Abstract EN:

The confrontation of the private war-correspondences of two meridionals (1914-1918) with publisched letters from the same period lays the stress on the differences that appear both in the lexical fields of vocabulary wich structurize the representation of the event as well as in the use of the pronominal system. The lexicals field, for the meridionals, deals with banal daily life and not the hostile environment of the front correspond to that of the arms and the heroic battle in the published texts. The analysis of the personal pronouns allows to distinguish the social groups and the categories of protagonists in the correspondences, wich are extremely different wether the letters have been published or not. The study of means of calling that adversary focuses the "mots-chocs" hich includenegative of neutral connotations in public speech. Variation can be noticed in private written works : these connotations are negative, positive or neutral. Another field of this research scrutinizes the more "coded" aspect of the letters. As a correlary of the identity system and of the impact of the speech, the "cliches" have not an expressive part alone, in the stylistic meaning of the term : they play a part in the mechanisms of persuasion wich affect the reader's representations, his beliefs an even his behaviour. From the point of view of sociolinguistic, the study of the main variations of non standard aspect of the letters of the men from the south of france, who have passed the "certificat d'etudes primaires", shows the limited part of the influence of the "substrat" on their production. Most of traits are not continuity of the dialect, they are a substitute to old weak elements of the french language. The gaps are less numerous and less rich than those can be found in the oral language of the south. The narrative is a true filter for the variations. The "substrat" language plays no part in the indentity position of the letters-writers.