Cohérences et communautés linguistiques : les adverbes évaluatifsétrangement,curieusementetparadoxalement

Abstract

This study aims at comparing three evaluative adverbs in contemporary French, namely étrangement, curieusement and paradoxalement, in order to contribute by means of linguistic criteria to their semantic categorization as discourse markers, as well as give account of their points of divergence. The corpus is mainly taken from literary texts, online journalism, digitalized archives from Le Monde Diplomatique, and includes some built up examples. Our study will be based on the Theory of Stereotypes, with special attention paid to the role of genericity and shared knowledge, and aims at building an explanatory model for the above mentioned adverbs. We will also point out the intervention of a criterium of semantic coherence and/or discursive coherence in their respective functions as modal expressions, as well as the role plaid in the background by one or two linguistic communities in deep structure.