La notion d'évidence et son expression linguistique dans la rhétorique scientifique

Résumé

Starting from the concept of evidentia, which was defined by ancient rhetoric as "what is set before the eyes, obvious" and has recently been revisited by linguistics and discourse analysis, our paper offers a case study of some rhetorical patterns of ‘obviousness' in academic discourse. The study, based on a large corpus of doctoral theses and scientific articles, written in French in various disciplines, aims to identify and classify the different kinds of phraseologisms that are used by scientific authors to express the obviousness of a concept or an assertion. Our results highlight two main types of phraseologisms: one showing the need to "go beyond the obvious" in order to reach scientific truth and the second expressing the "worth of calling to mind" some obvious facts before starting a demonstration.