The writing of the feeling: from the scene to the confidence, some reflections on the emotional register

Abstract

In an interlocution situation, the subject must simultaneously decode the verbal message and capture the complex set of clues and signals emitted. One might ask, and rightly so, about the genesis and the development of such competence. How do we become able to perform these complex actions, what are the demands before which we learn to express ourselves and to read the intentions and emotions of the other? We propose to reflect on the human capacity to make a "reading of the other", based on the following hypothesis: an important part of oral communication is unspoken, and it is literature that allows the access to elements that are an integral part of exchanges but are not told in the oral proceedings. Some essential concepts of anthropology and symbolic interaction will be taken to show that the opacity of the other's behavior can sometimes be reduced due to some notions proposed by these theories. We intend to show, in this paper, that the written forms can become a privileged support when we aim at seeking to know the oral forms.

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Original in French