En d’autres termes : dialogisme et altérité

Abstract

The aim of this article is to describe the uses of the French marker en d’autres termes ‘in other words’ by insisting on its polyphonic aspects rather than its strictly paraphrastic ones. This marker encodes procedural information of otherness instructing the listener to interpret the subsequent segment not only as semantically equivalent to the previous one but also as an implication of a series of contextual assumptions. First, we rapidly compare in other words with two similar reformulation markers: c’est-à-dire ‘that is to say’ and autrement dit ‘in other words’. Then, we examine to what extent reformulation procedures lead to productions involving identity and alterity. The study is based on oral and written corpora.

Keywords

• en d’autres termes ‘in other words’
• c’est-à-dire ‘that is to say’
• autrement dit ‘in other words’
• rewording
• otherness
• dialogism