Stance, Style, and Ideology

Question 1

Stance

Answer 1

Johnstone’s Definition: how interactants create and signal relationships with propositions they utter and with people they identify with

Question 2

Authoritative

Answer 2

Speakers laying claims to regimes of knowledge. Accomplished through projecting degrees of certainty/claims to an identity of authority

Question 3

Evaluative

Answer 3

Evaluative - does the work of evaluation, self-presentation, or positioning. Evaluative stances index culturally specific feelings and norms

Question 4

Interaction: affiliative/distancing

Answer 4

Affiliative: how interactants show alignment with interlocutors. This can be done through accommodation/mirroring, backchanneling, agreement, etc.
Distancing: how interactants show dis-alignment with interlocutors. Accomplished through disagreement, challenges, etc.

Question 5

Language Ideologies

Answer 5

Ideology is a term used to describe the underlying beliefs that people have. Though in other disciplines ideology can have a different meaning, here it speaks to the hidden force driving people in their behaviors and language choices. Everyone has ideologies when it comes to language, even if they don’t think they do.

Question 6

Language in Motion

Answer 6

Argues that dialects are becoming more differentiated over time, despite what modern media claims.
When you hear a southern speaker speak, automatically your mind becomes filled with associations you have with southern speaker positive or not.

Question 7

Language Subordination

Answer 7

Language subordination is when one language or dialect is made to seen as less than another. This happens through a series of steps. First language is “mystified”, in that you cannot hope to attain high levels of understanding without expert help. Then someone who labels themselves an expert in this way of speaking spreads misinformation about all deviations.

Question 8

Stance in a complex way

Answer 8

Stance is an unconscious assertion of ideology and ideology is the driving force of stance. While ideology can be characterized as being more unconscious belief, stance is more of a conscious action/manifestation. You are actively asserting this while the ideology that you are influenced by is behind the scenes.

Jaffee states that stance taking is inherently a performative notion and that social identity can be seen as the culminating of stance taking over time.

Question 9

Style

Answer 9

A constellation of stances over time.
Johnstone: Repeated sets and patterns of stance taking moves can emerge as style associated with situations or social identities; style, to some extent, are repeatable.
Eckert: style choices index a stance you’re taking in regards to social categories
Irvine: styles emerge when particular patterns of differentiation become ideologically linked with local ethnographically relevant social meanings

Question 10

Stance in simple words

Answer 10

Stance: how speakers position themselves in regards to their own utterances and the utterances of others

Question 11

Direct vs. Indirect Indexicality

Answer 11

Direct indexicality: what the speaker is directly asserting over the message, the direct position
Indirect: how this positioning fits in with the sociocultural landscape.

Question 12

Ideologies in simple words

Answer 12

Ideology: webs of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs. Serves as governing force behind all social behavior.