A la recherche des mots adéquats : le rôle de l’expression devo dire à l’oral

Abstract

The aim of the study is to show the role of the Italian expression devo dire in different contexts of use. The analysis is based on the approach elaborated in the studies of scholars belonging to the group of the French linguist A. Culioli. First, the forms devo and dire are analyzed and the general hypothesis on the semantics of the whole expression is formulated. After that, the contexts of use are analyzed. The analysis is focused on the formal properties of the context, which make possible the use of the expression, and on the effects of sense it creates. The analyzed data have been collected from two corpora of spoken Italian: LIP (Lingua Italiana Parlata) and SILaNa (Spoken Italian: Interviews about Language and Nation, built at the University of Oslo, accessible on-line). In the latter, the expression devo dire is quite frequent. This fact leads to a reflection on the relationship between the metadiscourse strategies and the type of discourse.

Keywords

• italian language
• the expression devo dire
• the verb dire
• oral discourse
• metalinguistic use
• context of use