Predicative use of the personal pronoun him in Sur La Braise by Henri Djombo

Abstract

This article studies the predicative use of the personal pronoun him in Sur La Braise by Henri Djombo. Thus, the objective is to describe the kinetics of him, as anaphora and cataphor of the represented element. The study demonstrates that the presence and absence of indices of subjectivity, which reinforce the thematization of this pronoun, would contribute to distinguishing the style of Djombo, to aestheticize his text and to convert his fiction into populist discourse. With a dual psychomechanical and pragmatic approach, we analyze the syntactic figures used and the stylistic effects targeted by the author. We show that the author avoids three-element structures for the sake of brevity and literality. It mobilizes exclusively the elliptical structures with a single element (lui + Ø) and with two elements (lui + SN + Ø / SN + lui + Ø) in which lui is sometimes reinforced by means of a prepositive locution (as for), d an indefinite adjective “even” or an adverb (also), to get as many readers as possible to adhere to his vision of the world that he shares. Keywords : Henri Djombo, predicative pronoun, dislocation, double marking, expressive values.