« Plus rien à prouver » : marche, course, escalade extrêmes

Abstract

Our research falls within the sphere of the linguistic disciplines, and in particular of the discourse analysis of the French school, privileging lexical data and phrasal items in the corpus we have compiled. Moving beyond previous studies into running and walking, here we examine the extremes which walking, running and climbing enthusiasts can reach. In our corpus – gathered from mountain literature, essays on running and walking, blogs and websites regarding marathons and Caminos of Santiago de Compostela, novels – the notion of the extreme has both intrinsic and extrinsic values which we examine. Verticality and horizontality are a further two concepts of interest to us, linked, as they are, to these activities of the human body on the move.

Keywords

• walking
• running
• climbing
• extreme
• discourse analysis