Introduction

[Jean Widmer]

Let me first gratulate the initiators of Discours List for their initiativ.
Discours Analysis has become an important area of study where many
different theoretical perspectives cross each other. Thus, to have a kind
of commun agora may be very usefull.

To introduce my self, I am professor of media and communication sociology.
I did my PhD in philosophy about the philosophical and semiotical roots of
ethnomethology. Thereafter, I continued in sociology, with a continuous
interest for studies in pragma linguistics. My main topic is to analyse how
versions of reality are socialy constituted, and how, doing this, people
constitute themselves what they are for each other, individualy or
collectively. 

One of my research projects belongs to the area of sociology of languages:
how it is, that different tongues become used as identifyers of "cultures"
and "identities", and how it is that they may correlate with different ways
of "looking at things". This line of thought doesn't go in the direction of
semantic or syntax but to the collectiv relation to languages, how groups
constitute themselves by relating to their own language. Switzerland, where
I live and work, is a good laboratory for that, since we have standardized
and not standardized languages, a difference which expresses part of what I
mean with "collectiv relation to ones own language". Actualy, I work with
my collaborator R. Coray on the conceptions the Swiss mobilised at
occasions where they discussed about the constitutional dispositions about
national languages. By "conceptions" I mean, how they see the relation
between language and speakers, their territory, their relation to history
etc., and how they see the relations among language groups, what are the
principles for conceptualizing this life in commun and what are the
principles for their politics in that matter.
A second line of investigation, which is also part of my teaching, is to
analyse a) the way the media constitute the relation between their public,
the world they speak about and themselves. I refer mainly to the theory of
enunciation, in the french tradition, and to the membership category
analysis, from ethnomethodology. I use the same tools for a second
subproject: how media discours constitute public issues (drug, holocaust
assets, etc.), and how this discours displays a way of acting collectively
about certain features of collectiv life (the function of institutions, the
nature of norms etc.).

My published work is mainly in french, some in german. 
Prof. Jean Widmer
Dept. sociologie et média
Université - Miséricorde
CH - 1700  FRIBOURG

Tél. +41 26 300 83 82
Fax. +41 26 300 97 27