Question et pertinence argumentative. À propos de l'essai d'Umberto ECO: Comment répondre à la question «Comment ça va»
Interrogation and argumentative relevance. About Umberto Eco’s essay « How to answer the question comment ça va »

Summary/Abstract: This paper advances an argumentative and rhetorical analysis of several (sixty-three, to be exact) answers to the question “how do you do”, by different historical and/ or cultural prominent figures, quoted from Eco’s above mentioned essay. The main idea is that the semantic relation from each of these answers, to the initial question goes far beyond the so called “règle de contenu thématique”: the textual coherence of the couple question/ answer relies actually on the argumentative relevance of the reactive intervention, which in turn is explained, according to Ekkehard Eggs’ discourse theory, in terms of “preferential topoï”. The highly technical rhetorical analysis of the 63 answers should also confirm the hierarchy proposed by the same Ekkehard Eggs between encyclopaedic level, argumentative level and lexico-grammatical structure, in discourse processing.

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