Avatars sémantiques et enjeux interprétatifs du phénonyme tsunami dans les discours journalistiques grecs et français.

Abstract

The Japanese word tsunami meaning “harbor wave” became well known after the natural disaster caused in Sri Lanka in December 26, 2004. In both French and Greek, tsunami does not seem to restrict itself to its literal meaning. It is constantly being re-used and re-contextualised in a multiplicity of different contexts, giving rise to an abundant production of new metaphoric meanings. This article sets out to study the semantic innovations as they unfurl in the journalistic discourse both in French and Greek. It favours a semantic and discursive approach, while having recourse to the semic analysis as developed within the field of Rastier’s Interpretive Semantics.