Sylvie Bruxelles

Tool-assisted analysis of interactional corpora: voilà in the CLAPI database

The aim of this paper is to show how databases and computer tools can be used for archiving and browsing corpora of social interactions. The development of specific search engines allows for both qualitative analysis of naturally occurring interactions and for quantitative explorations of larger corpora. The paper is based on the CLAPI Workbench , an interfaced ensemble of analytic tools which operates on a consistent body of corpora to facilitate their description and theoretical reconstruction. The analytical part of the paper focuses on the uses of a discourse particle in French interaction: “voila”.

‘Décidément’: La classification dissimulée☆

Abstract The French adverb decidement can be used in isolation and then constitute by itself a statement- like type of utterance. It is also used to introduce - and comment on - the utterance that follows. Examples of these two functions are presented and explained within a unified semantic description that accounts for the diversity of effects observed in different discourse situations. The speaker depends on an implicit classification which he forces upon the addressee. We describe this cognitive process by using Prietos approach to communication and the concept of argumentation (Anscombre and Ducrot 1976). This study is based on the assumption that a semantic-description cannot be separated from a pragmatic account of the linguistic object.