Dr. Juana I. Marín-Arrese is Professor of English Linguistics in the Department of Filología Inglesa I (English Language and Linguistics) at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Her research interests include issues related to cross-linguistic studies of evidentiality and modality and the expression of stance and subjectivity/intersubjectivity in discourse. She has coordinated several research projects on these topics and has published extensively in various journals and collective volumes (Perspectives on Evidentiality and Modality, Editorial Complutense, 2004; English Modality in Perspective. Genre Analysis and Contrastive Studies, Peter Lang, 2004; Belgium Journal of English Language and Literatures 5, 2007; Modality in English. Theory and Description, Mouton de Gruyter, 2009; Studies on English modality. In honour of Frank R. Palmer, Peter Lang, 2009). She has also carried out research on the middle domain, passive and impersonal constructions in Spanish and English (Journal of English Studies 1, 1999; Conceptualization of Events in Newspaper Discourse: Mystification of agency and degree of implication in news reports, UCM, 2002; Cognitive Linguistics in Spain at the Turn of the Century. Vol. I: Grammar and Semantics, AELCO & Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2003; Trends in Cognitive Linguistics, Peter Lang, 2009), as well as on metaphor and metonymy, and humour studies (Language Sciences 18, 1996; Intercultural Pragmatics 5, 2008).
Stancetaking and Subjectivity in Discourse. The Case of Tony Blair.
The multifaceted nature of stance has been associated with concepts such as evaluation, subjectivity, and positioning in interaction. Stancetaking is a form of social action, involving the expression of the speaker/writer’s personal attitudes, beliefs, or evaluations concerning the narrated state of affairs and their commitment with respect to the communicated proposition. Stance is indexical in that it evokes the speaker/writer's subjective construal of the stance object, their intersubjective positioning, and their alignment with other subjects in the discourse. Stance is also consequential in that it involves responsibility and consequences for the stancetaker in social terms (Du Bois 2007; Englebretson 2007; Marín-Arrese 2009).
Research on stance has proposed various categories for the concept of stance: evaluative stance, involving the expression of value judgements, assessments and deontic attitude; affective stance, used in reference to the speaker/writer’s feelings; and epistemic stance, which refers to the speaker/writer’s degree of commitment/certainty of the truth of a proposition or the evidence for their belief about the truth of a given state of affairs (Biber and Finegan 1989; Ochs 1989; Hunston and Thompson 2000; Berman 2004; Kockelman 2004; Marin Arrese 2007).
This paper presents a model for the analysis of speaker/writer's stance in discourse on the basis of two macro categories, the effective and the epistemic, which subsume the various categories proposed in the literature (Marín Arrese 2009). In characterising the domain of stance, I draw on Langacker's (2009) distinction between the effective and the epistemic level, which involves a systematic opposition of English grammar that is manifested at various levels of structural organization. Langacker (2009: 291) notes that “epistemic relations are those that hold at the level of knowledge, and thus involve conceptions of reality”, whereas “effective relations hold at the level of reality per se”. The category of effective stance thus pertains to the control or influence on the course of reality itself, to the ways in which the speaker/writer expresses a deontic attitude or value judgements towards the realization of events and situations, or their affective position with regard to the occurrences. By contrast, the category of epistemic stance pertains to epistemic control of the conception of reality; to the evolution of the knowledge of the speaker/writer regarding the occurrences or the assessment of the epistemic status of the propositions designating the occurrences.
Stance resources include modal, evidential and attitudinal expressions, as well as expressions of speech and thought representation (Mushin 2001; Palmer 2001; Aikhenvald 2004). In addition to their contentful meaning, these expressions are indexical of the speaker/writer's subjective construal and intersubjective positioning. Subjective construal inheres in the implicit locus of consciousness, the subject of conception, whereas objective construal attaches to the grounded entity that functions as a salient object of conception (Langacker (1991, 2002). Stancetaking and the dimensions of subjectivity vs. intersubjectivity also relate to the responsibility of the stancetaker. Nuyts (2001) conceives the dimension of subjectivity vs. intersubjectivity as the degree to which the speaker assumes personal responsibility for the evaluation of evidence or whether the assessment is 'potentially' shared by others. The model presented here accounts for the ways in which stancetaking is systematically related with subjectivity and intersubjectivity. On the basis of the notions of subjective construal, intersubjective positioning, and responsibility of the stancetaker, a set of categories of subjectivity and intersubjectivity is proposed resulting from the interaction of two parameters: degrees of 'salience and explicitness of the role of the conceptualizer' and 'specificity vs. generality of reference'.
The paper also aims to characterize the interpersonal style of Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, by presenting results of a case study on the use of linguistic resources for the expression of stance and subjectivity in his oral evidence in a legal Inquiry. On the micro-level of identity, speakers/writers may use stance resources to index ideological positioning and political identity. It is argued that the communicative event (Inquiry) in which the speakers/writers engage, as well as their social role (PM vs. witness) and their personal goals (persuasion, justification, self-exoneration), will condition their stancetaking acts and their expression of inter/subjectivity, which characterize their interpersonal styles and their use of rhetorical strategies.
