Section: New Results

Discourse Dynamics

In a joint work with a psycho-linguistist (Michel Musiol, ATILF) and a philosopher (Manuel Rebuschi, Archives Poincaré), are developing a formal analysis of pathological conversations involving schizophrenic speakers [16] . Such conversations give rise to manifest incongruities or ruptures that can be seen as mere contradictions by any “normal” speaker. Our analysis relies both on semantic and pragmatic features of conversation. We propose a SDRT-inspired [20] account of pathological conversations, and we apply it to two relevant excerpts. We conclude with a short discussion about the localization of inconsistencies by schizophrenics, either in semantics or in pragmatics, and its importance for our understanding of thought disorders.