La représentation iconique du français de spécialité dans les manuels italiens des années 1950. Des notions métalexicales visibles

The iconic representation of French for specific purposes in Italian textbooks of the 1950s. Visible metalexical notions In the 1950s, French in Italy became the expression of a system of knowledge and new acquisitions in several technical and scientific fields as the international language of the nascent ECSC. As far as learning the lexicon for specific purposes of the world of work was concerned, it should be noted that it was taught through iconic representations in several school textbooks. A variety of illustrations – simple drawings, diagrams, encyclopaedic plates, real work scenes and even photographs – were used to help identify the referent in the real world, which was sometimes difficult to describe and also difficult to understand through translation alone. What’s more, the semiotic conversion from the visual to the verbal suggests that the words designating an object or a category of objects are interrelated. Iconic representations of the lexicon from several points of view reveal the existence of a metalexical reflection referring to monosemy and its relativity, hyponymy and cohyponymy, holonymy and meronymy, derivation by syntagmatic amplification, the realisation of lexical fields and an onomasiological approach. The textbooks analysed certainly have historical antecedents, such as Jan Amos Komensky’s Orbis sensualium pictus or the plates in Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. However, the most influential example in the editorial context studied is the Petit Larousse illustré.