Annabelle Seoane, About pragma-declaratory values of ellipsis points in French

Omnipresent in our daily life (press, advertising, SMS…), ellipsis points are quite interesting for those who study discourse and its potential applications from a didactical and pedagogical point of view.
Our analysis will look at the suitable functioning of ellipsis points in a monological context and through a discourse-analytical approach: by the work of different discursive fields (press, advertising, movie posters, comics, school books etc.), we will adopt an enunciative trans-generic perspective which will allow us to study, on the one hand, the way they are situated between, an explicit and clear speech and, on the other hand, an implicit and latent speech. They act thus within a favourable space of application of the masking effects of what we say and what we cannot say. With the idea that the text does not say everything, these points become internalisation instruments of intentionality and give the discourse a new modal orientation, by inviting to activate a system of thought which exists outside the enunciation itself.
By typographycally marking the pause, they make a suspension and trigger the reader’s interpretative dynamics, centred by the category of style and the pragma-enunciative relationship created between the speaker and the reader. They produce, then, pragmatic effects that are linked to the functioning in a specific discourse, which we are going to put here into light.

 

Published on: The teachers and the freedom in teaching N. 26 Nuova Serie – Anno XIII 2017