Gilles Siouffi

Les modalisateurs émergents en français contemporain: présentation théorique et études de cas

Cet article explicite les points de depart theoriques de la reunion d’etudes empiriques presentee ici. Une premiere partie oppose « emergence » et « evolution » et precise en quoi l’approche emergentiste peut etre stimulante pour aborder des faits d’usage transitoires qui se signalent par leur lien fort avec le discours. Une deuxieme partie etudie les termes circulant actuellement dans la terminologie linguistique, et justifie le choix de modalisateur par rapport, notamment, a marqueur discursif . La derniere partie presente les etudes de cas reunies et formule l’enjeu de la recherche, a la fois sur la diachronie et sur les manieres d’aborder la langue.

« Langue écrite et langue parlée pendant la Première Guerre mondiale : enjeux et perspectives »

Abstract The First World War (1914-1918) has often been seen by historians of the French Language as a dividing line, raising the question of the coincidence between language change and historical change. One of the questions, e. g., is if the First World War was the moment when the use of dialects entered a phase of serious decline, as the soldiers sent to the front lines had to adopt French as a vehicular language. Picturesque aspects were also developed around the war by a significant amount of literary works, often published during the war itself, and tending to promote clichés and stereotypes. But what are the facts? This paper, divided in four parts, examines the different issues that can be raised around the linguistic production of this period, taking in turns the point of view of the linguist, the historian, and the literary critic. The fourth part looks more closely at the written production of the soldiers (letters, postcards). Indeed, during the war a number of individuals (soldiers and their families) had to write in French, perhaps for the first time ever, but certainly for the first time on such a scale. Is there a linguistic specificity to those written productions? Did the level of literacy evolve? This paper attempts to show that the First World War bears a fascinating potential for sociolinguistic enquiries, as some of its language material has so far remained unexploited and may reveal fruitful case studies for some of today’s most important issues in the linguistic field.