French Literature Reviews - 2026
É. Bordas, Style. Un mot et des discours
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Review published in the Acta Fabula critical dossier "Pensées du style" (October 2010, Vol. 11, n°9): "Valeurs du style" by Marielle Macé.
Éric Bordas, "Style". Un mot et des discours
Paris: Éditions Kimé, 2008.
306 p.
EAN: 9782841744541
Publisher's overview:
This book aims to take stock of our contemporary uses of the word style, across popular, spontaneous, or elaborated speech, as well as specialized scholarly discourse. Its primary corpus is the French language of the early 21e century, as practiced, spoken, and written in books, on television, or across the Internet. The object of study is the general usage of a word—a key marker in our culture situated at the crossroads of discursive practices whose diversity and dispersion generate meaning and value, a crossroads once regarded as the very locus of ideology. The word style is examined within some of the richest social scenographies—those most frequently engaged by speakers in the early 21e century: educational discourse, academic discourse, media discourse, commercial discourse, and political discourse. Born in 1966, an agrégé and PhD in Literature, Éric Bordas is Professor of the French Language at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (Arts and Humanities).
The concept of style has long occupied a central position in French linguistic and literary traditions, often functioning as a nexus for debates regarding aesthetics and ideology. This study explores how the word is deployed in contemporary settings ranging from academic environments to commercial and political spheres. It documents the shifting meanings attributed to a term that remains a significant marker of cultural identity in early twenty-first-century French society.
The analysis focuses on the dispersion of the term across popular, spontaneous, and specialized forms of communication. By examining how style is articulated in books, television, and digital spaces, the work addresses the diversity of discursive practices that shape the understanding of the concept. The study situates these linguistic habits within the contexts of educational and media-driven exchanges, illustrating how the word functions as a point of intersection for social values. Readers interested in the intersection of linguistics and contemporary cultural discourse may find this examination of terminology relevant.