La sémantique du stereotype et la representation topique de l’altérité

Abstract

This research explores the discursive representation of exotic referents filtered by a stereotyped look in the narrative of three French travelers to the Persia in the first half of the 19th century. The traveler-enunciators, placed in an asymmetrical linguistic and cultural context, attempt to capture and transcribe their observations on foreign terrain according to their intellect, cognition and experience. A series of elements marked by alterity modify the representation that the author-traveler gives of the referent and the referential universe to which he is confronted. It is in this “reductive” way of seeing referents from a different universe and the intervention of the subjectivity of the author that we are interested in this study. We analyze the discursive effects produced by the use of linguistic resources and the enunciative positioning of author-travelers. This homogenizing and generalizing approach to the perception of the Other is made through pre-constructed molds and a subjective approach in the receptive culture that we will try to see with the help of the linguistic and discursive analysis tools in the travel stories of Goupil Fesquet (1844), Rémy Aucher-Eloy (1843) and that of JM Tancoigne (1819) in the East, especially in Persia.