Singer ou de la répétition des mots à l’imitation des corps

Abstract

This article addresses the ways in which the other’s gestures, postures, and attitudes (subsumed by the concept of corporality), just as his/her words, can be reported, and the place of corporal repetition in reported speech as a specific phenomenon of language. Through an examination of the semantic values of three verbs (to quote / to imitate / to ape), it argues that quoting another person’s body indicates a certain degree of the subject’s investment in his/her own discourse—a subject that stakes his/her social ethos on the degree of discursive success of his/her performance.

Keywords

• reported speech
• quotation
• discourse analysis
• gesture-imitation
• posture