Contenu du sommaire : Figures et point de vue

Figures of speech and confronted points of view : an introduction. The figure of speech is a process which demonstrates the fact that words do not produce meaning as a “mirror” of things in the extralinguistic world, but according to linguistic representations, or points of view. These points of view appear in utterances or fragments of utterances, referring either to a first speaker/enunciator, or to second enunciators. The dialogic figure of speech process is based on the unexpected production of a point of view with regard to habitual ways of thinking and speaking, and relies on the singularity of a tangible experience and its meaning. According to this approach, the first speaker/enunciator assumes responsibility for his points of view and takes into account the points of view of second enunciators, in order to appropriate them and distance himself from them. There is a tension in the confronted points of view between an interactional dimension and a cognitive dimension, which become privileged expressions of a problematic enunciation.

Confronted points of view in the antimetabola MORE and LESS. The article first of all analyzes the relations between antimetabola (repetition of words in an opposite order, in successive proposals), chiasmus and reversion, and then proposes two big classes of antimetabola, referred to as antimetabola MORE (A +) and antimetabola LESS (A –), according to whether the points of view contained in the reversed propositions are combined or are excluded. The analysis of these confronted points of view reveals two functions of antimetabola : in A +, the selection of a dominant point of view does not prevent the merging of the two points of view assumed by speaker1/enunciator1, while in A –, such a selection implies a rejection or a distancing of the point of view taken into account to the benefit of the only point of view assumed by speaker1/enunciator1. This distinction is reflected in the various pragmatic figures of speech which emerge, where there is a tension between the intake of the same and of the other, feeding on the consensual and/or agonic figures of speech of the enuciator.

The oxymora : a tool for polemics or textual cohesion ? In this paper, we consider the oxymora as a confrontation between contradictory points of view which are built by the co (n) text and related with different enunciative origins. We definite two kinds of oxymora : a polemic one and a more consensual one. In the polemic oxymora, the speaker assumes responsibility for only one of the points of view and gives the antithetic one as untrue or limited. In the second kind of oxymora, the speaker assumes responsibility for a point of view which results from the synthesis of two contradictory ones. The paper, studying literary examples belonging to different genres and oral contemporary uses, deals with oxymora textual and pragmatic interests. Oxymora appears as an argumentative weapon in which the speaker's point of view can prevail, but also as a tool for textual cohesion, keeping in an easy-to-remember formula the whole discursive process. Key words : oxymora, point of view, enunciation, textual cohesion, pragmatics

The tautological tyranny : evidency as an enunciative tool and a discursive strategy. This paper aims to reassess the figural status of tautology, which rhetorical tradition considers either an “expressive” figure or a vice, by emphasizing its enunciative and pragmatic functioning through precise contextual examples. The comparison between tautology and similar figures such as pleonasm or antanaclasis first shows how the formula/X is X/lies on the well known principle of semantic dissimilation on the one hand and on a tyrannical assimilation of the points of view on the other hand. Second, the analysis points out the tautologist's taste for both non indexical utterances and doxical point of view. Finally, Lucile Gaudin-Bordes studies the various discursive strategies by which tautology presents as an evidency a vision without a source and reduces alterity in chosing the enunciative postures of coenunciation or superenunciation.

Shift in speech and selection of point of view in metalepsis. The heterogeneity of the definitions of metalepsis and its variable scope – from temporal metonymy of M. Bonhomme to narratological figure of G. Genette – leads us to reconsider this figure in a pragma-enunciative approach. We show that a shift in speech and a selection of point of view are added to the first criteria, of (chrono) logic reordering and indirect name. These two new criteria produce a shortcut both referential and enunciative. We then examine the nature of this para-informative shortcut and dynamic changes of points of view on the same object. The study of the stage setting of the points of view and discursive strategies of the main enunciator allows to show pragmatic values of metalepsis.

The enallage : an operation of grammatical commutation and/or enunciative disjunction ? The introduction of an enallage within an existing grammatical and referential frame, and by comparison with it, signals the unexpected use of a grammatical form (tense, verbal form, or person). Suggested explanations for this perceived distortion – i.e. substitution (Fontanier), syntactic elliptical form (Beauzée), or indeed grammatical error (Dumarsais) – point to a ‘translation'/ rewriting of the utterance. This paper, focusing on person enallage, argues against these approaches on the basis of discursive materiality (interaction between persons) to describe underlying enunciative positions and relevant viewpoints in the figurative sequence. By introducing through its characteristic individual configuration a disjunction between deictic and modal applications, a person enallage reveals simultaneously both tension and resolution of these viewpoints.

To say and to say more or less “Style” figures of speech also are manifestations of speech acts. These acts demand that their contexts of enunciation should be taken into account, in order to be actualised in communication processes. This conception leads us to transcend the typological fragmentation antagonizing “word figures” and “thought figures”. Figurative language stages a problematized enunciation that incites a reflexion on a sort of modalisation. The coupled analysis of two figures concerned with the fact of “saying the least” i. e euphemism and litote aims at explaining the pragmatic divergence that many treaties attribute to them (to make the least heard, vs “awaken the idea of more”). If a confrontation of points of view underlies the act of toning down, the external point of view that crosses the enunciative process takes its source differently : it corresponds to an interdiscursive diaologism for euphemism and to an interlocutive diaologism for litote.

Hyperbolic Speech in Interaction. This paper focuses on live hyperboles in ordinary conversation, defined as utterances expressing intense and sincere feelings. After showing that, as far as the referential and pragmatic approaches are concerned, hyperboles only amount to gross exaggeration, without offering any way of scaling them, the paper turns to a dialogical approach (cf. Bakhtine) which takes into account the utterer's relationship to the addressee and to interdiscourse. It points out that linguistic markers of intensity (prosodic, lexical, morphological or syntactical) are often found alongside some dialogical markers. The latter make it possible to articulate, at least, two points of view : a normative one assumed to be that of the doxa, of a third party or of the addressee, and an hyperbolic one that the speaker is trying to bring the addressee round to sharing.