L'insulte : la parole et le geste

Résumé 0

It is the title of Leroy-Gourhan’s work in this inverted order that will lead our path: insults are not limited to screams or vocatives – they are very often expressed by gestures, whether or not these are accompanied by words. The recent example of the “anarchist-entarteur” who targeted the French politician Chevènement clearly shows the link between an act and an interpretation by its victim. Thus, insults are not necessarily some abuse or a swearword; they may be a punctual act. Such an act further supposes in an enunciative analysis the recognition of the central role of the enunciator in action interpretation. This is evidenced by a corpus based on Sobrino’s Spanish-French grammar as well as Argentinean, Brazilian, Spanish and French data. This study concentrates on the notions of injunction, exclamation and onomatopoeia, which belong to the borders of the structured systems studied by grammars.