Pour une grammaire du discours : l'« ordre oratoire » face à la Praelectio, une occasion manquée

Abstract

Alain Viala : For a speech grammar. The « oratory order » against the praelectio : a missed opportunity The « Français » still persists in treating the study of the language as a preliminary to the study of the texts (lot of grammar in primary school and Junior High School, lot of literature and no grammar in High School), especially by laying the emphasis on sentence's grammar. In reaction to its kicks, has appeared a text's grammar. But the language exists, in practice, as a speech, and is learned before school, and, more, the notion of « text » is problematical. The persistence of such an inadequate mechanism has historical reasons. In the middle of 18th Century, Batteux, by proposing to study the French authors aside of the Ancients, started a movement towards the « oratory order ». But the scholar institution didn't extend it, under the influence of the dominating model : the teaching of latin with a grammar of sentence — for a foreing language — and praelectio — for the literary texts. So there is an aggiornamento necessary and possible by the way of a "speech grammar"