Pragmatics of Stance

PENTTI HADDINGTON

Introduction
Pragmatics is here understood broadly as the study of how language and talk are used
in discourse and how their use is influenced by nonlinguistic factors. Stance refers to
the ways in which speakers talk and use language to express different kinds of positions,
attitudes, and feelings. Taking a stance in speech or in writing is a predominant and
multifaceted feature of language use and it has been studied broadly.
Pragmatic research on the expressions of stance can be placed on a subjective
intersubjective continuum. At the subjective end of the continuum, the act of taking
a stance can be understood as the way in which speakers or writers express their position
toward an entity or a proposition. At the more intersubjective end of the continuum,
taking or adopting a position is seen as an intersubjective achievement. Individual studies
on this subjectiveintersubjective continuum should not be seen as being mutually exclusive or contradicting each other. Rather, they both provide a rich view of how speakers
use language to express their attitudes and to adopt positions in discourse. Still, stance
is not an unproblematic notion.

Subjective Stance
A large body of research in pragmatics has shown that speakers and writers use various
linguistic forms (units, phrases, and words) to express their stance either toward a subsequent proposition in an utterance or toward some entity or referent (see Thompson &
Hunston, 2000). In general, this body of research understands stance as a subjective attitude
which rises from the speakers internal mental positions, aims, and beliefs. Linguistic forms
are then seen to represent the language users subjective (also internal, individual) stance.
Research has especially focused on linguistic forms that express a speakers or writers
evidential, evaluative, epistemic, or emotional stance. Linguistic evidentials (e.g., adverbs,
modals, and verbs) can be used for evaluating the degree of reliability of knowledge or
for specifying the mode of knowledge (see Chafe, 1986, and below). Speakers and writers
also frequently evaluate other people, objects, or events by using, for example, adjectives
(That is nice.) (see Channel, 2000). Epistemic expressions are used to display the speakers
degree of knowledge or belief (e.g., I think she was here, I know she was here, I dont
know if she was here.) Finally, emotional expressions refer to linguistic elements by which
speakers express their feelings and emotions, such as joy, sadness, and anger (e.g., Im
sad and angry.) (Martin, 2000).
There are several linguistic frameworks which have approached stance from this
perspective. Influential and extensive research in the appraisal framework within systemic
functional linguistics has explained how attitudinal and evaluative meanings are expressed
in discourse, especially through evaluative words (Martin, 2000). Corpus linguistic research
has shown that a large number of linguistic forms that are very frequent in discourse are
used for expressing a personal attitude or feeling. Using the Longman Spoken and Written

The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Edited by Carol A. Chapelle.

2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0944

pragmatics of stance

English Corpus (LSWE), Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan (1999) have studied
the occurrences and frequencies of adverbs, verbs, adverbials, and modal markers and
shown that they frequently function as ways to express stance in discourse. Channel (2000)
uses corpus linguistics as a method for studying how words and phrases receive negative
evaluative meanings as a result of their frequent use in particular collocational contexts.
Discourse-functional linguistics, which usually relies on recorded data (audio or video) of
spoken discourse, has focused for example on the expressions of evidential stance in discourse. In one study, Chafe (1986) has shown how speakers express different degrees of
evidentiality (reliability, belief, induction, sensory evidence, hearsay evidence, deduction,
and expectation) linguistically with adverbs, modals, and verbs. Downing (2001), by using
the British National Corpus, focuses specifically on the adverb surely and shows how it
displays the speakers confidence toward the truthfulness and reliability of the subsequent
claim. There is also recent research in discourse-functional linguistics which shows how
particular frequently occurring and grammaticized linguistic markers are used to display
speaker stance toward a proposition encoded in the following utterance. These studies
have focused, for example, on such epistemic, evidential, and evaluative stance markers
as I think (Krkkinen, 2003), I dont know (Scheibman, 2000), and I guess (Krkkinen, 2007).
(See also Thompson, 2002.)
The two main arguments in the above studies have been that first, speakers and writers
have a wide array of linguistic resources available to them for expressing their attitudes
and opinions, and second, that these resources express the speakers subjective stance.
Nevertheless, many of these studies acknowledge that the studied linguistic forms do not
only express a subjective position or an attitude toward a subsequent clause, sentence, or
utterance, but that they emerge in the situated social context and can also be used for
constructing agreement and affiliation, for displaying disagreement and conflict with prior
discourse or between speakers (e.g., Chafe, 1986; Krkkinen, 2006), or for constructing
and maintaining relationships between speakers and hearers (Hunston, 2007). In other
words, these linguistic resources can be used for the intersubjective and dialogical expression of stance.

Intersubjective Stance
How do people use language to communicate their stances to each other in spoken
discourse? What are the linguistic and interactional mechanisms that they rely upon in
order to agree or disagree with a position taken by a coconversationalist? This question
has been asked in a broad, more interactionally oriented line of pragmatic research. Within
this framework, it is possible to identify three different approaches to talk and language.
First, there is discourse-functional (see above) research that focuses more on how morphosyntactic, prosodic and lexical practices are used for taking a stance in dialogic interaction
(Du Bois, 2007). Second, in conversation analysis there is research that focuses on how speakers
through the production of situated social actions adopt and understand positions in sequentially unfolding interaction. Third, interactional linguistics, which is informed by the conversation analytic method, specifically focuses on how linguistic forms feature in the design
of social actions.
What is common to these approaches is that they rely on audio or audio-video recordings
of naturally occurring spoken discourse and microdetailed transcriptions made of them.
As regards stance specifically, they also build upon the idea that speakers use language
to negotiate their positions in spoken discourse with and relative to other participants in
the conversation and what they have said. They argue that speakers use different linguistic
forms and practicesnot only to display their stance toward a subsequent utterance or

pragmatics of stance

proposition, but also to agree and disagree, to affiliate and disaffiliate with other speakers;
to adopt positions with respect to topics and themes, events, objects and themselves in
spoken discourse; to modify their stances; and to design them with respect to immediately
prior talk.
These studies show how linguistic structures and practices are used for the intersubjective construction of stance in two ways: (a) stances can be taken and designed on the basis
of and as responses to previous talk, and (b) stances can be constructed for particular
recipients. Thus, the general objective is to study how particular linguistic constructions
and interactional practices are used for collaborative and intersubjective stance taking.
That is, whatever positions we take, the positions are not left hanging in the air; they are not
produced in a vacuum. Rather, they are made socially available for coconversationalists;
they can be agreed upon, contested, disagreed with, left uncommented, and so forth.
There are a few studies that have taken this broad theoretical starting point. One of these
is Du Boiss (2007) discourse-functional work on stance taking. Du Bois outlines stance as
follows: Stance can be approached as a linguistically articulated form of social action
whose meaning is to be construed within the broader scope of language, interaction and
sociocultural value (Du Bois, 2007, p. 140). Furthermore, Du Bois sees stance taking as
a tri-act in which speakers take stances about (and position themselves with respect to)
an object of talk; at the same time, speakers negotiate their positions and attitudes relative
to one another (and align themselves with respect to one another). The use of particular
linguistic structures can also invoke and index different sociocultural values, which further
position the speaker with respect to objects and other speakers. For discourse-functional
linguistics, and perhaps for traditional linguistics more broadly as well, Du Bois (2007)
contribution has been to show that linguistic stance taking is an intersubjective social act
and that language form and its indexical properties within the sequential, sociocognitive,
and cultural context are important resources for constructing and understanding stances
in spoken discourse. By building on the framework outlined by Du Bois (2007), Haddington
(2006a) shows how in a news interview an ethnic identity comes to be presented in a
dubious light, not through individual utterances or linguistic forms but gradually in and
through sequentially unfolding discussion. With the same background, Krkkinen (2006)
studies story completions and shows how the tellers, by using for example assessments,
encourage story recipients to partake in the evaluation of the story. Consequently, she
shows how a stance toward a just-prior story is jointly accomplished in a story-reception
sequence (see also Krkkinen, 2007).
Prominent research in interactional linguistics has also explored how interlocutors use
linguistic structures as part of social action to adopt positions with respect to their
coconversationalists. Keisanen (2006) studies tag questions and negative yes/no interrogatives and how they are used in American English conversations in such actions as
requests for confirmation, challenges, disagreements, and assessments for negotiating
evaluative, affective and epistemic positions. Haddington (2007) describes a linguistic
practice called the neg + pos pattern by which interviewees in televised news interviews
deny the relevance of the question or a presupposition in it and then respond to the question in their own terms. Halonen and Sorjonen (2008) show how interrogatives in Finnish
are used for calling into question a prior action. Steensig and Larsen (2008) study the
affiliative and disaffiliative uses of questions in Danish. Rauniomaa (2007) studies Finnish
stance markers minusta (i.e., I think) and minun mielest (i.e., in my opinion, to my mind,
it seems to me) as they are used in assessments. In another study, Rauniomaa (2008) focuses
on repetition and shows that by repeating a linguistic form, a speaker takes a stancenot
to a person, object, or subsequent utterance, but toward the ongoing activity or another
speakers (lack of) contribution in just-prior talk.

pragmatics of stance

In addition to linguistic pragmatic research on stance, there are plenty of studies that
take social action, sequence, or turn constructionrather than a linguistic form or practice
as their starting point and study how social actions in their sequential contexts are
designed and used for adopting and negotiating positions. This work in conversation
analysis has studied, for example, agreements and disagreements (Heritage & Raymond,
2005), questions (Koshik, 2002), challenges (Keisanen, 2007), and responses (Gardner, 2001).
A classic paper among these is Pomerantzs (1984) study on assessments. She shows that
the production of assessments in talk is a highly routinized, constrained, and organized
sequential activity. She continues by claiming that by producing an assessment, participants
partake in a social activity in which they first introduce a referent of which they have
direct knowledge and then produce an assessment of it. Furthermore, assessments tend
to be sequentially organized into first assessments and second assessments. A first assessment often prefaces and is followed by a coparticipants second assessment, in which she
reports either an agreeing or a disagreeing stance about the referent introduced by the
first speaker. It is noteworthy that the way in which the first assessment is designed invites
either a preferred or a dispreferred second assessment. More recently, conversation analytic
research has also started to study how nonverbal practices (e.g., gestures and gaze) are
used as resources for taking a stance (e.g., Haddington, 2006b; Stivers, 2008).
Finally, there are also conversation analytic studies that focus specifically on the use of
prosody for expressing stance. Niemel (2005), who studies direct-reported speech (DRS)
in storytelling sequences, shows how prosodically voiced DRS in stories is often followed
by matching voiced direct reported speech produced by story recipients (either in responses
to stories or in second stories). According to Niemel, such matching voiced DRS functions
as a display of an affiliative stance. In two important papers, Ogden (2006) and Local and
Walker (2008) show that particular phonetic features cannot be connected to specific displays of affect, emotions, or stance (e.g., sadness, joy, anger). In the first one, Ogden (2006)
shows that agreements and disagreements do not have any unique phonetic properties.
Rather, the phonetic devices which speakers use are related to the action that the turn
produces in its sequential context. Ogden (2006) continues by describing a phonetic pattern
in which a preferred second assessment is phonetically upgraded, whereas a dispreferred
second assessment is downgraded. In line with Ogdens work, Local and Walker (2008)
show how expressions of stance and affect cannot unproblematically be connected to
particular phonetic features of talk; they argue that stance and affect are understood as
part of the turn and sequence in which they occur.

Discussion
Stance is not an unproblematic analytic notion for pragmatics, and there are at least two
reasons for this. First, as has been outlined above, stance is used broadly to refer to very
different kinds of linguistic, cognitive, and social phenomena. It has been used as a nearsynonym or even an umbrella term for such notions as affect, emotion, evidentiality,
epistemicity, and evaluation. It has also been used as an analytic notion to cover such
acts as evaluating people, objects, and events, and negotiating social positions and attitudes
in discourse. Consequently, rather than being a clearly conceptualized notion that refers
to a specific phenomenon, its broadness can be confusing. Second, in linguistics stance
is an analysts category that continues to be connected to different linguistic practices but
which does not explain how or for what purposes a linguistic practice is used in discourse.
An analyst should be able to say more than simply that a linguistic practice expresses
a stance.
While these points remain partly unanswered, it should be noted that pragmatic research
on stance and stance taking has been valuable and helpfulespecially for linguists in

pragmatics of stance

that it has supplemented existing linguistic research by foregrounding the idea and by
providing evidence that linguistic forms have social functions in discourse. Furthermore,
some of the above studies have helped linguists to recognize the importance of studying
how humans use language in real everyday conversations. Thus, they can be helpful in
highlighting the importance of understanding the intersubjectivity, reflexivity, and dialogicality of language use, and thereby supplementing existing knowledge of language
and linguistic form.
In the future, it would be valuable to combine different linguistic methods, for example
interactional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and corpus linguistics, in order to obtain a
comprehensive view of how speakers and writers use linguistic forms to adopt positions
in discourse. Such a study would enhance our knowledge by exploring the degree to which
expressing ones position and attitude, or taking a stance, is a multifaceted linguisticinteractional phenomenon.
SEE ALSO: Conversation Analysis and Affiliation and Alignment; Conversation Analysis
and Interactional Linguistics; Grammar and Discourse; Quantitative Methods; Systemic
Functional Linguistics

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Suggested Readings
Barton, E. L. (1993). Evidentials, argumentation, and epistemological stance. College English,
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Clift, R. (2006). Indexing stance: Reported speech as an interactional evidential. Journal of
Sociolinguistics, 10(5), 56995.
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& G. Thompson (Eds.), Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse
(pp. 5673). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Englebretson, R. (Ed.) (2007). Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction.
Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.

pragmatics of stance

Field, M. (1997). The role of factive predicates in the indexicalization of stance: A discourse
perspective. Journal of Pragmatics, 27, 799814.
Hunston, S., & Thompson, G. (Eds.). (2000). Evaluation in text: authorial stance and the construction
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Martin, J. R., & White, P. R. R. (2007). The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. New York,
NY: Palgrave Macmillan.