Mirja Unge is a Swedish author who often writes about young people and the tough situations they face. She writes both plays and short-stories and is acclaimed for her dialogue. The aim of this essay is to examine Unge’s dialogue style and how potential face-threatening situations are portrayed. To reach my aim I pose questions regarding the conversational support in two of Unge’s literary works, the short story Det var igår bara and the play Mariella and compare the result. The dialogues analysed both tackle the sensitive subject of sexual assault, a topic that is potentially face-threatening. The analysis is based on the theoretical and methodical framework of conversation analysis. The conversational support is analysed through “keys” that unlock interesting points in the conversation. The keys in this essay are ‘topic generation’ and ‘topic shifts’. The results show that in the text with the most conversational support (the short story) the subject of assault is avoided and only appear in the characters thoughts. In the play on the other hand there is very little conversational support, but the character tells the whole story in a direct manner. This indicates that the situation in the short story is more face-threatening than in the play. However there are other aspects in the dialogue that makes the conversation difficult for the characters in both stories.

This theoretical-empirical paper researches how simultaneous interpreters work with face threatening acts (FTAs). For this purpose we researched how FTAs that we identified in speeches given by native Spanish speakers at the European Parliament's plenary sittings are interpreted into Czech and English. This paper has been inspired by the study of Cédric Magnifico and Bart Defrancq from the University of Ghent "Impoliteness in Interpreting: A Question of Gender?" in which they carry out a similar research. In their study the authors research the simultaneous interpretation of French speeches given at the European Parliament's plenary sittings into English and Dutch in order to find out whether interpreters really engage in face work - by face work they mean mitigating (potential) FTAs. In this paper, however, we aimed at answering a more general research question: "How do simultaneous interpreters handle face threatening acts when interpreting at the European Parliament's plenaries?" Researching the interpretation of FTAs into two target languages, moreover, can show whether face work is influenced by the cultural norms used in the community of the target language. Even though some of our findings come close to those of Magnifico and Defrancq's, some are considerably different. Magnifico and...

De nombreuses recherches empiriques montrent que la façon dont les locuteurs et locutrices parlent peut varier en fonction du contexte, des dispositions mentales des locuteurs·trices, du type de la relation interpersonnelle (horizontale ou verticale) qu’entretiennent interlocuteurs·trices, de l’environnement culturel, etc. Mais en continuant d’exposer le grand public à des données incomplètes s’appuyant sur des stéréotypes de genres, les médias continuent d’entretenir l’idée, que les hommes et les femmes parlent différemment ; il y a donc une discordance entre la réalité des pratiques langagières et la représentation que les individus s’en font (Freed 2014). Notre étude du masculin et du féminin dans quatre séries de BDs de science-fiction franco-belges a pour but de vérifier si les héros et héroïnes de ces quatre séries sont représenté·e·s selon des stéréotypes de genre. Concernant le physique, comment héroïnes et héros sont-ils représentés ? Y a-t-il une frontière nette entre représentation de la féminité et de la masculinité ? Et, concernant la requête du type demande de faire, les héroïnes et héros formulent-ils différemment leurs requêtes ? Ces trois questions nous permettent de savoir si le lectorat des quatre séries de BDs analysées est exposé aux stéréotypes de genre. Les seuls stéréotypes de genre exposés s’appliquent aux corps et au vêtements (sauf dans une série). Pour le reste, attitudes, comportements, façons de parler, les stéréotypes sont globalement évacués. Il en ressort que la féminité et la masculinité s’inscrivent sur un continuum du genre. Pour ce qui est de la requête, dans deux séries les héroïnes se distinguent de leurs partenaires masculins du point de vue du fond de la requête (c.-à-d. de son objet), mais pas du point de vue de la forme et ce schéma est un corrélat de l’absence de leadership des partenaires masculins et révèle l’état mental de ces derniers ou la crainte de la prise de risque. Nous parlons alors de schémas de requêtes différenciées (et non genrées). Dans la troisième BD, le schéma des requêtes est genré dans la forme (et non dans le fond) dans la mesure où l’héroïne emploie davantage de requêtes indirectes que le héros, mais ce schéma n’est aucunement corrélé au manque de pouvoir de l’héroïne, qui, bien au contraire, jouit d’un grand pouvoir symbolique (probablement raison pour laquelle, le fond de ses requêtes est identique à celui du héros). Dans la quatrième série, celle où la représentation corporelle des hommes et des femmes est globalement similaire, on ne trouve ni schéma de requête genré ni schéma de requête différencié. La variation stylistique qui caractérise la nature directe ou indirecte des requêtes des personnages fictifs étudiés est fonction de l’urgence de la situation (contextuel), de leur expertise ou pouvoir (relation verticale) ou de leur état mental. Ils et elles privilégient la sauvegarde des faces à mesure que le caractère anxiogène du contexte de l’énonciation s’éloigne ou s’ils·elles entretiennent une relation interpersonnelle horizontale avec leur(s) allocutaire(s). Nos résultats sur la requête sont ainsi conformes avec les recherches empiriques : dans un cas ils illustrent la manifestation d’un des aspects du style langagier féminin et dans les trois autres, ils invalident l’existence de stéréotypes langagiers féminins dans le sens ou ces derniers sont dépassés par le contexte situationnel ou la relation interpersonnelle. / A significant number of case studies have shown that the way individuals speak, be they men or women, varies according to variables as the kind of relationship (vertical or horizontal) existing between interlocutors, mental state of speakers, context, culture and so forth. However, as Freed (2014) states, the mass media keep exposing their large audience to incomplete or erroneous data and stereotypes concerning the way men and women speak. Thus, individuals keep thinking that there is such a thing as «women and men speak differently». To put it in a nutshell, the way men and women speak is at odds with what occurs in reality. Our study about masculinity and femininity within four series of Franco-Belgian science-fictional comics aims at verifying how masculinity and femininity are represented in the four heroines and their male counterpart or partner(s). On the ground of non-linguistics representation, how are the female and male characters represented ? And does a clear line delineate masculinity and femininity ? Second, on the ground of linguistics, do the heroines phrase their requests differently than do the hero or male partner(s) ? In other words, are female characters more enclined than male characters to formulate indirect requests ? These three questions lead us to determine if the lectorate is exposed to gendered stereotypes. Our results show that stereotypes are only confined into the bodies (and at a certain point, the clothing). Other than that, attitudes and the way the characters speak are not bound to gendered stereotypes. Concerning the analysis of the requests, in two of our series, there is a difference between the requests made by the heroine and the ones made by the male in terms of the content of the requests. Therefore, we say that their request schema is not gendered but differentiated. That is to say, the content of the requests made by the males is correlated to their lack of power and reveal either their mental states or their being concerned with risk taking. In the third comic, we observe indeed a gendered schema of requests between the heroine and her male counterpart, the latter phrasing more direct requests. Conversely to the two previously mentioned comics, here, the stylish gendered request schema is not correlated with the heroine lack of power, that’s probably why both characters’ content of requests is the same. In the fourth series, which is the one where men and women are almost physically alike, we neither observe differentiated pattern of request nor gendered pattern of requests. Globally, in the four series, male and female characters articulate direct requests according to the emergency (contextual), their expertise or power (vertical relationship with interlocutor) or their mental state ; moreover, they indulge themselves into face-saving speech strategies as the emergency diminishes or disappears or if they have an horizontal type of relationship with their interlocutors. Thus, the variation is either stylistic or due to interpersonal relationship. Our results are not at odds with the empirical data : in one case, they illustrate the display of one aspect of the feminine language stereotype, and in the three other ones they invalidate the existence of stereotyped language styles in the sense that the stereotypes are overcome by the context or the interpersonal relationship.

The present master's thesis tackles the position of vulgarisms within the system of language as used in texts published in Czech and French weekly opinion magazines. The thesis takes a theoretic and empiric approach, the first part dealing with the definition of the term of vulgarism in Czech and French stylistics and the delimitation of its role in the style of journalistic texts. The second part of the thesis describes the practical approach of Czech and French weeklies to vulgarisms in their texts based on a survey among editing staff of the major publishing houses both in France and in the Czech Republic. The outcomes of the survey were compared to the analysis results conveyed on a corpus built out of texts published in Le Point and Respekt weeklies. Based on the contrastive analysis of vulgarisms used in Czech and French language corpus, following the critical criteria as outlined in the first part of the thesis, several recommendations are made about French-Czech translations of vulgarisms in journalistic texts. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)