Vol. 32 (2020)

sous la rédaction de / edited by
Wiesław Banyś et Beata Śmigielska     Autour de la notion de pragmatème et de notions connexes : diversité d’approches, de termes et de pratiques et autres études  

Phraseology has recently gained significant attention, including fixed constructions like collocations, idioms, proverbs, winged words, and routine formulae. However, distinguishing between lexical and textual units remains a challenge. Therefore, focusing on pragmatic multiword units used in spoken language is essential to understand their specifics better. Pragmatic idioms are conventionalised multiword expressions that are used in recurrent situations and serve various functions in speech acts such as greetings, leave-taking formulae, encouragements, replies, congratulations, etc. However, more studies are needed to understand pragmatic formulae' attributes fully.

This issue of Neophilologica is dedicated mostly to studying the questions raised by the analysis of pragmatemes' attributes.

Igor Mel'cuk has proposed a universal typology for lexical phrasemes based on their constraint nature and compositionality. The constraint types include lexemic, semantic-lexemic, and pragmatemes. Lexemic relates to free construction, semantic-lexemic pertains to conceptual representation, and pragmatemes are based on pragmatic conditions.

Gaston Gross has highlighted the concept of discursive equivalences, where the same idea can be expressed through seemingly unrelated expressions such as "comme la lune," "comme un balai," "comme une baleine," "comme une bite," or "comme une valise." These expressions are pre-constructed sequences that are not under the complete control of the speaker due to their language-specific nature. His article delves into the vast number of such equivalences that exist. Furthermore, important research has been conducted on pragmatemes, which are examples of pre-constructed sequences that do not follow regular syntax rules. Gross's article attempts to provide an initial classification of these cases.

Francis Grossman and Anna Krzyżanowska propose to use two examples to illustrate the lexicographical approach used in a French-Polish Polonium PRAGMALEX project (2018-2019). The PRAGMALEX project utilises a lexicographic approach to provide a pragma-semantic description of French conversational formulas, along with their Polish and Italian equivalents. The project focuses on highlighting the pragmatic values of these formulas and elucidating the sociolinguistic or cultural factors that influence their use in discourse.

Krzysztof Bogacki notes that the term 'pragmateme' is relatively new, and its definitions lack precision, making it difficult to define its scope. However, two criteria are crucial in identifying a pragmateme: it's an independent linguistic unit that involves an act of enunciation and is characterised by selecting a suitable linguistic segment and its use in compliance with all constraints. This criterion is based on classical logic's binary opposition of truth and falsehood. Based on many-valued fuzzy logic, the second criterion requires a unique connection in language users' consciousness between a specific formulation, its semantic content, and other competing formulations. Neither of these criteria correlates with formal exponents, which limits their use in creating a pragmateme dictionary. 

Wiesław Banyś’s text sheds light on the often-neglected role of prosody in defining pragmatemes. It explores the influence of prosody on various linguistic phenomena, presents definitions of pragmatemes by I. Mel’čuk and X. Blanco with S. Mejri, and examines how prosody determines the pragmatematical status of constructions. For a construction to function as a pragmateme, its actual pronunciation in a specific enunciation situation must be appropriate. Suitable intonation and context co-generate the meaning of a construction, making it a pragmateme. Therefore, a comprehensive study of expressions classified as pragmatemes must include critical prosodic information in dictionary entries.

Ruth de Oliveira presents and discusses the hypothesis that clitic doubling, or pronominal reduplication, as seen in the sentence "Je ne parle pas anglaise, moi. / I do not speak English [me]," possesses the fundamental structural and pragmatic parameters of the pragmateme. This is because it is a compositional construction that the speaker selects as a whole to achieve a communication goal associated with a specific utterance situation. Moreover, this device is pragmatic in nature, as it serves as a means of acting on the interlocutive context and allows for the accomplishment of specific acts. Therefore, like the pragmateme, French clitic doubling is fixed, compositional, and associated with a particular utterance situation.

In her analysis, Ewa Pirogowska examines the concept of pragmateme in various discursive settings. She demonstrates that it is dependent on a diaphasic variant that can be applied to utterances whose value hinges on the communicative context and is inherent to the speech production of a given individual. Additionally, its value may depend on communicative circumstances and could be specific to a particular speech community. The anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist discourses of the acclaimed French performer Dieudonné's enthusiasts provide convenient examples. The instance of pragmateme considered in this case relies on a single phonetic shape \ʃ ɔ.a.na.nɑ\, which likely corresponds to two different spellings: [chaud ananas] and [Shoah nana]. This construction misrepresents the figure of a Jew, whose derogatory image strengthens the ties between community members, where anti-Semitism is perceived as an overarching value.

Kamila Łobko aims to compare explicit and implicit formulas of the act of thanking in French and Polish using exemplary utterances retrieved from blogs, social networking sites, and internet fora. The methodology employed includes studies on speech act theory, typology of speech acts, and research papers on language politeness and gratitude. The author classifies the collected explicit and implicit utterances, juxtaposes French and Polish examples, and provides an analysis based on pragmatic parameters. As a result, the author creates a corpus of utterances used for expressing gratitude along with a study on diverse thanking formulas in both languages.

After briefly introducing pragmateme, or pragmatic phraseologism, as a fixed expressive phrase with affective and emotive load, Ryszard Wylecioł and Karolina Adamczyk present the results of the French-Polish Polonium project  "Pragmatemes in contrast: from linguistic modelling to lexicographic coding." The focus is on the analysis of the French pragmateme "Ça roule!" and its Italian equivalent "A posto!" as well as their equivalents in other languages. However, as cognitive linguistics tools offer greater insight into the meaning of pragmatemes, the project also includes an analysis of the trajector-landmark relation and conceptual metaphors that underlie the imagery of these linguistic elements. This approach allows for a comparison of how different cultures depict similar scenes in similar speech events, highlighting similarities and discrepancies.