Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
carried by an audiovisual text or corpus is taken into account. There is a great deal
of academic literature on the subject of discourse analysis, and it is difficult to
obtain an overall and appropriate view. However, the work of researchers in
linguistics, semiotics or pragmatics on discourse and more particularly, discursive
strategies for dealing with referential content demonstrate the great advantage which
discourse analysis holds for analyzing the content of audiovisual corpora which,
when reduced simply to its referential dimension, is often sterile and unsatisfactory.
While we are aware of the great variety and richness of research in the field of
discourse analysis, for the moment, we have concentrated on a small set of strategies
or so-called procedures of discourse production around a subject. These are
presented below in the form of six general questions:
1) Who is the “true” author (i.e. the enunciator) of the subject dealt with and
developed in the text? In other words, who is the actual source of the content and
who is responsible for it (for its veracity , for instance; its newness or its originality ).
It is important to be able to answer this question, particularly when it comes to direct
or indirect quotes, references to what “someone said” (or rather, may have said), to
trains of thought, to texts published or otherwise, and so on, in the context of
citations. Explicitizing the structure of the enunciation of the subject dealt with in
the audiovisual text is particularly enriching in the context of analyzing interviews,
eyewitness accounts, life stories or tales of experiences (see also the explanations we
give in [STO 01]). Analyzing the enunciation also includes explicitizing the
audience to which the text is addressed. Here, the addressee or the audience is a role
which forms part of the discourse (sometimes, this role is also referred to as the
enunciatee and is considered a necessary, complementary role to that of the
enunciator). In other words, indicators which are apparent within the discourse, or
which can be inferred from it, can demonstrate to whom the subject being dealt with
by the enunciator is addressed. Taking account of the enunciatee (the target audience
of the text) enables us to elucidate two issues which are important for all
communication:
- the first issue is evaluating the congruency between the empirical, “real-
world” audience of an audiovisual text and the audience at whom that text is
actuallyaimed (i.e. the “ideal audience”, to paraphrase Umberto Eco [ECO 79]);
- the second issue is taking account of the contextual variations of the
enunciator's commitment to the truthfulness, the originality, the exactness, etc. of
the subject being dealt with. As we know, these contextual variations may play a
crucial role in the construction of the discourse ofscientific vulgarization and also in
constructing the discourseofa(social)group , of so-called communitydiscourse .
2) What is the point of view according to which the author approaches his/her
subject? This second question is closely linked to the first, but raises a different
Search WWH ::




Custom Search