Research subject French Linguistics

Our research group encompasses diachronic and historical linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis.

In diachronic and historical linguistics, studies have been conducted in morphology, specifically on the suffix -issime. Over the past few decades, adjectives with the intensifying ending -issime (‘very, extremely’) have become frequent in French, particularly in informal written language. However, unlike other Romance languages, this suffix has not previously appeared to any significant extent in French. Moreover, the flexibility in word formation seen in other Romance languages does not occur in French. One possible reason for today’s frequent usage could be the democratization of the language, where people write more on social media than before. In addition to this, linguistic studies have been conducted on 17th- and 18th-century French through a travel journal written by a Swede, Eric von Roland, during his travels in Europe.

Discourse analysis and pragmatics have provided the methodological and theoretical framework for numerous studies on French political language. Several projects have examined the pragmatics of negation, its functions, and its significance in political argumentation, such as in election debates and political speeches. Other projects within the framework of French election debates have explored the pragmatic meaning of terms of address, speech acts, and populist language use. Central themes have included strategies of argumentation, rhetorical devices, and the role of language in ideological positioning.

This research contributes to knowledge about the linguistic aspects of negation—one of the most complex yet fundamental phenomena in all human language. It also provides a deeper understanding of how language use reflects and shapes ideology and politics in the Francophone world.