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<div>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.</div>
<br>
<div>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. </div>
<br>
<div>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.</div>
<div>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.).</div>
<br>
<div>My published work is mainly in french, some in german.</div>
<br>
Prof. Jean Widmer<br>
Dept. sociologie et média<br>
Université - Miséricorde<br>
CH - 1700 FRIBOURG<br>
<br>
<font size=2>Tél. +41 26 300 83 82<br>
Fax. +41 26 300 97 27</font></html>