‘Ecologie’ et ‘environnement’ dans l’espace dictionnairique francais

Abstract

As cultural objects, dictionaries are stricly related to the period when they are written: “Alors même qu’ils semblent destinés à fixer les savoirs, ils ne sont en vérité, à l’échelle du temps, que des instantanés” (Pruvost, 2006). Consequently, the registration of new words and the evolution of the articles through the editions of general dictionaries reflect the emergence of new realities and their development within a society. This paper aims to trace out the presence of the entries écologie and environnement, their derived words and the compounds formed using éco-, in five different editions of the monolingual French dictionary Petit Robert published over more than 40 years (1972-2014). First, the investigation will concern the macrostructure; then, the microstructure will be analyzed in order to retrace the evolution of some articles (éco-, écolo, écologie and environnement); finally, the marker écol. will be taken into account.