Langage et cerveau: Revue française de linguistique appliquée ed. by Karine Duvignau, Marion Fossard (review)

The studies in this volume do not treat la figure as something that is linguistically marked. Instead, their aim is to consider “la complexité du potentiel sémantique des énoncés figuraux dans son double versant interne et externe, sans qu’il soit besoin de poser comme base un énoncé ‘neutre’ ou un degré zéro, donc une ‘déviance’ de l’expression” (7). As the editors note in the preface, these studies all center around four main areas of inquiry:“l’articulation entre dialogisme et polyphonie”,“la sémantique”, “la saillance figurale”, and “la pratique stylistique” (9–10). Another positive aspect of this collection of studies is the treatment of figures de style that have been studied exhaustively (for example, allégorie, litote, euphémisme, ironie) and others that have received much less attention (for example, aposiopèse, énallage, étymologie, interrogation rhétorique, hypallage, réduplication, syllepse). The first part of the volume includes four studies that have been categorized as perspectives théoriques. In the first of these chapters focusing on theoretical perspectives, Soutet anchors his discussion of la polyphonie pré-énonciative in the theoretical framework of Gustave Guillaume. Next, Jaubert also takes up the notion of polyphonie, tracing its origins, evolution, and relevance . In the third study of this volume, Bonhomme examines l’interrogation rhétorique through the prism of the Fables by La Fontaine. The final contribution in the section on theoretical perspectives provides une analyse énonciative based on a corpus of examples from works by Racine. The second part of this volume includes eight studies that highlight “dialogisme et polyphonie au principe de la figuralité” (65) and analyze a number of different figures in various types of discourse: a blog, contes, a play, and novels. In spite of being divided into two distinct sections, the studies all rely heavily on ample and appropriate excerpts and samples of discourse supplemented by a substantial amount of references. These references allow the reader to explore in greater detail specific theoretical constructs or background information that may be unfamiliar or mentioned only briefly. Although this volume is most likely intended for specialists, the target audience includes both literary scholars and discourse analysts who are interested in examining les figures from a different perspective, namely one that adopts “une approche pragmatico-énonciative”(7). University of North Texas Lawrence Williams Duvignau, Karine, et Marion Fossard, éd. Langage et cerveau: Revue française de linguistique appliquée 17 (2012/2). Paris: Linguistiques, 2012. ISSN 1386-1204. Pp. 135. 25 a. Many French-based studies explore the relationship between language and the brain from the perspectives of neurology, cognitive psychology, and clinical research in the communication sciences, but there are comparatively fewer publications presenting brain-based findings to an intended audience of linguists. This wide-ranging attempt to fill the gap in the French literature is divided into two components. The 288 FRENCH REVIEW 87.1 Reviews 289 first collects recent work employing online measures and covers such diverse topics as functional neuroimaging studies of Parkinson’s disease, event-related potential (ERP) investigations of syntactic and lexical processing, unconventional utterances among children with specific language impairment (SLI), and the use of emotional prosody by children with autism spectrum disorders. The second part of the issue deals with the use of offline measures (for example, judgment and production tasks) in psycholinguistic studies of French, and reports an investigation of the relationship between educational level and metaphor processing, a study on morphological inflection among Parkinson’s patients, and an assessment battery for language impairment in neurodegenerative diseases. The volume’s goal of strengthening connections between language-related disciplines is admirable, and it is consistent with the sentiment that greater interplay can lead to linguistic investigation that is better grounded in the biological foundations of language. While this is an area of linguistics and the language sciences where increased interdisciplinarity is needed (regardless of the language of investigation), this special issue does not consistently bring these fields closer to that goal. The articles on Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases are well constructed and report findings that seem justified given the design of their experiments; they focus, however, on research areas that remain of greater interest...