Constructions synonymiques dans Les mots comme marqueurs de l’idiostyle de J.-P. Sartre

Abstract

The actualization of mono- and polysynonymic compressed, extended and quantitatively equacomponential structures in J.-P. Sartre’s autobiographical story The Words allows revealing the author’s communicative intention and idiostylistic features and justifying their co(n)textual (linguistic and situational) pertinence. The considerable quantity of monopredicative utterances complicated by participial/gerundial constructions reflects existentialist ideas of the writer who describes intro- and retrospectively the main character’s actions and states of mind or the influence exerted on him by other human beings and objects. The frequent synonymic preferential options containing the predicate of perception or of mental process indicate the author’s concentration on the stream of thoughts, the sensations and the protagonists’ attempts to find the consensus with being. The apposed nominal and adjectival constructions are used to investigate the processes of elaboration and conservation of the personality, the aspiration of the Sartre-child to find himself. Two worlds appear to the reader—real and imaginary—that cross and intertwine in different temporal plans. In several extended utterances which “counterbalance” the compressed structures, new co(n)textual referents are actualized and focalized with a view to accentuate their importance in the narration or in the writer’s life. The abundance of the mono- and polypredicative utterances with the verbal head lexeme marking the process or the state confirms J.-P. Sartre’s certitude that from birth and throughout life the human being doesn’t stop changing, degrading or improving due to his actions or behavioral habits.