Anaphoric and exophoric uses of the pronoun “il(s)” in Congolese schoolchildren’s essays

Abstract

: In this article, we discuss the construction of discursive cohesion by examining the pronoun il(s) as anaphoric or exophoric in schoolchildren’s essays. The written productions examined are those of college students aged between 13 and 16, students for whom fluency in the French language is assumed to be acquired. The analysis focused on referential indeterminations in writings of an argumentative nature. The results indicate that anaphoric practices give rise to gender and number breaks in the link between the pronoun and the antecedent. Exophoric practices give rise to non-text referents, a phenomenon that is visibly little perceived by the learner. However, the misuse of anaphorics does not break the textual coherence. And it ultimately seems that these deviations in the use of the pronoun il(s) do not have a strong bearing on the construction of co-reference and of textual progression and coherence. Keywords: pronoun, il, anaphoric, exophoric, school writing