Between Scientific Discourse and Autobiographical Writing: Emotional and Ecological Engagement in Anne Collet and François Sarano

Abstract

In this article, we examine the use of the first person, its place and its role in two works devoted to marine mammals: Danse avec les baleines by Anne Collet (1998) and Le retour de Moby Dick. Ou ce que les cachalots nous enseignent sur les océans et les hommes by François Sarano (2017), with the aim of characterizing the discursive functions of subjectivity in ecological popular science writing. We hypothesize that internal focalization and the use of the first person contribute to generating an “embodied” experience for the reader by facilitating the sharing of the narrator’s subjective experience, in line with Weik von Mossner’s analysis (2017). The analysis of personal pronouns, particularly first-person forms and the pronoun on, shows that while these texts do belong to the discourse of scientific popularization through their aim of disseminating knowledge, they also pursue other essential purposes, which vary according to the author. These uses seek to convey a sense of wonder at the marine world, to retrace the personal and scientific trajectories of the researcher-writers, and to encourage the reader’s awareness and even ecological action. These findings suggest that the objectivity claimed by scientific discourse does not exclude an assumed subjectivity, especially in ecological popular science writing.