Enunciative Scenes of Rumors in Financial Discourse: Polyphonic Configurations of Discursive Uncertainty

Abstract

This paper aims to develop a polyphonic-argumentative description (Ducrot, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1993, 1998) of a rumor-utterance system within the financial discourse on the Internet. It shows the results of the contrast between different ways in which rumor-utterance represents dissimilar interventions of the rumor-reproducer. Specifically, a wide range of argumentative orientations (AO) at the utterance-level reveals these subjective positions. These AO are built on two contrastive topoï, both applied in their conclusive and transgressive aspects. The main finding of the study is that the enunciative position of the rumor-reproducer varies both in hearsay-reproduction as well as in the content reported. The result of this variation confirms that there are different types of uncertainness and not a uniform scale of uncertainness.