L’exclamation en contexte.

Abstract

The notion of exclamation contains both the idea of exteriorisation and intensity. Evidence from the context shows that exclamation is a modulation, compatible with most utterances, and giving salience either to a full utterance (enunciative salience) or to an element of an utterance (intra-enunciative salience). This paper also examines the motivation of exclamation: situational or contextual assessment and pre-modal evaluative motivation; inter-enunciative pragmatic motivation; or intra-enunciative motivation in the case of focalisation. The analysis of a corpus of exclamative utterances – apostrophes, interjections, focalisation, injunctions; deontic, optative, assertive, evaluative utterances; exclamative constructions – shows that pluri-modality is very often relevant, and questions definitions of exclamation as an effect of surprise, or of an emotional state, or as the expression of high degree.

Keywords

• exclamation
• inter-enunciative relation
• motivation
• exclamative salience
• pluri-modality