L’expression de l’agentivité animale sur le plan communicationnel : analyse du discours commémoratif

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

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Abstract

This study explores the expression of animal agency in digital commemorative discourse, focusing on the use of speech verbs with an animal agent. Based on a corpus of 2,625 commemorative texts from the Amonami website (2019-2024), the analysis reveals that speakers use articulatory verbs (e.g., parler, dire, répondre, raconter) to describe the communication of their deceased companions, despite the fact that these verbs normally require a human subject. This discursive practice reflects a recognition of animals’ communicative potential and their status as autonomous agents, while revealing an ambiguity marked by the co-presence of vocalizations, onomatopoeia, and quotation marks. Attributing language skills to animals serves several purposes: it valorizes the deceased animal in an epidictic logic, legitimizes the intensity of mourning, and symbolically maintains the reciprocity of the interspecies relationship beyond death.