De toute façon ‘anyway’ and d’une certaine façon ‘in a certain way’: A joint study of linguistic, prosodic, and gestural markers in the construction of viewpoint

This article offers a contrastive study of the French discourse markers de toute façon ʻanywayʼ and d’une certaine façon ʻin a certain wayʼ within an enunciative framework inspired by the work of Culioli (1999; 2018) and Paillard (2017; 2021; 2026). The analysis is based on an audiovisual corpus of contemporary spoken French and combines linguistic, prosodic, and gestural data. We argue that the differences between the two markers stem from the way the semantic properties of their constituents determine the specification of p and, consequently, the discourse value of each marker. More specifically, the contrast results from the mode of construction of the class of occurrences associated with the noun façon ʻwayʼ. While de toute façon ʻanywayʼ homogenizes the occurrences within this class and neutralizes interpretive variations that might affect the validation of p, d’une certaine façon ʻin a certain wayʼ selects a particular occurrence while preserving the possibility of alternative interpretations. The study shows that this opposition is systematically reflected in the prosodic and gestural realizations of the two markers. Although these realizations vary according to the marker’s position within the utterance (preamble, rheme, final position), they consistently reveal meaning-construction operations that are coherent with the markers’ semantic identities. The findings support the hypothesis of a continuity between the semantic properties of lexical constituents, the semantic identity of discourse markers, and their discourse functions. More broadly, they highlight the value of the joint analysis of linguistic, prosodic, and gestural forms for investigating enunciative operations and the construction of viewpoints in spoken interaction.