Contenu du sommaire : Les analyses du discours en France, sous la direction de Dominique Maingueneau

Authors present research in a new field : analysis of language at work. They place this research in the development of discourse analysis in France, they point out the specificity of this domain and organize these studies from three perspectives : lexical production at work, mixing of various semiotics, and mixing of language and activity.

This article examines and develops some key concepts of a theoretical frame for discourse analysis today : the cognitive dimensions of research on ordinary discourses, some descriptive categories for their linguistic analysis (such as evaluation, designation and didactic orientation) and the structure of discourse communities, which can be used to shape a discourse topology.

The research of this article centers on a commitment to a discourse analysis focusing on history. Herein lies an attempt at interpreting the meaning of utterance in the forms of language and in the effects of archivization. It is first question of a historian-observer describing linguistic events in a precise historical environment. Then the linguist devises an observatory of various discourses which make it possible to confront the materiality of forms and the values of social practices. Finally, a study of utterances based on linguistic and discursive properties (reflexivity, interdiscursivity) goes towards constructing an observatory of interpretative processes.

Applying discourse theory in the field of sociology leads to considering social organization as involving discourse « registers », with their associated genres. The non-linear relation registers induces a dialogic view (in Voloshinov's sense) of discourse formations which can be analyzed through enunciation. Concrete examples of analysis are provided.

As politics and language are places of confrontation and temporary peaces, theory and methods of discourse analysis seem the best ways to evaluate strategies and ideologies. Such is the object of research undertaken in the Saint-Cloud laboratory of Lexicometry and Political Texts, sometimes with informatic and statistical techniques.

Any method of analysis depends on a theoretical framework on which is based the empirical phenomenon observed and which cosntructs the object under study. What is proposed here is to define such a framework, stating that it is a question of semiolinguistic problematics of discourse and the components of the resulting socio-language structuration. There follows the presentation of the methodological framework which the Centre d'Analyse du Discours uses in its analysis of monological and dialogical texts.

This article presents a type of discourse analysis suitable for discourses « constituent » (religious, philosophical, scientific, for example), whose function is to warrant the multiple verbal productions in a society. It is assumed that the remarkable status they have as founding discourses gives them common proper- ties. This assumption is exemplified with religious and philosophical texts from the XVII th century.