This thesis explores the semantic and conceptual potential of the literary portmanteau word, with a view, more specifically, to examining the ways in which the term works to highlight questions of critical, ethical and disruptive activity. Formed from the combination of morphemes from two or more existing words (i.e., “human” + “document” = “humument”), the portmanteau word is a neologism that exists both within and beyond the frame of the authorised lexicon. Exploring this dynamic by way of three main areas of focus—“creating”, “mediating” and “activating”— this thesis adopts a thoroughgoing approach to portmanteau word functioning and logic, considering the term not only in relation to frame-stretching difference, semantic uncertainty and (potentially) mediative/ethical critical practice (as existing scholarship has tended mainly to do), but also with regard to the effortful and precarious activating of these concerns across different literary and geographical contexts. Up to now, academic work on the literary portmanteau word has generally considered the term in relation to two, largely non-overlapping sites of interest: Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1871) and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939)—a pair of texts that remain central here in developing a working theorization of the portmanteau (“creating”), and in the explication of a Wakean critical ethics (“mediating”). Through exploring different responses to both Carrollian and Joycean portmanteau words, the first of these focuses approaches the term in relation to the semantic and critical effects of frame-stretching difference, contingency and structural uncertainty. In the second, the possible mediative ethics of this uncertainty is considered with reference to the ethics of deconstruction and to an analysis of selected passages from the Wake. The extension in this thesis, though, into the writing of Édouard Glissant, Kamau Brathwaite and Ivan Vladislavić works to further interrogate and complicate this Carrollian-Joycean understanding of the portmanteau word, making it less (but still) a matter of structural uncertainty and mediative ethics, and more a question of effort, risk and resistance. With Glissant and Brathwaite, this “activating” of portmanteau uncertainty in the (post)colonial Caribbean translates in different ways into a form of hard-fought, aesthetic opacity, the effortful creation (and interpretation) of which requires an always precarious, (re)cyclical mediation between structure and difference, self and other. With Vladislavić, in (post)apartheid South Africa, this “activating” of the portmanteau expresses itself as a complicatedly material concern with the necessary folly (and urgency) of ethical (re)construction following the collapse of apartheid socio-political structures. It is the contention of this thesis, then, that it is through such contextual, mess-making, “activating” elaborations as these that we arrive at a richer, more resistant understanding of the portmanteau word (in both linguistic and conceptual terms), and that, in a manner not at all unlike the creation of a portmanteau word itself, we help to enact a frame-stretching move into new and uncertain exploratory frames. / published_or_final_version / English / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

L'objet de notre travail porte sur les mots-valises. En effet, les résultats des études de la sémantique et de la lexicologie structurales ont démontré qu'il n'y a de signe qui ne soit dérivé d'un autre signe et donc de création lexicale qui ne soit le rappel de structures déjà existantes. Au cœur de la réflexion sur la motivation du signe, le mot-valise représente le mot saisi dans sa totalité et dans sa segmentalité. Pour comprendre la technique d'agencement qui aboutit à la formation des mots, Alain Finkielkraut explique qu'il faut transgresser la linéarisation du signe en récitant à l'envers sa leçon de parole. Le mot-valise prend au sérieux cette hypothèse car en réalité les mots contenus dans le dictionnaire ne sont que des morceaux errants d'un lexique inconnu. Désormais, le mot n'est plus un groupe de son correspondant à un sens, un véhicule passif porteur d'un signifié comme l'enseignent les dictionnaires et la vieille grammaire. C'est pourquoi, Freud et Saussure on bien chacun démontré par une voie qui lui est propre, qu'à travers le mécanisme du lapsus, le sens peut aussi s'appréhender par métanalyse pour l'un, et par dérivation anagrammatique pour l'autre. Ainsi, quelque soit le procédé, le mécanisme analogique reste toujours le même qui assure la fusion du son et du sens. Pour terminer, l'objet de cette thèse sera d'explorer dans le cadre d'une étude sémiologique, les mécanismes à l'œuvre dans la formation des mots-valises ainsi que les effets de sens et de style suscités par ce type de création. / The focus of our work is on “portmanteau words”. Indeed, results of studies of semantics and structural lexicology have shown that there is no sign that is not derived from another sign and therefore of lexical creation which is not a reminder of already existing structures. At the heart of reflection on the motivation of the sign, a portmanteau word represents the sign grasped in its totality and its segmentality. To understand the technique of the arrangement that leads to the formation of words, Alain Finkielkraut, argues that it is paramount to transgress the linearity of the sign by reciting one’s speech lesson backwards. The portmanteau word considers this assumption seriously considering that in reality words contained in the dictionary constitute stray pieces of an unknown lexicon. Henceforth, a word is no longer a group of different sounds corresponding to a meaning, a passive vehicle carrying a signification as taught by the old grammar dictionary. This is why Freud and Saussure have clearly demonstrated in a peculiar way, that through the mechanism of the slip, the meaning of a word can also be understood by metanalysis for one, and by anagrammatic derivation for the other. Thus, whatever the process, the analog mechanism remains the same, ensuring the fusion of sound and meaning. Finally, the purpose of this thesis will be to explore, in the context of a semiological study, the mechanisms at work in the formation of portmanteau words as well as the effects of meaning and generated style by this type of creation.

De nombreux travaux ont décrit et analysé le phénomène néologique, ses domaines d’adoption et ses occurrences dans le discours. La néologie satirique, est, elle, relativement peu explorée. À travers un corpus constitué d’écrits de presse humoristiques portant sur la vie politique française et allemande et provenant des journaux satiriques Le Canard enchaîné et Eulenspiegel, l’étude dégage dans un premier temps les procédés morphologiques de l’innovation lexicale : la dérivation, la composition, les mots-valises, l’abréviation, la conversion, l’emprunt. Le travail explore ensuite les stratégies qui caractérisent cette pratique de la néologie satirique, ainsi que ses divers effets sémantiques et pragmatiques recherchés dans les créations lexicales. Cela nous a permis de faire une analyse contrastive entre textes satiriques français et allemands par les diverses manifestations dicursives des néologismes. / Many studies have been made of the neologistic phenomenon, both in terms of the contexts in which it is used and of how it integrates into discourse. The satirical neology is less well documented. By using a corpus made up of press cartoons in the political French and German satirical magazines Le Canard enchaîné et Eulenspiegel, the study first posits the morphological devices of the lexical innovation : derivation, composition, portmanteau-words, abbreviation, conversion, loan. This work then explores the strategies which characterise the use of the satirical neology as well as the semantic and pragmatic effects aimed in the lexical creations. This allowed us to make a contrastive analysis between satirical French and German texts by the various discursive uses of neologisms.