Une approche automatisée pour la recherche des figures de style de répétition

Abstract

Stylistic figures have seen a renewed academic interest in the context of automated analysis pertaining to the fields of computational linguistics and philological analysis of the text and resulting as such from an interdisciplinary approach. The paper examines the problem of classifying and searching stylistic figures of repetition which belong to the basic means of rhythm creation in a fictional text. The aim of the research is thus seen in differentiating between rhythm figures as well as in identifying the peculiarities of their functioning in the French prose of the 20th century.A challenging area in this field is an absence of unified definition of the stylistic figures of repetition in different languages (English, French and Russian). It entails the need for their distinction to provide for the analysis of rhythm based on the repetition of certain units in different positions in the framework of comparative studies. Rhythm in prose received a lot of attention in the past decade, however current research has proved it an increasingly topical subject since it allows for implementing automated methods to its analysis. The authors propose a new approach to find and analyze stylistic figures of repetition in a text. The PRD (ProseRhythmDetector) tool searches and counts such stylistic devices as anaphora, epiphora, simploce, epanalepsis, epizeuxis, anadiplosis and diacope. The paper evaluates the results of their search in a number of 20th century French texts with a quantitative analysis of the data presented in tables and charts as well as the characteristics of idiolects of three French authors (Colette, A. de Saint-Exupéry and A. Camus).