From the many voices to the subject positions in anti-globalization discourse: Enunciative pragmatics and the polyphonic organization of subjectivity

This contribution presents enunciative pragmatics as a methodological orientation to account for how written texts are contextualized in the act of reading. As an offspring of the pragmatic turn among French-speaking linguists, the enunciative approach is mobilized to analyze the cover page of a cartoon on the anti-globalization legend José Bové. Focusing on the complex interpretive problems of political discourse, the enunciative-pragmatic approach shows how readers construct subject positions following the text's complex indexicality. It reveals the polyphonic play of voices orchestrated by the enunciative markers. Therefore, enunciative pragmatics promises to bridge the gulf that separates text-based and process-oriented approaches to language in use as well as between micro- and macrosociological levels of analysis.

► Anti-globalization discourse operates with a multitude of voices. ► In discourse, subjectivity is constructed in a process of reducing polyphonic complexity to a set of subject positions. ► Enunciative pragmatics is presented as a text-based approach to language in use which focuses on the markers of subjectivity.