The Role of Speech Stereotypes in the Organization of French Protest Song Discourse (Chanson Engagée)

Abstract

The research featured the role of speech stereotypes in the formation of the discourse of protest songs, or chanson engagée, in the French language culture. The study included the method of continuous sampling, discursive analysis, and a descriptive method. Stereotype is a ready-to-use idea about a certain social group or phenomena. The research revealed a number of functions performed by speech stereotypes in the discourse of protest songs. Stereotypes appeared to have the following discourse organization function: they establish the horizontal relationship between communicators to create the communicative equality of the sender and the recipient. Their axiological function is in that they create emotional background that affects the mood and feelings of the recipient. Stereotypes create the illusion of objectivity, where judgment is replaced by the "obvious" knowledge, a fact statement. The dramatization function implies a certain collision. The objectification function is realized due to the incorporation of relevance markers in the artistic text fabric, signaling about the problems of society: if people regularly hear about something, they believe that they understand the phenomenon. The function of banalization means that stereotypes simplify the situation. The persuasive function is in the absence of an obvious appeal: songwriters resort to using clichés that are firmly rooted in the world culture.