What type of subjectivity lies behind French causal connectives? A corpus-based comparative investigation of <i>car</i> and <i>parce que</i>

Abstract

In French, the difference between the causal connectives parce que and car is traditionally related to the prototypical causal relations they are meant to convey. The main claim is that car conveys more subjective relations and is also used in higher register language, whereas parce que is equally well-suited to both types of relations. In line with recent studies, this contribution questions the clear-cut distinction between the two connectives on the basis of a comparative corpus investigation with annotation tasks (journalistic and text messaging registers). Our results do not corroborate the traditional hypotheses that car is used to express more subjective relations and it is restricted to higher register language. On the contrary, we find that car has a strong tendency to be perceived by addressees as providing the information in a more objective way. Our empirical investigation has allowed us to put forth a modified notion of subjectivity which is associated with car and parce que: we distinguish between the more classic approach – the type of subjectivity related to causal relations, and a novel approach – the evaluative type of subjectivity related to the expressive use of language. We rely on the relevance-theoretic framework to spell out our theoretical proposal.