoint of memory. This contribution also outlines a cultural history of memory in Europe. Language sciences are conceived here as the meeting point of different disciplinary approaches of the question of memory.

The Historical Hypothesis and the Grammatical Under-Determination of Language. Sylvain Auroux's work is an attempt at establishing the epistemologie al foundations of a scientific perspective integrating history as major data in the field of language sciences. Through a critical reading of the formalist reduction of linguistic creativity to linguistic recursivity, this article shows how empirical language belongs to history, and how linguistic interactions are only partly determined by grammar.

F. de Saussure and the Constitution of a Domain of Memory for Contemporary Linguistics This text examines the memory of linguistics as a discipline by questioning the essential reference of many linguistic works to F. de Saussure's Course of General Linguistics. It show the complexity of this apparently simple referential operation, in which it perceives different and often contradictory reading strategies, various modes of reception and several time periods. This work is a contribution to the understanding of what is the « domain of memory » (Foucault) of contemporary linguistics.

F. Brunot (1860-1938) : the Fabrication of a Memory of the French Language. This article studies how the French linguist F. Brunot — author of the huge and famed History of the French language — was educated and how his career developed. It shows the way his conception of the history of the French language as memory was strongly determined not only by the French academic tradition, but also above all by the future Brunot envisioned for French society.

A Controversy without Memory : the French Struggle over Spelling (1893-1991). Michel Arrive 's article surveys over a hundred years various episodes of the French interminable feud over spelling reforms. It stresses the paradoxical nature of the controversy, as far as the question of collective memory is concerned : this debate about memory is a debate with no memory. And indeed the same antagonistic arguments are being used again and again over the years in a sort of endless repetition. This contribution shows how this attachment to spelling is an essential part of the French collective linguistic memory.

The Russian Model : Anamnesis of Language and Quest for Identity (the Language-Memory of the People). Patrick Seriot reconstructs the history of the discourse on language in Russia, in order to demonstrate how a collective memory and identity are built upon it. Through different periods of Russian contemporary history, he uncovers a persisting focus on language conceived as the memory of the Russian people, and the deeply rooted idea of a national memory grounded on an ethnic definition of language and culture.

Russia/SSSR : the Russian National Discourse as Memory and Rejection. Denis Paillard's contribution examines the latest aspects of the new political culture born in Russia after the collapse of communism. It shows that in the years 1986-1992 a « new » discourse on memory has appeared which is a hybrid product of the Russian traditional national discourse and of the remnants of Stalinist discourse. The text unveils the common logic that these two discourses share, discovering deep cultural continuities through the recent political upheavals.

Memory and Event : July 14 1989. This article explores an essential side of the French collective memory : the commemoration of July 14 1789 held during the ceremonies of the Bicentenial of the French Revolution. Through the analysis of different French newspapers from opposite political sides, they study the constitution of collective memory as discourse. They also question the status of the concept of discourse as history and linguistics envision it.