Quand et comment survient l’interpellation en classe : étude comparative d’oraux en maternelle et au collège

Abstract

Interlocutory spaces corresponding to ‘direct interpellation’ were studied comparatively in infant and middle schools. Preliminary processing of corpora identified the role of the prime indicators – pronouns I and you and first names. A second, pragmatic study isolated interpellative episodes by extracting the interlocutory circumstances governing the use of these pronouns and first names. In this way, the two contexts were differentiated (infant and middle schools): (i) a large majority of retroactive episodes in infant school and (ii) functional divergence in pupil-teacher relative positioning. A third, morphosyntactic study showed noteworthy trends and specific features in language use, e.g., it’s..., I-myself..., the use of characteristic expressions, e.g., people..., and complex textual organisation. We conclude that classroom discussion constructs an interpellative route where (i) in infant school the teacher ‘queries’ the pupil, whereas (ii) in middle school the pupil has to ‘guess’ what the teacher is expecting.

Keywords

• pragmatics
• interpellation
• corpus
• morphosyntax
• didactics