Contenu du sommaire : Dialogisme et marqueurs grammaticaux

The aim of this introduction paper is to justify a grammatical approach of dialogism. Jacques Bres and Sylvie Mellet argue for the hypothesis that the language system (rather than the mere discourse level) has the potential to express dialogic phenomena and possesses specific markers to this end. They first specify the concept of dialogism by confronting it with other similar notions like polyphony or enunciative heterogeneity. They then examine the – either grammatical or lexical – nature of the elements by which dialogism is marked. They notably point out the recurrent association between the dialogic function of some markers and their grammaticalization. By the way, they also justify the choice of developing this analysis within the theoretical framework of French enunciative linguistics : indeed, they show that by articulating dialogism to the grammatical system, it is necessary to conceptualize the connexion between language and speech in terms of enunciative actualization.

To what extent verbal tenses are concerned with dialogism ? Jacques Bres develops the idea that the conditional is the only tense in the indicative mode to be dialogic in the language system : the morphological association of two verbal suffixes, – r and – ai (s), entails an enonciative splitting : an enunciator (E) locates in the past (–ai (s)) another enunciator (e), who views the process as subsequent (–r). The future tense and the imp1erfect (and to a certain extent the prospective imper1fect as well as the present tense and the prospective present) only have dialogic uses in context : if it is contextually required, their temporal and aspectual instructions enable them to participate actively to the production of a dialogic meaning.

In this paper, Jean-Marc Sarale describes various occurrences of possessive noun phrases which take a dialogical meaning in context, such as “your N” meaning “the N you spoke of” or “the thing you call N “. This kind of enunciative splitting can happen in proper noun as well as in common noun phrases, at all persons (my/your/his...), regardless of syntactic function. It is suggested that the personal indicator implied in the possessive adjective may contextually point at another source than the main speaker, when interacting with a subjective indicator or a dialogical marker. The possessive adjective doesn't seem to be a marker of dialogism in itself, but rather a dialogical signal in context – some of his contextual interactions are described.

Geneviève Salvan considers specific relative clauses, whose antecedent is separated from, to show that they operate as markers of dialogism. These relative clauses express an autonomous assertion and install in the sentence an enunciative duplication. Unlike coordination which joins several informations, they are building a hierarchical and enunciative oriented representation. They add an enunciative (re) orientation of first assertion, which is their dialogical specificity. The last part deals with the various dialogical and discursive values of these relative clauses.

Aleksandra Nowakowska deals with a syntactic structure called in grammar left and right dislocation : Paul, he is a nice guy ; He is a nice guy, Paul. The analysis is based on a body of articles in the journalistic press. Following an initial description of this syntactic structure and of the framework of analysis, this article provides a close study of dialogic function of dislocation. The hypothesis of work stipulates that the dislocation is dialogic because the theme implies a relationship with a prior utterance by another enunciation. This relationship between two utterances makes dislocation a dialogic marker and produces in a discourse, according to the rheme and the context, the different effects of sense : agreement, concession, irony, etc.

Michèle Monte deals with the use of si in non conditional dependant clauses. Based on a big corpus (press and essays), our research distinguishes three categories of si P clauses : topical clauses in which Q explains P, concessive ones in which Q limits P, and comparative ones where Q is compared with P. We explain these uses of si – which are not so marginal as it could seem – by the value of si in the system : we definite si as a morpheme that puts the allocutor in front of a choice he is invited to make although the context and the clause position already show the locutor's preference. In a second part we show how the dialogism works in each category : anticipating a counter-argument, bringing into use arguments belonging to the interdiscourse, resuming the locutor's speech (auto-reformulation). In a third part we insist on the argumentative interest of si in contexts where the locutor wants the interlocutor to think it is himself who validates the si P content. Thanks to its value in the system, si allows to benefit from elements belonging to the context while giving the idea their validation is still in doubt.

Sylvie Garnier and Frédérique Sitri question the characterization of certes as a « dialogical discourse marker ». After demonstrating the difficulty that most polyphonic descriptions of certes have in describing the different usages of the adverb in a unified manner, they show that certes, in marking the clause it refers to as containing a “certain” point of view as compared to other points of view, carries an aspect of alterity. In discourse, and particularly in the concessive constructions, this alterity is capable of making an altered discourse heard, and of producing effects of interdiscursive and interlocutive dialogism, or autodialogism that they attempt to characterize in various discursive genres.

Stéphane Bikialo develops the idea that the pseudo-objective motivation described by Bakthine comes in the form of a linguistical and discursive configuration that unites a form of language (a logical connector) and a distinctive discursive item. The purpose of this article is to explain the theoretical status, the formal characteristics (markers of consequence, cause and comment) and the nature of the enunciative heterogeneity and the discursive effect which are triggered by this configuration by insisting on the forms of language that these different forms of dialogism summon up.

Sylvie Mellet examines the hypothesis that dialogism is not only a discursive effect of meaning, but that it is also grounded in the language structure. In that respect, the expression of dialogism may be considered as integrated to the grammar itself. She supports this point by studying grammatical elements that are often and strongly associated to the expression of dialogism (concessive adverbials, comparative and conditional subordinate clauses, negation and the French modal verb pouvoir). Her analysis uses the framework of Culioli's Théorie des Opérations énonciatives and pays a particular attention to the notion of notional alterity : She shows that each of those grammatical elements may be analysed as a scanning operation marker (parcours in French) over the whole notional domain, i.e. over both alternative values p and p'. Thus, by focusing on the enunciative choice between the two propositional values and on the assumption of p rather than p', the marker outlines the possibility of two assertive utterances, consequently of two enunciators and so, it makes the emergence of dialogism possible, or even necessary.