Inspired by a postgraduate French studies conference (University of Nottingham, 10 September 2008), this volume explores linguistic form and content in relation to a variety of contexts, considering language alongside music, images, theatre, human experience of the world, and another language. Each essay asks what it is to understand language in a given context, and how, in spite of divergent expressive possibilities, a linguistic situation interacts with other contexts, renegotiating boundaries and redefining understanding. The book lies at the intersection of linguistics and hermeneutics, seeking to (a) contextualise philosophical and linguistic discussions of communication across a range of media and (b) illustrate their intimate relations, despite differing strategies or emphases.

Contents/Contenu : Foreword by Raphael Salkie - Helen Tattam/Pierre-Alexis Mével: Introduction: The Myth of Babel - Rose-Marie Alarcon : Baudelaire et Fauré : du sens poétique au sens musical - Mylène Dubiau-Feuillerac : La Mise en musique d'un poème : transposition d'art ou traduction d'un langage à un autre ? Le Cas de « Mandoline » de Paul Verlaine mis en musique par Claude Debussy - Irène Salas : Peindre avec des mots : les proverbes-rébus de Pieter Bruegel l'Ancien - Fabien Arribert-Narce : Image(s) de l'autobiographe : de la photographie comme « dangereux supplément » - Helen Tattam: Theory, Theatre, and Polyphony: Dramatising Existentialist Ethical Thought - Céline Schmitt : La Scénographie : le rythme du regard dans l'espace vécu - Helena Chadderton: Transposing the Thought Process in Marie Darrieussecq's Bref séjour chez les vivants - Jessica Whelan: Interpreting Comparisons in La Petite Fille qui aimait trop les allumettes by Gaétan Soucy - Pierre-Alexis Mével : Trompe-l'oeil et traduction - Iain Bailey : 'L'heure viendra, la chose est là, tu la verras' : Reading Biblical Intertextuality in Beckett's Bilingual OEuvre.

Pierre-Alexis Mével is a Ph.D. student at the University of Nottingham, where he also completed an MA by research. His thesis lies at the crossroads of translation theory, sociolinguistics, and media studies, and concerns the subtitling into French of African-American Vernacular English. Helen Tattam is a Ph.D. student working in the French Department at the University of Nottingham. Developing the research undertaken for her master's thesis (also at Nottingham), her thesis examines what is distinctive about the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, and resituates him in relation to the French intellectual tradition.