Soldiers Letters - from Micro to Macro Analysis: Correspondences during the Great War

The important number of letters written by French soldiers during World War I calls for an adequate methodological frame allowing for the organization of the data. The study uses the tools of Discourse Analysis and Argumentation in order to enlighten the nature of epistolary exchange in the combatants' letters. In this perspective, the written documents are explored in their interactional, communicational and representational dimensions, while taking into consideration the evolution of the correspondences and their spatio-temporal frame. We will see how the shift from micro- to macro-analysis can be achieved by studying the way the soldiers deal with the event in their communication with the other at the very beginning of the war. The epistolary discourse is examined through a perspective of polyphony and of dialogism inscribing it in a common discourse, or detaching it from this interdiscourse. The epistolary attitude displayed by such an analysis of the letters at this precise period allows us to hear a single voice common to a group distinguished by its specific perception of the conflict.