C bien alors. Contraintes communicatives sur la périphérie droite en conversations spontanées Le cas du face-à-face, du chat et du SMS

This paper addresses the interaction between the right-peripheral position of an item and its semantic values in different types of spontaneous conversation. It assumes that the right periphery “encodes” intersubjective and metadiscursive functions. To check this hypothesis, we subscribe to a synchronic view on the discourse marker alors operating in right periphery in face-to-face conversation, chatting, and texting. The main results show that alors is marked by a stable discursive environment and semantic distribution throughout the three types of conversation, with a tendency for expressing causal and metadiscursive relations in sustain speech functions.