Discourse Dynamics

This volume presents a reasoned study of the discourse connectives of attainment of the French language. For the most part, the studies on connectives are based on referentialist descriptive frameworks, which are sustained more or less explicitly on what we have called the general problem of causality, the epistemological foundation of a scientific paradigm which has been used for centuries but which, in our opinion, is now outdated. In the first place, we have submitted this old paradigm to critical debate, showing the limits of its scientific validity. Next, we have placed ourselves in a non-referentialist linguistic framework, the Theory of Argumentation in the Language-System, developed by the French linguist Oswald Ducrot, in which we have formulated a new descriptive proposal for discourse connectives, taking into account both the argumentative configuration and the polyphonic configuration of each of the discourse dynamics generated around a given connective. We have described the argumentative configuration in terms of semantic blocks, and the polyphonic configuration in terms of discourse algorithms, original and innovative heuristic instruments with which we attempt to stimulate a new approach to language more in line with the general scientific approaches of the 21st century, and with the new scientific paradigm which is currently valid.