The discursive dimensions of interaction in communicative situations are a key focus of the Centre's research. This research takes account of the audio-scripto-visual aspects of these discourses, always considering them in the context of social practices and uses. This research considers the different forms of articulation and interaction between language on the one hand, and the social, cognitive and technological on the other.
The same applies to the analysis of social discourses, which activate and regulate social relations at different levels (in inter-individual relations as well as at the more macro level of social functioning as a whole). Within this framework, the circulation of these written, oral and electronic discourses is analysed according to the enunciative framework, discursive heterogeneities, discursive genres, discursive and linguistic formations and manifestations of memory. The study of these trans-semiotic objects (television series, comic strips, songs, advertising objects, etc.) characterised by the interaction of different semiotic systems requires an interdisciplinary approach specific to the communication sciences. The same applies to the study of the construction of knowledge within educational systems using multiple semiotic registers (in the context of classroom interactions or the use of media productions for educational purposes). In the field of organisations, social discourse is often linked to the issue of organisational culture, whether this is experienced at the level of exchanges between the social actors involved in the life of the organisation, proposed by the institutional managerial project, or linked to the different levels of culture present in society (macro, meso, or micro).
In addition to these analyses of social discourse, sustained attention is also paid to questions of representation (semiotic, social, cultural, mental). The concept of representation refers to a problematic process that is historically and culturally marked. This is why the analysis of any human society includes the study of the theories of representation that they construct and that govern them. As defined here, the concept of representation refers more to the putting into representations, i.e. the action of representing (situated on the side of enunciation) than to the result of this action. This action is produced by an utterance; it presupposes the use of one or more systems of signs; it often involves institutional arrangements (media, school system, museums, etc.), and it always requires an activity of interpretation. Discourse analysis also enables information to be decoded and the representations underlying the discourse conveyed and naturalised in a given society and at a given time to be brought to light.