Trasgredire e offendere nella pagina letteraria: osservazioni a partire da Entre les murs di François Bégaudeau e En finir avec Eddy Bellegueule di Édouard Louis

Licia Reggiani, Università di Bologna

 

licia.reggiani(at)unibo.it

 

Abstract: The concept of linguistic impoliteness is used mainly with reference to oral (conversational) interaction and is often employed in didactics and in languages and cultures in contact, as can be seen from recent research. This reveals that the conditio sine qua non for the analysis of the dynamics of linguistic (im)politeness is the authenticity of the exchanges examined. It would seem, therefore, that there is no room for the fictional dimension, which is perceived as inauthentic and, therefore, irrelevant to research on (im)politeness, leading to confining literary work to the realm of inauthenticity, lies and lack of truthfulness. The present article questions this view and examines instead a literary corpus made up of two contemporary French novels that highlight, in significantly different ways, the dynamics of linguistic impoliteness. These are Entre les murs by François Bégaudeau, published by Verticales in 2006 (and on which Laurent Cantet's homonymous feature film is based) and En finir avec Eddy Belleguele, a debut novel by young French writer Édouard Louis, published by Gallimard in 2016. The aim of this study is first to reflect on the implications that this paradigm shift (from the authentic to the fictional) has on the representation of linguistic (im)politeness and second, to discuss the narrative function of the latter. To do that, we will necessarily have to take the concept of literary mimesis as our starting point.