(Mémoire de DEA, Département des Pays anglophones)

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to bring forth a linguistic invariant to the notion of negation through a cross study between philosophy, psychoanalysis and linguistics. The negation is a multifaceted linguistic phenomenon. As such it encompasses many levels of analysis such as prosody, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Moreover it is not always explicitly mentioned. This explains the difficulty to define such an invariant.
The negation as a linguistic phenomenon can be understood through the survey of negation as a philosophical concept. But there is a gap between the pure notion and its linguistic application. It corresponds to mental processes which can be interpreted through Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theories.

These three disciplines are put into perspective in order to draw out a better understanding of the negation by analogies and crosschecks.
The resort to other disciplines helped to define more precisely what the negation involved and the roots of such a linguistic complexity. In correlation with the study of numerous and different linguistic occurrences of negation, it allowed us to relate the negation to the domain of modality in the broad sense of the term.

NEGATIVITY, NEGATION, TRANS-DISCIPLINARY APPROACH : REVIEW OF A PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTUALISATION, PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORISATION AND LINGUISTIC APPLICATION.
Université Michel de Montaigne – Bordeaux III
U.F.R. des Pays Anglophones
Mémoire de DEA d’Etudes Anglophones
Directeur de recherche : Monsieur le Professeur Hervé Fourtina
Soutenance : Année 2004 – Mention Très Bien
130 pages

Un exemplaire est disponible en consultation à la Bibliothèque de lettres H. GUILLEMIN, Localisation : Rez-de-Chaussée – Mémoires Pays anglophones, Côte : LIN DUV