Presentation
The 35th international conference of the Cercle Linguistique du Centre et de l'Ouest (CERLICO) will be entitled: Dire et re-dire : /bis repetita /... With its constant repetition, language seeks to find itself and discourse supports itself by / re-dire "re-saying"/. Following on from the 34th CerLICO conference, organised by CeReS at the University of Limoges in 2021, LIDILE is hosting the 35th CerLiCO international conference at the University of Rennes 2, on 20 and 21 May 2022. /Dire et re-dire: bis repetita?/ will examine repetition, its parameters and variabilities, from a linguistic, translational and didactic point of view.
We will consider all types of authentic corpus, both written and oral, from the broadest to the most specific (learner, medical, political, commercial, etc.), parallel and comparable translation corpora, as well as didactic corpora. All languages and language combinations may be studied. No theoretical framework is excluded, provided that it is made explicit.
Axis of the conference
The CerLiCO invites participants to submit papers in the following three areas:
- Linguistic studies
Papers may focus on delimiting the written and oral forms (enunciative, lexical, morphological, syntactic, phonetic, pragmatic) that /re-dire, "re-say"/ and their inclusion in the discourse. At what point is repetition considered to exist? Are we saying the same thing, are we progressing in the discourse and if so how, and how do we say that we are going to (re)say? How do we identify repetition and the span of repetition?
We will observe repetition as one of the constraints of the syntagmatic axis which says and /re-says/, which reformulates, which repeats and thus weaves its coherence, its cohesion, as it builds up. From a phonetic and phonological point of view, we will be interested in the variations that change interpretation: from interrogation to pastiche, from sarcasm to anger, via mockery, for example. We will also be looking at the argumentative and pragmatic ways in which language can be used to repeat and signify the same thing or something else. The different functions of repetition in the linearity of discourse, and the difference between self-reformulation and hetero-reformulation, will therefore be explored.
In addition, we will incorporate corpus research into this line of thought: how can reformulation be annotated, according to the types of enunciator in the interaction, the types of discourse and text? What patterns of repetition and reformulation can be identified? Is there a unity of repetition? How can it be measured? From the point of view of computer detection and human/machine learning: what are the methods for automatically detecting and distinguishing between repetition and reformulation?
- Translation, interpreting and technical writing
The conference will also include research into translation, interpreting and technical writing.
While translation inevitably involves repeating something different, the fact that repetition occurs between different language-cultures also calls for reflection on what needs to be said, added or explained, and what may or may not need to be repeated.
We can question the thresholds of acceptability that the notions of /dire/ and /redire/, in a translation, generate depending on the language-cultures involved, the types of text and their purpose. In this respect, work in corpus translatology is particularly relevant for identifying trends, for example between translated and untranslated texts of the same language, which may point to the existence of translation universals, or contrasts between source and target languages. The famous translator's note, for example, has no place in the subtitling done by audiovisual translation professionals, whereas it does in so-called “wild” subtitling (/fan-subbing/). Repetitions may be more acceptable in some languages than in others.
Papers will also look at revision, based on both human and machine translations. Do translation and writing aids act as a brake or a support? Do they impose terminological standardisation or do they allow the translator to leave his or her own mark?
In the field of technical writing, the conference will provide an opportunity to examine in particular the /saying/ of the informants that the technical writer calls on and even, upstream, the /have to say/ of the technical writer. These two /dires, "says"/ can be compared with the /redire "re-say"/ of the writer, after understanding what needs to be communicated to the users of his texts.
Lastly, the general theme of the conference calls for us to look at the work of the interpreter, who is physically present at the moment of enunciation, and to analyse how his or her /dire/ differs from that of the translator. The /dire "say"/ that the interpreter initiates, in addition to the /redire/ of the first utterance, in a given situation, will be interesting to study, as will the hesitation and reformulation that enable him or her to arrive at the desired /redire "re-say"/ in relation to this utterance.
- Language Didactics
The studies will present the various didactic problems associated with the processes, forms and strategies of /dire "say"/ and /re-dire "re-say"/ from the point of view of both the learner and the teacher.
Has the transition from the structuralist auditory-oral approach, based on the repetition of forms, to the communicative approach and the action-oriented perspective advocating free expression, definitively eliminated the /redire/ from the pedagogical arena? Between artifice and the reality of language learning, can repetition be considered an effective teaching/learning strategy? In the multiplicity of forms of repetition, how can we take into account the parameters represented by the teaching/learning context, the level of the learners, the type of task and the constraints of the instructions?
In class, the teacher's reformulations help to structure knowledge. The teacher has to reformulate his own words as well as the learners' answers. But isn't the reformulation of instructions, for example, preceded by an identical repetition of the first statement? Doesn't the reformulation of what the learner has said begin by repeating their answer? We can look at the co-presence, the succession of these two moments, repetition and reformulation, in foreign language lessons. Does the retelling say more or less? Does it use periphrasis? translation? gestures? transcription in API?
On the learner side, /redire/ is called into question when it comes to repetition. On the other hand, written and oral mediation activities, which are in fact re-telling, are highly praised in the /Supplementary volume/ of the CEFR (2018). While the learner-user is most often asked to summarise, to ‘prune a text’ and ‘eliminate repetitions and digressions’, he or she may also be asked to ‘amplify a dense text’ to make it more comprehensible, and to do this ‘use repetition and redundancy, for example by paraphrasing in different ways’ (/ibid/: 133). We might ask how written and oral mediation activities can concretely encourage learners (and teachers) not to systematically consider repetition as an error to be tracked down, but as part of the ‘mediation strategies’ to be developed.
Organising committee
Scientific Coordinators: Élisabeth Richard, Griselda Drouet, Marie-Françoise Bourvon
Organising Committee : Catrin Bellay, Marie-Françoise Bourvon, Clara Destais, Griselda Drouet, Aura Duffé, Christine Evain, Thomas Gaillat, William Kelleher, David Le Roux, Jenyu Li, María Lomeña Galiano, Margarita Munoz-Garcia, Dolly Ramella, Elisabeth Richard, Cristian Valdez.
Scientific Committee : Sophie Anquetil (U. de Limoges), Encarnación Arroyo González (U. de Toulouse), Marie Françoise Bourvon (U. Rennes 2), Katarina Chovancova (UMB, Banská-Bystrica, Slovaquie), Marie-Ange Dat (U. de Nantes), Claire Doquet (U. de Bordeaux), Sophie Dufossé (U. de Limoges), Griselda Drouet (U. Rennes 2), Thomas Gaillat (U. Rennes 2), Djaouida Hamdani (UQUAM, Canada), Meri Larjavaara (Åbo Akademi), Cindy Lefebvre-Scodeller (U. de Limoges), Intareeya Leekancha (U. de Thaïlande), David Le Roux (U. Rennes 2), María Lomeña Galiano (U. Rennes 2), Claire Martinot (Sorbonne Université), Margarita Munoz-Garcia (U. Rennes 2), Sylvester Osu (U. de Tours), Blandine Pennec (U. de Toulouse), Olivier Polge (U. de Limoges), Élisabeth Richard (U. Rennes 2), Audrey Roig (U. de Paris), Cristian Valdez (U. G. Eiffel, Marne la Vallée), Bernadeta Wojciechowska (UAM, Pologne).