Positions, positionings and posture of the enunciator

Abstract

This article draws connections between the notions of enunciator position, positioning and posture, which structure the dialogic, cognitive and interactional co- production of utterances. The notion of enunciative position corresponds to the fact that the (first or second) enunciator refers to objects of discourse while positioning himself/herself with regard to them, by indicating from what point of view he/she considers them. In view of the dialogic nature of the discourse, two modal subjects and levels of responsibility can be discerned: the first enunciator has the role of the agent in charge of the discourse and the second enunciator fulfills internal functions of validation, assuming thus a sort of responsibility which does not necessarily commit the first enunciator. The article then analyses the dialogic strategies of positioning by enunciative reduplication and separation which account for auto- dialogic and hetero-dialogic situations. Finally it deals with the enunciative postures of co-enunciation, over-enunciation and under-enunciation, which refine the notions of enunciative reduplication or separation, by specifying the degrees of agreement, according to dialectic between discordant concordance and concordant discordance.