From stance to identity: Stancetaking in contemporary English risk discourse

The author manifests his stance concerning the heightened radiation level in Japan. He not only makes an epistemic evaluation of the associated health risks (Thyroid cancer is the most immediate risk of radiation), but he also offers his judgment of Japanese people as a collective risk subject. Dwelling on the fear washed over Japan he uses intensifying adverb dramatically (Fears about health risks rose dramatically) that functions as a qualifier of a panicky emotional state of Japanese society. Such affective wording reflects the author's attitude towards the events, as well as his ability to influence the interpretations of his recipients. Unlike in personal narrative, the author of the journalistic piece (article, editorial) tries to hide his / her own affective reactions, concentrating on the other people's emotions instead. In such a way they try to remain unbiased, distancing themselves from direct evaluations and judgments.

Thus, linguistic expression of affective stance in MSR, as well as its emotional intensiveness is determined by the level of the stance-taker's personal engagement into the communicated event: lay stances tend to be emphatic, stances constructed by experts are more likely to be faceless, and, finally, mediators' stances can be both. Epistemic stancetaking in MSR correlates with the level of knowledge of stance-takers about the object of communication and their certainty / uncertainty in inferred propositions.

Conclusions

Investigating of stancetaking in contemporary English risk discourse was fulfilled in sociocognitive paradigm of discourse analysis that addresses discourse activities in all their multiplicity and diversity. Complex approach to this multidisciplinary problem allowed discovering specifics of mutual identification of the English language speakers in different situational and cultural conditions. This research has also disclosed the socio-semiotic potential of stance as a discursive formation uniting micro- and macro-levels of social interaction.

It was established that stance is a contextually dependent and interactively formed discursive construct containing information about the speakers' knowledge of the stancetaking object (epistemic component of stance) and their emotional attitudes towards it (affective component of stance). Accumulating, stances form unique situational identities that incorporate the stance-takers' linguistic, cognitive, and sociolinguistic repertoires. Any native speaker of a language is also a representative of his / her culture and ideology which can be discernible in his / her stancetaking. A stance-taker as well as his / her situational identity is a product of their discursive interaction, and thus, their identities profoundly depend upon situational circumstances of communication.

Stancetaking in the English risk discourse, produced either in situational conditions of immediate (communicative situation of risk) or mediated (meta-communicative situation of risk) interaction, is characterized by specific linguistic, cognitive, and pragmatic features. It has both subjective and inter-subjective nature.

In communicative situations of risk, stancetaking consists in dynamic construction of situational identities that are indexically interrelated with the stances a person is inclined to take and verbalize in similar discursive situations. The constructed identities may vary from riskaverse subject (cautious) to a risk-taker (risky). These identities are determined by recursive iterations of epistemic and affective elements of stancetaking in the process of decision-making under the immediate circumstances of situation of risk. Inter-subjectively, stancetaking in CSR can be either consonant (a concerted / persuasive cooperation) or dissonant (a persuasive / coercive conflict). While aligning their stances, the participants of CSR deploy the following interactional mechanisms: recirculation, feedback, indexical involvement and emotional resonance.

In metacommunicative situation of risk, discursively built identities include expert, lay and mediator that have rather a collective than a personal character. The epistemic stances they build can be certain or uncertain, while their affective stances can be either emphatic or faceless. Experts' stances are predominantly based on assertive epistemic reasoning, and are devoid of emotionality, or faceless. Lay people' stancetaking is more emphatic, than epistemic. Mediators' stances are characterized by wide variability - they can be certain or uncertain, emphatic or faceless. Experts, lay stance-takers and mediators utilize an array of specific linguistic resources in the process of their stancetaking to achieve their communicative goals. The stance- formulating means they use, attest not only to their individual views and positions but index collective voices of media and/or institutions they represent. Thus, their choices are not incidental but have a socio-indexical or socio-semiotic value.

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