Part of
Autour des verbes: Constructions et interprétationsSous la direction de Kozué Ogata
[Lingvisticæ Investigationes Supplementa 29] 2013
► pp. 187–200
This paper discusses the French pronominal passive construction (PPC) which is frequently used with judgement verbs in scientific articles. After examining the difference between PPC and the periphrastic passive, we focus on the inherent prescriptive sense of PPC. We assume that by using PPC, authors present their judgements as already established in the society in order to render their arguments more persuasive. We then highlight another pragmatic usage of PPC, considering as examples sentences used as instructions. PPC exhibits subtle semantic differences according to context, which enables us to consider the relationship between the fundamental function of the construction and its pragmatic interpretations.
Article language: French