Un homme comme vous! Ressemblance et identité référentielle

Abstract

This article aims to describe noun phrases such as un N comme moi / toi / vous ‘a N like me / you (informal) / you (formal)’. They can either build a class constituted by Ns sharing exemplary properties with the speaker or the hearer (un homme comme vous ‘a man like you’; une femme comme moi ‘a woman like me’), or assimilate the speaker (or more rarely the hearer) to the class denoted by the N before comme (un pauvre petit ver de terre comme moi ‘a poor little worm like me’; une montagne de chair et d’os comme toi, lit. ‘a mountain of flesh and bones like you’). In the three constructions, categorising nouns are used most often, but the usage of pejorative or ameliorative non categorising nouns differs according to the pronoun. A corpus study shows that the use of these NPs is related to face work, more specifically to the preservation of the hearer’s positive face.

Keywords

• comme ‘as
• like’
• exemplarity
• typification
• discourse