Contenu du sommaire : Numéro spécial. L'Autre, l'Etranger, présence et exclusion dans le discours

PATRIOTIC CONSENSUS, HIDDEN FACE OF XENOPHOBIA P.F. explores the emergence and use of the notion of Ueberfremdung (excessive number of foreigners and undue foreign influence). It is found in a 1931 Act, in experts' reports and also in texts issued by the Union Syndicale Suisse (engaged since the 1937 «Paix du travail» in formal cooperation with the swiss Confederation). In those texts it appears as an instrument for national consensus and integration of working class movement. But it also overtly occupies a central position in the xenophobic nationalist speach of the 60s and 70s of which P.F. studies two typical examples : a pamphlet and an interview given by Fritz Meier the founder of the Action nationale, and texts by J. Schwarzenbach who was the initiator of various projects of xenophobic référendums.

« IMMIGRATIONSAUVAGE » The expression caught on in 1973 when the extreme right group Ordre nouveau launched the slogan «Stop " wildcat " immigration ». Lexical item analysis finds three levels of meaning. Sauvage (« wildcat »), at the level of denotation is a doublet of «non contrôlé» («uncontrolled»). But its connotation is that of ruthless brutality, wildness in fact. And above all, in the period following May 1968 in France, the adjective took on a tinge of « youthfulness ». It also hinted at «anti-establishment», «modern» spirit. It is this polysemy of the adjective which gives the expression its wholeness and unity. It turns it into vector that can be accepted because it is new lexical version of common racist expression. Political discourse thus draws from the common fund of social attitudes, latent themes that have not yet been polarized by rifht-wing or left-wing ideologies. By shaping them into special linguistic forms it makes them sound more extreme and endows them with a coherence which turns them into main springs of action.

THE OTHER'S PLACE IN A FALSIFICATION DISCOURSE OF HISTORY. ON A DENIAL OF THE JEWISH GENOCIDE DURING THE IIIRD REICH The authors investigate the relation to the Other's discourse through the strategies of a text (R. Faurisson, 1980), related to the "revisionist" obliteration of the genocide against Jews under the IIIrd Reich. They show two binding levels. The first level is the account of the confrontation between two discourses. It conspicuously sets on stage a «je» harassed by the adverse discourse. In a secretly reversed balance of power, the second level brings actually into play this confrontation through enunciation mechanisms of distance, referential de-construction, etc. intending to destroy — not to discuss — the Other's discourse.

THE DEFINITIONAL PRESUPPOSITIONS OF AN UNDEFINABLE: "RACISM" The definitions of the French lexeme racism were built up through early descriptions of national socialism, in which racism was established as a State ideology. Because of their co-inscription in the general vocabulary, « racism » and «Nazism» have in common certain semantic effects: being the objects of a similar reprobation — even of violent rejection —, they usually appear as hetero-designations, aiming at disqualifying Anyone else supposedly concealed. The defining discourses about racism involve two distinct ideological nuclei appearing according to two metaphorical main lines: «rank» and «blood». These main lines tally with two racisms: inegalitarian racism and differentialist racism. In auto-referential racism, the fact of preserving one's own purity and self-identity constitutes the categorical imperative. In altero-referential racism, it is the hierarchic scale which is to be unreservedly respected. Two distinct logics are derived from it: the domination and the exploitation of the «inferior» (inegalitarian racism), and the extermination of the «impure» («puristic» racism of identity). Three kinds of anti-racist discourses can be distinguished, according to the relationship established between «race» and «racism»: disinvolvement from the scientificity granted to racial anthropology and racist ideology, the impugnment of the concept of race in order to unlegitimate racism, the inseparability of the representations centered on race and racism, these representations involving common unconscious functionings. It is possible to build up a model by synthetizing the discourses which, in defining racism (1932-1983), are rejecting it. This idealtype turns out to throw light rather on the structures of antiracist ideology than on the structures of racism.

A SPEECH UPON COLONIZATION IN BELGIAN CONGO: GAMES OF SKILL The authors intend to specify the representation of colonialism through a speech delivered by King Baudoin the 1rst in Léopoldville in 1955. This representation has not been acted upon either by the accession of many nations to independence or by the more and more radical denunciation of the colonial systems everywhere in the world (Bandoeng Conference) at that time. The network of the lexico-semantic relations such as opposition(s) and equivalence(s) shows colonialism (the word colonialism itself is not in the text) on the side of: humanism, civilization, Christianity, genius. The authors also prove the inevitable ambiguity of the syntagms and enunciation marks expressing the relation between metropolis and colony.

THE JAUNES: WORD-PHANTASM AT THE END OF THE 19th CENTURY In the field of etymology, dictionaries must reduce their investigations either to the abstract philological etymon or to the footnotes of history as regards the origins of the words. The whole complex elaborate process of social assumptions escapes them. The word jaune suddenly sprang from the the watershed of the late nineties to designate a strike-breaker. This has already happened twenty years earlier in California when the Union members bitterly attaked asiatic people brought in by the bosses to fight the unions. In France these jaunes are not people belonging to the yellow race. But why an how did this term catch on and why was it to easily integrated into the system of opposites which constitutes the political discourse. Because phantasms are part and parcel of history. There is first of all the age-old « long forgotten » yet sacred phantasm relating to the colour of heresy and its various shades, throughout the whole Western world of Christianity. And next there is the modern phantasm concocted by xenophobic campaign for colonial wars and against the yellow peril. Both were undoubtedly manipulated by the so called indépendant union, to invert their meaning and in the hottest of the fray during strikes at Montceau-les-Mines and le Creusot (1899). Does this mean that these phantasms where wholly integrated ? Certainly not. For the weight of social historical inertia had not been fully realised and this was the reason why the followers of Bietry failed and the term has remained the mark of infamy for anyone who wears it without assuming its past connotation.

A CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE LINGUISTIC SITUATION IN CATALONIA: FIRST STEPS TOWARDS AN ANALYSIS On one hand, the Manifiesto por la igualdad de derechos linguîsticos en Cataluňa (March 1981) claims to start up a purely linguistic debate. In fact, the real situation is reversed. Catalan language appears a discriminatory weapon, able to lead to the dying out of Castilian. The Manifiesto tends to disqualify the «Other», the «Generalitat» (regional government of Catalonia). On the other hand, the answer of the Catalan institutions, mainly of the Executive Council of the Generalitat, is a supporting discourse. It shows its dependence on the central government to which it is addressed really. This linguistic argument takes place among the power plays between the central (Spanish) and local (Catalan) governments. It reveals opposite political standpoints towards the national Catalan fact.

VERLAN: SCHOOL SLANG OR KEUMS' LANGUAGE? What is the real meaning of the word verlan (syllabic inversion of l'envers) which has been popularized by the mass media ? The authors define and examine four distinct senses. They subsequently undertake a sociolinguistic description of a new social phenomenon : the emergence of a peculiar kind of street slang, spoken especially by young people in housing estates in the suburbs of Paris.