Michel Bréal e la polisemia. Una nuova prospettiva sulla vita delle parole

Polysemy refers — as well known — to the coexistence of several related meanings within the same word and it is a key issue in semantic analysis (cf. Ullman, 1977/1957). The awareness of the existence of a plurality of meanings of a word is a very old acquisition, however the technical term polysemy was coined by Michel Bréal at the end of the 19th century (cf. Bréal, 1897) a few years after the creation of the term semantics. Bréal’s coining of the term polysemy came at the end of a diversified and complex process that began in the 18th century with the study of neologisms, synonyms and rhetorical figures, and was intertwined with early 19th century lexicography (linked to rhetoric and hermeneutics) and with research into etymology, lexicology and semantics (cf. Nerlich & Clark, 1997). Here we will try to outline how Bréal — by virtue of contacts and affinities with previous and contemporary French and German authors — understood polysemy in all its potentiality, not only as the historical evolution of new semantic uses (and therefore in the domain of semantic change), but also as a phenomenon of a synchronic order, linked to the social and cognitive needs of the speakers. In Bréal’s position, one can notice some very fertile ideas that see polysemy as a principle of cognitive organisation that acts on the lexicon in synergy with the variability of the context of enunciation, and therefore in relation to the concrete and always variable dimension of the contexts of use.