RSSReview: Stance
Mar 18
AUTHOR: Alexandra Jaffe
TITLE: Stance
SUBTITLE: Sociolinguistic Perspectives
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: Simone C. Bacchini, British Library
SUMMARY
“Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives” is, in the words of its editor, ‘a
sociolinguistic exploration of one of the fundamental properties of
communication: stancetaking’ (3). In its ten chapters, the contributors to
this volume offer explorations of some of the ways in which speakers’
positionality is linguistically encoded through various lexicogrammatical and
discursive means. Although, for the most part, the essays contained in this
volume refer to contemporary English language examples, the collection also
contains cases of non-English contexts and, in one of these, a
non-contemporary situation.
This volume refers to encodings of speakers’ positionality as ‘stance’ and
‘stancetaking’. As Jaffe explains, stancetaking refers to ‘taking up a
position with respect to the form and content of one’s utterance’ (3). Jaffe
clearly acknowledges that the linguistic encoding of stance is not new.
However, she rightly points out that each act of stancetaking is, by its very
nature, both socially situated and dialogic: it occurs in a specific social
context, which contributes to its shape; and it responds, directly or
indirectly, to other possible stances a speaker might take in ways that are
socially and interactionally relevant. With time, repeated acts of
stancetaking can become indexical, at a higher level, of things such as
femininity, for example. It is against these backdrops of indexicality that
further stancetaking then takes place.
The main way in which the studies presented in this volume differ from
previous ones is that their perspective is clearly sociolinguistic. What this
means is that here, the approaches taken are ‘explicitly socially grounded’
(Coupland 1991: 99). As Jaffe explains, a sociolinguistic approach to stance
and stancetaking is interested in the ways in which speakers ‘draw upon
sociolinguistic resources and repertoires to signal positionality’ (10). What
is meant by ‘sociolinguistic resources’ is ‘forms of variation that have
established social indexicalities’ (10). All the studies in this volume
successfully deal with a number of such indexicalities: authoritative speech,
rationality vs. irrationality, moral irony, and elitism, to name but a few.
This collection of essays opens with an exhaustive introduction (Chapter One)
by the volume’s editor, Alexandra Jaffe. In it, the aim of the work is clearly
stated: ‘to map the sociolinguistics of stance, bringing together analyses
that allow […] to explore both what the study of stance has to offer
sociolinguistic theory, and to define the territory occupied by
sociolinguistic approaches to stance’ (3). The extent to which it is
successful will be addressed later. As Jaffe makes clear, the goal of her
introduction is not to provide a general overview of research on stance, but
rather, more modestly, to ‘identify dimensions of stance research that are
particularly salient for sociolinguistics, and to situate the sociolinguistic
focus on stance in relation to related concepts and currents of analysis
within sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology’ (4).
Jaffe provides the reader with a useful introduction to the study of stance by
first defining the object of enquiry and then by clearly explaining why a
sociolinguistic approach, as opposed to other available approaches, is a
productive one is shedding light on the various choices speakers and writers
make when they encode positionality within a text.
Chapter Two (Stance, Style, and the Linguistic Individual), by Barbara
Johnstone, is a discourse analytical study of one particular individual’s
textual production (i.e. including both talk and writing) across a variety of
genres and over a number of years. The analysis also makes use of biographical
and historical data on the sociolinguistic and ideological contexts in which
this well-known U.S political figure, Barbara Jordan, operated, and how, in
turn, her linguistically encoded examples of stancetaking became indexical,
through repetition, of this particular individual’s identity. For example,
Johnstone points how the late U.S. politician established personal authority
by repeated acts of linguistic epistemic and interactional stancetaking. Both
in face-to-face interviews and in public speaking, Jordan would present and
project moral and epistemological authority by highlighting (and thus drawing
attention to) her knowledgeability, the power of intellect, her adherence to
principle and her thoughtfulness. Explicit markers of evidentiality, encoded
linguistically through markers such as ‘I think’, ‘in my opinion’ and phrases
like ‘this may be too much of a generalization’, are convincingly shown by
Johnstone to contribute to the establishment of Jordan as a (in this instance)
thoughtful individual.
Chapter Three (Stance in a Colonial Encounter: How Mr. Taylor Lost His
Footing), by Judith T. Irvine, makes use of Goffman’s (1981) notions of
‘faultables’ and of ‘audience’ to better understand the concept of ‘stance’.
She does this by offering an analysis of archival material, in this case,
letters held in the archive of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) from their
nineteenth-century missions in West Africa. The letters concern a violent
dispute among missionaries, which resulted in the corpus of letters between
the missionaries, their locally-based bishop, and the church authorities in
London. Irvine clearly and convincingly shows how – through stancetaking – the
different social actors involved (i.e. the missionaries and their local
bishops) positioned themselves vis-à-vis the ‘faultable’ actions of one
particular missionary. The author points out that often an excessive emphasis
on speaker intentionality and agency in stancetaking obscures how dispreferred
stances can be imposed on speakers by others. These stances, in turn, are
shaped and influenced by the various social and power structures in which such
speakers operate.
In Chapter Four, Janet McIntosh takes an ethnographic approach to examine the
narratives of white Kenyans. She shows how, through stance choices, they
ostensibly establish distance between their rational, Western selves and the
superstitious, irrational belief system of black Kenyans. However, McIntosh
shows that, in closer inspections, these white Kenyans’ belief system is less
coherent and more porous than they would like their listener to believe. In
fact, their cumulative stance choices reveal a degree of anxiety about the
possibility of cultural assimilation and suggest that these choices might
serve to perform a preferred identity.
Chapter Five, by Robin Shoaps, aims, in the author’s words, to ‘demonstrate
the necessity of ethnographic research for the study of resources for indirect
stancetaking and how they are deployed in naturally occurring speech
situations’ (92). Shoaps’s is the first study in the collection which looks at
a language other than English; she examines, Sakalputek, a Mayan language
spoken in Guatemala. The author looks at constructions that encode what she
terms ‘moral irony’ which, superficially, resemble ironic constructions in
English. These constructions, she argues, provide an important resource in
Sakalputek for indirect stancetaking. Shoaps argues that in these
constructions, ‘moral irony’ is ‘modal’ ‘not only because the construction
makes use of modal particles, but because, semiotically, it projects a realm
of possible actions and a possible division between the speaker or animator
and principal or agent who takes responsibility for or is committed to the
hypothetical stance or action’ (112-113). It is ‘ironic’ because – following
Goffman – the principal ‘who is committed to the possible stance is distinct
from the animator who, in the moment of speaking, rejects the stance or
action’ (113). For example, in an encounter where, as customary in Mayan
culture, a bride receives advice from her kin the night before the wedding,
the bride’s aunt (in this case) advising her niece not to make her father (who
is deceased) ashamed qualifies her statement by saying (107): ‘as if because
you don’t have a father anymore you can put your mother in shame [,] and as if
he’s over and done with’. Here, the aunt uses moral irony to indicate ‘an
imagined stance of some other principal who endorses the erroneous idea that
because the girl’s father is dead’ (107) she is not expected to hold the same
standards of respectability.
Chapter Six is by Alexandra Jaffe. In it, the volume’s editor explores how
teachers in a bilingual Corsican-French primary school produce acts of
sociolinguistic stance, which, in turn, position the two languages within the
classroom. Through the repetition of such acts, Jaffe argues, the pupils’
instructors simultaneously accomplish two things: they offer ‘ideal models of
bilingual practice and identity’ (119) whilst, at the same time, attributing
stances to their students. The analysis offered in this chapter illustrates
how the sociolinguistic stance encoded by bilingual instruction in the
classroom highlights the ways in which ‘the conventional association between
language and social categories, linguistic ideologies, and language
hierarchies’ (143) are themselves indicators of stance.
Chapter Seven, by Mary Bucholtz, looks at the use of of the lexical item
‘güey’ by Mexican and Mexican American youth as both a marker of
‘interactional alignment and of a particular gendered style’ (147). Through
her analysis, Bucholtz sheds light on the ways in which stance and style are
attended to simultaneously through the use of slang. She argues that contrary
to what its critics often claim, ‘güey’ is not a mere verbal filler. Instead,
it is a ‘highly expressive [term], performing a range of functions within
discourse’ (150). For example it may function as an address term, an insulting
or noninsulting reference term, or a discourse marker that indicates focus as
emphasis. However, it can also index solidarity, ‘especially during
face-threatening social actions’ (152). In an example that Bucholtz provides
(153), a young man travelling on a bus with a school friend comments on a
motorist’s driving he sees through the bus window. He says: ‘hey idiot.
(pause). This güey can’t go here. He has to go on the right’. Here, the term
had a double function: that of a reference term but also a mildly insulting
epithet. In the following example (152), the term simply functions as an
address term: (one of the boys’ phone rings. The boy takes it out of his
pocket and puts it to his ear) ‘What’s going on güey? What’s going on güey?’
Chapter Eight is by Scott F. Kiesling. Looking at three examples of situated
talk (i.e. recorded interviews and interactions in a U.S. college fraternity,
recorded interaction among female colleagues who shared similar jobs in
university administration, and the use of the phonological realization of
word-final ‘-er’ by second generation Italian and Greek immigrants in Sydney),
Kiesling argues that speakers’ stances are the primary means through which
they organize interaction. Stance, which he defines as ‘a person’s expression
of their relationship to their talk’ (172), then becomes the ‘precursor, or
primitive, in sociolinguistic variation’ (172).
Chapter Nine, by Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow, is an exploration of one
particular type of stance: elitism, as encoded in the language of travelogues
in the travel sections of two British newspapers. The chapter offers an
examination of elitism ‘as an everyday discursive accomplishment in the light
of a critique of contemporary class privilege and social inequality’ (195).
The authors highlight the inherently ideological significance that stances
take which, enhanced by their ability to draw little attention to themselves,
become a powerful tool for the preservation and propagation of positions such
as elitism. For example, one frequently-made in travel writing is the
distinction between ‘tourists’ and ‘travellers’. Tourists are seen as
sophisticated, often driven by a desire to conform and to ‘take in’ as much as
possible; quantity over quality, mere escapism versus a true cultural desire
to learn, understand, and improve oneself through travel. As the two authors
point out, this distinction is often exploited by travel writers who then
position their readers as fellow-travellers, as opposed to the despised
tourists.
Chapter Nine, by Justine Coupland and Nikolas Coupland, concludes the volume
with a look at how the dialogically developed stance, in relation to body
weight in a geriatric setting and in women’s magazines, indexes and reinforces
the role of the body as a ‘moral site’ (229). By highlighting the dialogic
nature of stancetaking, Coupland and Coupland show that authorial stances are
not always, and not only, the product of individuals’ subjectivities but can,
and often are, made for them. The authors quote, for example, medical
discourse, which has often been referred to as ‘asymmetrical’, realized in
acts of ‘speaking for’ rather that ‘speaking with’ the patient. They then
refer to the discourse of magazine features relating, in this case, to issues
of weight and body shape issues. This discourse, Coupland and Coupland argue,
is distinctive in the ways it attributes institutional stances to laypeople
(the magazine readers) in relation to their body weight and body shape. This,
the authors argue, is essential to the maintenance and dissemination of
normative ideologies, in particular, with regard to ageing and the body.
EVALUATION
In 1981, Lyons (1981) wrote that, as far as works written in English were
concerned, ‘the vast majority of them [were] seriously flawed, from a
theoretical point of view, by their failure to give due weight to [the notions
of modality, subjectivity, and locutionary agency] and their interdependence’
(235-236). This, he argued, was mainly due to an ‘intellectualist prejudice
that language is essentially an instrument for the expression of propositional
thought’ (236).
Fortunately, things have change since then and what might be termed the
‘subjective function of language’ has been receiving considerable attention.
The encoding of ‘speaker’s positionality’ vis-à-vis his/her utterance, its
form and content, and in relation to his/her real or potential audience, has
been explored not only in semantics but also in pragmatics and discourse
studies. According to each particular researcher’s priorities and theoretical
orientation, this has resulted in different terminology reflecting the
particular aspect of subjectivity being investigated. However, from whichever
point of view one wishes to approach it, one thing is clear: in language,
speaker’s positionality is found everywhere. Indeed, language seems to be
specifically designed to encode it.
This volume refers to encodings of speakers’ positionality as ‘stance’ and
‘stancetaking’. As Jaffe explains, stancetaking refers to ‘taking up a
position with respect to the form and content of one’s utterance’ (3). Jaffe
clearly acknowledges that the linguistic encoding of stance is not new.
Most of the volume’s contributions also benefit greatly from ethnographic and
anthropological approaches, which is why they are likely to be appreciated by
a public with interests beyond linguistics and sociolinguistics. What the
contributors to this volume clearly show is how central of a process
stancetaking is in the formation, maintenance, and transmission of individual
and communal identity. Furthermore, stancetaking is clearly shown to be
related to concepts such as power, ideology, and style. Consequently, the
research presented in this volume will be of interest not only to
sociolinguists, but also, in this reviewer’s opinion, to literary scholars,
discourse-analysts, anthropologists and psychologists. All readers will
certainly appreciate the clarity with which arguments are made and will find
inspiration to further test the ideas and methodologies put forward.
Another strength of this volume is the range of data it uses: travelogues in
British newspapers, everyday monolingual and bilingual talk in English as well
as other languages, archival material such as letters written by African
Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century, and recorded interactions
and interviews. This certainly strengthens the arguments being made and
clearly demonstrates the wide applicability of a sociolinguistic approach to
stancetaking. All contributors to the volume are experts in their own fields
and have long histories of dealing with their respective topics. However, each
contribution is up-to-date, both in terms of progress in the field and the
latest developments put forth by each researcher. As such, this collection can
work well as an introduction to what, for some, might be a new area of
interest, as well as a way of staying abreast of leading researchers’ current
thoughts on issues such as stance and individual style.
Of all the very good essays in this volume, one that particularly stands out
(at least in this reviewer’s opinion) is Jaworski and Thurlow’s essay on
elitist stance in newspaper travel articles. Although the analytic tools they
employ are neither new nor particularly sophisticated, their work clearly
illustrates how stancetaking and ideology can be fruitfully uncovered and
explored in texts to which most readers will have been exposed at one point or
another. Thus, this chapter can be used as a ‘how to’ guide by instructors,
more experienced researchers, and students alike.
In conclusion, this is an excellent book which, by providing a unifying
concept, offers a very interesting and useful methodology for looking at
speakers’ individuality or ‘self’. Written with clear language and with a
plethora of examples, it is likely to be a seminal work for years to come.
REFERENCES
Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Lyons, John. 1981. Language, Meaning & Context. London: Fontana.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Simone C.Bacchini is Social Sciences Curator at The British Library. He has
obtained a PhD in Linguistics. His thesis was on the linguistic encoding of
the experience of bodily pain in chronic illness. His interests include
sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, health communication, and systemic
functional grammar. He is currently working on ageist discourse in Italian
political discourse.
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