Contenu du sommaire : Discours et sens commun

This article proposes to evaluate the relevance of the saussurian concept of language. First of all we remind the theoretical context of this concept ; in a further time we show : I) that it represents the amalgam of several concepts more fundamental that it is important to dissociate ; II) that it fails to give an account of the variation as well diatopic as diastratic ; III) that language, that one defines it in the manner of Saussure or a more flexible way, is not the necessary framework of any linguistic analysis. We are thus led to propose several concepts allowing to make the economy of the concept of language in all the cases where this one is not operational.

Ever since semantics became a scientific disipline in its own right, there has been a continuous discussion about the ontological status of its object of study, meaning. In an attempt to overcome the theoretical problems inherent to both subjectivism and objectivism, this article explore the possibility that meaning exists as an emergent intersubjective property, that is that only the meaning which is common to more than one speaker has real and relatively autonomous existence. From this conception of meaning it follows an epistemology which is neither that of the exterior observer, nor that of subjective introspection, but one of we, that is an interactional, participant and dialogical epistemology.

Our contribution is an attempt to articulate the polysemy of concept of common sense (shared sensory experience vs ordinary knowledge) by analysing the role of linguistic (lexical) forms in constructing cognitive categories for common senses, from the observed differences, in lexical forms as well as in discourses, between senses, and particularly between colour and odour categories. Colour categories, highly lexicalized contrast with odour “naming” which actually does not refer to the odour itself but to an odorant source, or to an effect. Such an analysis of the lexicon, integrated in discourse analysis, allows to reconsider the notion of common sense both within a psychological conception of individual sensory representations, and the construction of knowledge in discourse.

The study of semantics norms may allows us to return to a rather outdated problem, that of the relationship between ideology and « formations discursives » (Foucault), not from the point of view of a political philosophy, but from that of linguistics. Large electronic corpora allows textual stereotypes to be studied in a new way. Our study will be lexicon-based and will underline the necessary critical dimension for a semantics of doxa.

This contribution takes again the rhetorical problem of the doxa to question the semiotic idea of legitimacy. The thesis defended here consists in assessing the rhetorialc character of any speech, and, through it, the statute of doxa understood as base of the social field. From this prospect we postulate a concept of legitimacy at the principle of the semiotic activity. Topics, as center of rhetoric, is consequently proved inseparable from a concept of anthropological acceptability which conditions the meaning as a social value. It results from it a strong thesis on the doxic incarnation of language (in particular verbal) with a redefinition of the statute of meaning from the primacy of ethics.

In spite of its decrease in the modern context, the proverb remains part of a common sense which is not reduced to a background of language, but belongs to a whole of techniques of speech. Within the framework of a theory of the semantic forms, we propose a model of the figurale genericity of proverbs, deploying a variety of “motifs” to various stages of integration. We see in particular that a trans-discursive level emerges from koinè semantic, where the dimensions of sensibility and doxa are brought together in common sense. The following points are specifically approached : anarchistic diversity of formular interpretations, fluctuation of the lexical values, rock of gnomic/deontic, logical and proverbial realism. One underlines the nonconsensual character of the community of meaning, the need for reconsidering the problem of modalities, and, at least, the scientific interest of a concept of “micro-genre” for the discursive approach of common sense.

Linguistics must set for task a theory of common sense, able to describe the mechanisms of semantic obviousness. From this point of view, the philosophical concept of common sense is redefined here in terms of semiotic process of the norms of the praxis. The detailed analysis of these norms shows that they operate simultaneously in various registers. But the concept of common sense is also specified compared to discursive dynamics, starting from three types of variations (canon, vulgate, doxa). To these typical variations of common sense correspond of functional criteria applicable to the analysis of corpus. The study outlines moreover a praxeologic and pragmatic model of the concept of “genre” and proposes to revalue the role of the speaker starting from the concept of “pluriphonie”. It is a question of specifying, step by step, the idea of community of language.

This paper deals with the dynamic construction of the discursive object INTERMITTENT in a media corpus. Our goal is to integrate a discursive point of view into a semantic perspective : discursive corpus are priorized, because they define places of inscription as well as spontaneous modeling for common sense ; and these discursive sets must thus allow to bring back the dynamics of meaning to the formations which are in the beginning, in order to define contours of ambient topics relating to a particular object. The notions of ‘common sense' (Sarfati 1996) and of perception will be the background of this topic analysis, in witch the discursive and ideological dimensions of meaning are put forward, taking into account textual, semantic, and discursive dimensions of the construction of meaning.