Rôle argumentatif des négations, interrogations, exclamations et points de suspensions dans la publicité française et québécoise

Abstract

Several comparative studies on negative and interrogative sentences in English and French have shown that French texts contain more negative and interrogative forms than English (Pons-Ridler; Quillard 1992 and 1993). This difference came from socio-cultural as well as linguistic factors. If such socio-cultural factors are significant one would expect that they would be reflected in North American writings such as publicity. This study examines publicity in France and in francophone Quebec, and shows that while the former uses negatives and interrogatives, Quebec publicity uses exclamation marks and suspension points. It is well known that the anglophone milieu has influenced Canadian French in various aspects of morphology, syntax and semantics; but this study illustrates that the very way of thinking has been influenced, and is reflected in the different formats used for publicity as well as argumentative strategies.