"Third Element" and "Lateral Evocation": An Essay on ConnectivesConjunctions (connectives) have been seen as being responsible for establishing meaning relationships between the clauses they connect, but the importance of the co-text (intradiscourse) in the effect they produce has often been ignored. Similarly, it has also been suggested that the relationship of the meaning produced by them depended only on the articulated fragments/sentences, without the “implicit” (interdiscursive) support that functions as an ideological premise for the articulation. This paper uses French Discourse Analysis to challenge such notions and to support the hypothesis that both the connectives and the co-text of the linked fragments/sentences are key to establish the articulation between them. The effect that such articulation produces is anchored in what Michel Pêcheux (1995), based on Frege, refers to as the Third Element or Lateral Evocation, whose identification results in a better understanding of how connectives work in general and, above all, in access to the ideological underpinnings of a given society.
Keywords:
discourse
;
connectives
;
intradiscourse
;
interdiscourse
;
lateral evocation