From the argumentation to literary solidarity in the prefaces of Amkoullel, l’enfant peul and Contes des sages d’Afrique of Amadou Hampâté Bâ

Abstract

This study focuses on the preface as a discursive manifestation in the production of the written text. She understands the preface as an address to an interlocutor by means of writing to get them to take an interest in a book or any other prefaced work. The aim of the study is to analyze the argumentativeness of the preface discourse, the plurivocal phenomena underlying it and the mechanisms of literary solidarity that emerge from it. It highlights the discursive means allowing a pragmatic connection to be established between speaker and receiver of the preface discourse and reveals that the preface has an essentially argumentative substrate. This research work demonstrates that the preface is a means to support the author of the prefaced text. The preface contains various phenomena relating to plurivocity. Because it is perceived as a discourse aimed at promoting the reading of the text, the preface constitutes a pragmatic orientation of the interlocutor towards a cognitive activity, that of reading. This research is approached from the angle of discourse analysis and, to do this, convenes pragmatics as an analytical tool.