Prosody and punctuation in the stranger by Albert Camus

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the results of a study concerning the prosodic interpretation of punctuation. The focus is placed on the two most common punctuation marks, that is to say, full stops and commas. The findings are based on a comparison between The Stranger by Albert Camus the way it is published as a book and the way it is read out by its author in two French radio broadcasts in 1954. My findings suggest that the oral interpretation of the punctuation clearly is subject to a certain code. However, the most interesting findings of this study concern a non-negligible number of cases in which the code is not observed.