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Images that we can make about languages, cultures, and speakers result from a construction process between different historical, social, and cultural circumstances. The images are constructed individually, and then they become part of social imagination. These ideas are circulated in society in many different ways; they influence individuals' behaviors when they communicate with other speakers. In this paper, we are interested in language, culture, and speakers' images: historical images and imaginary hierarchies are exposed. This is part of a qualitative investigation done within two Ph.D. theses. We conducted interviews with young Mexican teachers to talk about their experiences in learning foreign languages and their thoughts about the languages they speak.

Keywords: images, imaginaires linguistiques, FLE, héritage, Mexique, imaginary, foreign languages, hierarchies, legacy, Mexico

This study focuses on the communicative strategies that Dieudonné and Grillo use in their public discourse. Both the Italian and the French leader have been comedians, and have recently become protagonists of public debates in their countries. Both of them exploit the Web to spread their polemical discourses, which have proven to be viral in the era of liberalization of obscene language, insults, cries, and provocative gestures against the establishment. The polemical ethos which characterizes Grillo's and Dieudonne's discourses tend to become more and more violent, and to acquire features typical of the pamphlet. This study shows that their well-organized rhetoric has been able to awaken a negative pathos in their followers, who appreciate their new and more modern forms of authority. That is why they become all-out supporters and easily tend to adhere to new ideologies, which become viral due to the new media.

Keywords: analisi del discorso, discorso polemico, lingua della politica, autorità, vecchi e nuovi media, discourse analysis, polemics, political discourse, authority, traditional and new media

How do we distinguish socially legitimate singularities (differences, dissimilarities, extravagances, etc.) from disturbing figures of disorder (deviations, pathologies, anomies, etc.) who activate the “invisible hand of intervention” (psychologists, doctors, social workers, sociologists, etc.)? What are the normative conditions of astonishment, concern, and indignation that mobilize sociologists (and other “logists”)? How do we switch from the series “observe, understand, and let be” to “worry, analyze, and intervene”? We will develop our argument in five steps: 1) distinguish two elementary forms of the conditions of attention (resemblance and analysis) when it comes to apprehending an unknown phenomenon; 2) sketch the characteristics of a space of order in terms of liminal functions (possible–impossible, thinkable–unthinkable, etc.) and interfaces (human–nonhuman, conforming–deviant, etc.); 3) problematize the “obviousness” of the new space of order around emotion and intersectionality; 4) describe how “the invisible hand of intervention” distinguishes the statuses of “abnormal” (pathology, problem, deviance, etc.) and “anomalous” (difference, dissimilarity, diversity, etc.) to “classify” the different phenomena; and, finally, 5) list some contemporary characteristics of our “sociological way of reading” the “problematic social” universe, that is, our specific way of “paying attention” to the social.

Keywords: problèmes sociaux, intervention sociale, déviance, émotion, intersectionnalité, social problems, social intervention, deviance, emotion, intersectionality

In this article, we analyze women's access to law according to the Luhmanian dialectic of inclusion and exclusion within systems. Based on the results of an 8-month ethnographic study conducted with groups of women in North Kivu (DRC) in 2011 and 2012, we will see that the local community plays a decisive role in the conditions of inclusion of women within other social systems. Moreover, as a historically marginalized group, women find themselves “under-integrated” within social systems. This means that they cannot enjoy the benefits of legal and normative systems, such as the protection of their rights, while having to submit to the duties and responsibilities imposed by these coercive structures. They also disproportionately suffer from their punitive forces. Therefore, women must implement invisibility strategies through their network, a structure that escapes the monopoly of the community system on individuals, in order to satisfy some of their fundamental rights.

Since the Supreme Court of Canada rendered its decision in R v Powley in 2003, claims to Métis identity have significantly increased in each census. More recently, a subfield of Métis Studies has emerged that advocate for the existence of Métis communities in the eastern Canadian provinces (Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia). Certain scholars active in this subfield instrumentalize a few select excerpts from Louis Riel's works to discredit contemporary “western” Métis nationalism as “exclusive” and buttress “eastern Métis” claims as “inclusive”. This article takes a closer look at several of these excerpts by first placing them in their immediate textual context and considering their internal logic. It then places them within the general economy of Riel's political project. A closer scrutiny of Riel's projects reveals a much narrower nationalism than contemporary Métis nationalism, whether in ethnic, linguistic, religious, or geographical terms.

Keywords: Louis Riel, Métis, métissage, nationalisme, mouvements politiques autochtones

The letters of Louise Couture (1837-1916) preserved in the Fonds Famille Landry 1826-1975 at the Archives nationales in Montréal tell the story of a young French Canadian woman who marries a merchant supplying the California gold rush as a means of acquiring funds for her family. This paper uses a close reading of family correspondence networks to discover a gendered practice of remittance in which Louise navigated the restrictions of marriage and class while attempting to supplement the failing finances of her family back in Quebec. Borrowing Rosental's frame of “espace-ressources” and “espace investi”, our analysis adds a micro-historical perspective and gendered preface to recent demographic research on French Canadians in the West in the late 19th century.

Keywords: transfert monétaire, correspondance, migration, éducation, ruée vers l'or, mariage, veuvage, remittance, correspondence, migration, education, gold rush, marriage, widowhood

This article is based on a clinical psychological research about violence in psychotic organization of personality. Based on a clinical case, the purpose of our article is to bring into question the psychic function of the act in relation to psychological organization and life-course. Our hypothesis asserts that, for a psychotic subject, violent act results from an attempt of the object annihilation in its difference, its desubjectivation to fight against intrusion and destruction anguish. Our results raise the paradoxical nature of the violent act, testifying both to disruption but also an attempt to subjective appropriation.

Keywords: agir violent, organisation psychotique, parcours de vie, angoisse, violent act, psychotic organization of personality, life-course, anguish