Abstract EN:

The work aims at observing to what extent the definition of “description” as an object of knowledge may act upon the ways it is brought into operation in the didactic space. Conceived as a hypertextual practice, a pattern at theme level as well as form level, it can be viewed in an existential perspective. A case study of description in six novels taken from the canon of French literature gives the opportunity to identify a process running along its evolution in history. From the immediate relation to the object, to its position as a thing, this process invites the learner to travel along a “way” at the end of which, not only an actual practice of description may occur, but also the describer-mediator entity itself. Both are inscribed within specific and yet interdependent dynamics which could form a paradigm in discourse teaching. Various experimentations in school environments have demonstrated that such a conception of the object of knowledge enables to give a definition of a subject matrix that can be taught at secondary school level. They have also resulted in the necessity of turning such an elementary structure into a problematics, so as to make sure the curriculum matrix in which it is bound to be worked, will be coherent.