Pour une analyse des énoncés en contexte : théories et pratique

Abstract

This paper deals with the general question of how to study utterances or portions of utterances extracted from real texts. The tradition of teaching English linguistics in France is based on the assumption that the best examples are attested ones and should be analysed taking the co-text into account. Techniques and concepts have been developed within this tradition and have yielded interesting results which underlie teachers’expectations in examinations and ’concours’ (competitive exams forfuture teachers). I nevertheless wish to argue that the format of French ’concours’ like the CAPES and the frameworks which are usually privileged are too restrictive. I take as an example a relatively simple sentence Is that the mill? as used near the beginning of Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. I attempt to produce as complete an analysis as I can of this sentence in its context. This demonstrates what linguists know, i.e. that any utterance is the result of the interplay ofmany complex structures operating in parallel. I also argue that a number of concepts we require appear to be absent from standard textbooks or guides to ’concours’ which are recommended to students in France. I plead for more theoretical openness towards a variety of models which can contribute to our understanding of language and of English in particular. I also plead for a cumulative approach to the teaching of linguistics. Many of the insights of traditional grammar, structuralism, generative grammar, “énonciativisme”, case grammar, cognitive grammar, etc., should be combined and not simply placed in a linear sequence wherein the latest model displaces everything that has gone on before.

Keywords

• anaphora
• ascriptive
• deixis
• equative
• speech-acts
• yes-no questions