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From Speech Acts to Literary Genres: Toward a Factual and Fictional Discourses Typology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2018

SIMON FOURNIER
SIMON FOURNIER*
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Rimouski
*
*<[email protected]>
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Abstract

In recent decades, speech act theorists began analyzing discourses in order to describe the logic that governs the use and understanding of language in the context of interlocutions. This paper is in the wake of those studies. It questions the fruitfulness of the notion of speech acts in literary pragmatics, analyzes some literary genres and proposes a discourse typology containing eight generic categories that reflect the possible links between factual and fictional discourses. In doing so, it offers a response to a question raised many years ago by a literary theorist that is directed to speech act theorists.

Au cours des dernières décennies, les théoriciens des actes de discours ont amorcé l’analyse des discours afin de décrire la logique qui gouverne l’usage et la compréhension du langage en contexte d’interlocution. Cet article s’inscrit dans la foulée de ces études. Il interroge la fécondité de la notion d’actes de discours en pragmatique littéraire, analyse quelques genres littéraires et propose une typologie des discours composée de huit catégories génériques qui font état des relations logiquement possibles entre les discours factuels et fictionnels, en guise de réponse à une question qu’un théoricien littéraire a posé autrefois aux théoriciens des actes de discours.

Keywords

logic of discoursediscourse typologyspeech actsliterary genresfactual discoursesfictional discourses
Type
Original Article/Article original
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 877 - 894
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2018 

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