Si hypothétique et discours persuasif
Hypothetical “si” and Persuasive Discourse

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyzes the behaviour of the French conjunction si in persuasive discourse. Having defined the semantic values of this conjunction – which introduces either a hypothesis, or a condition, or an indirect interrogative – the paper addresses its potential to construct the discourse of the hypothesis by inviting the speaker to imagine a possible world where the proposed hypothesis might be put into practice. This semantic value of the conjunction under consideration is analyzed in persuasive discourse, in a corpus of si-prefaced sentences taken from Catherine Bensaid’s works in psychotherapy. Thus the paper reveals how argumentation is constructed in the persuasive discourse of psychotherapy.

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