Some qualitative filters in the construction of meaning

Résumé 0

The article raises the question of qualitative filters in the construction of meaning in English texts, using the theoretical tools of Culioli's Théorie des Opérations Prédicatives et Énonciatives. Two sets of linguistic markers are analyzed showing two kinds of what the author calls "linguistic violence" at play in the construction of subjective nuances: (i) the violence of the linguistic system itself, which imposes specific forms to speakers (for instance now and then vs. every now and then) depending on the factual or neutral, quantitative vs. valuation-oriented, qualitative contexts, without the speakers being aware of such 'rules'; (ii) the violence which is sometimes imposed by the speaker on the linguistic system and distorts it. Trévise studies the latter through an analysis of the aspect-temporal system--in particular the use of the present perfect--with examples of utterances where the speaker's subjectivity directs a representation of the moment of utterance as still belonging to past time. The uncommon, yet authentic use of the present perfect with ago is also shown to construe specific meanings, implying that qualitative subjective properties cannot but violate some of the linguistic rules of a system which has no means of expressing such subjective representations otherwise.