Multiculturality in discourse analysis: The “French” example

Abstract

Multiculturality plays a key role in the way texts and talks are studied. Although from the 1980s onwards discourse analysis has been subject to a process of globalization, it is still divided into various trends that were originally rooted in cultural intellectual traditions, but spread out to other cultures and countries. This article aims at presenting one of them: French discourse analysis. We begin with describing its origins and its main characteristics (“French” tendencies): a non-empiricist style of research, an interest in non-conversational corpora, pre-occupation with “linguistic materiality” [matérialité linguistique] and with the question of subjectivity in discourse, and the primacy of interdiscourse. Special attention is paid to its attitude towards subjectivity, which is tightly connected with the European theories of linguistic “enunciation”. As many French discourse analysts do not focus on the coherence of texts or genres, a distinction is made between “topical” (types, genres) and “non-topical” categories (discursive formations, networks). Hence we are allowed to introduce two concepts: “enunciation scene” and “ethos”, which are illuminated by two examples: a political program and an advert for a whiskey company. This article concludes that the existence of various trends in discourse analysis around the world is a condition of its development.