La musicalité, élément de l’expressivité dans le langage

Abstract

In this reflection on the relationship between language and music, we show that the term « musical language » used in the common language does not correspond to a linguistic reality. Linguists used this term metaphorically, to discuss either the perception of a foreign language, which does not mean that the language itself is musical, or rhythmic and phonetic-prosodic facts in natural language. As these facts are a manifestation of a language’s expressiveness, we compared the approach of C. Bally on the expressiveness and that of Jakobson on the poetic function to show their commonalities and their specificity. Our conclusion is that Jakobson’s expressive and poetic functions are included in what C. Bally called « expressiveness », and that Jakobson’s functional approach is not radically different from Bally’s richer linguistic approach.