Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 1
Final version
Discourse stance
Ruth Berman,a Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir,b and Sven Strömqvistc
a
Tel Aviv University / bIceland University of Education / cLund University
In press, Written Language and Literacy 5,2 2002.
( R. A. Berman, H. Ragnarsdóttir, & S. Strömqvist. 2002. Discourse stance .Written Languages
and Literacy, Volume 5, 2 )
The aim of this article is to integrate findings reported in the preceding articles in this
collection, employing a global discourse perspective labeled DISCOURSE STANCE. The
paper attempts to clarify what is meant by this notion, and how it can contribute to the
evaluation of text construction along the major variables of our project: target Language
(Dutch, English, French etc.), Age (developmental level and schooling), Modality
(writing vs. speech), and Genre (personal experience narratives vs. expository
discussion). We propose a general conceptual framework for characterizing discourse
stance as a basis for an empirically testable potential model of this key aspect of text
construction and discourse analysis. Unlike the cross-linguistically data-based studies
reported in the rest of this collection, which involve quantitative as well as well as
qualitative analyses, this concluding article presents selected pieces of text from our
sample to serve as case studies that illustrate our general line of reasoning, rather than to
test specific hypotheses.
1. Introduction
The term STANCE has been used in the discourse literature in different ways. For example, Biber
& Finegan (1989) define stance as “the lexical and grammatical expression of attitudes, feelings,
judgements, or commitment concerning the propositional content of a message”(1989:124) – to
include adverbs, verbs, and adjectives which mark affect, certainty, doubt, hedges, emphasis,
possibility, necessity, and prediction. Ochs 1990, 1996 specifies “stance” as one of four
dimensions that she discusses in considering the relation between language and culture. She
defines stance as “a socially recognized disposition,” distinguishing EPISTEMIC STANCE, “a
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 2
socially recognized way of knowing a proposition, such as direct (experiential) and indirect (e.g.,
secondhand) knowledge, degrees of certainty and specificity,” vs. AFFECTIVE STANCE, a
“socially recognized feeling, attitude, mood, or degree of emotional intensity” (1990:2).
These studies derive from quite different perspectives: Biber and his associates (cf. Biber
1995, Biber et al. 1998) analyze recorded written and spoken texts, in terms of the statistical
distribution of different clusters of linguistic markers, as expressing a particular “stance style.”
These researchers deliberately proceed from analysis of linguistic forms,1 with no a-priori
relationship to a particular discourse context or communicative setting. In contrast, Ochs and her
associates (e.g. Ochs & Schieffelin 1983) proceed from the communicative context of situation
to analysis of linguistic forms occurring in different socio-cultural settings. They focus on
conversational interaction, and advocate an ethnographic methodology to assess how children
acquire the ability to “use language constitutively,” on the assumption that “epistemic and
affective stance has … an especially privileged role in the constitution of social life” (Ochs 1996:
420).
The framework for analysing discourse stance which we propose below is parasitic on the
above research, and on a large body of other literature that ranges across literary studies (e.g.
Bakhtin 1986, Leech & Short 1981); sociolinguistic analyses of narrative and conversational
interactions (Labov 1972, Tannen 1989); psycholinguistic research on conversational usage
(Clark 1986, Clark & Gerrig 1990); studies focused on the comparison of written vs. spoken
discourse (Tannen 1982, Chafe 1994); and research on children’s developing discourse abilities
(Shatz 1985, Reilly 1992). Relevant notions that have been alluded to in the literature include the
following (in roughly chronological order).
(a) Evaluation. This critical notion in studies of narrative discourse, since the pioneering
work of Labov & Waletzky 1967, refers to those elements of a narration which flesh out the
sequentially ordered events that it describes (in a presumably objective, descriptive fashion) by
providing the narrator’s personal commentary on those events, and subjective interpretation of
them, and so renders a story more expressive and interesting to the listener.2
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 3
(b) Involvement. Chafe 1982 and Tannen 1985 use this term to characterize the interactive
features of texts. Tannen points out, importantly from our viewpoint, that involvement need not
be confined to prototypically interactive situations of face-to-face conversation, or even to
narrative type texts. She refers instead to the “relative focus of involvement,” noting that literary
language, like ordinary conversation, is dependent for its effect on interpersonal involvement. It
fosters and builds on involvement between speaker and hearer rather than focusing on
information or message. It also depends for its impact on the emotional involvement of the
hearer. In contrast, expository prose, associated with literate tradition … depends for its impact
on impressing the audience with the strength and completeness of its argument, that is, with
aspects of the lexicalized message (Tannen 1985:139–40).
(c) Perspective. Our view of discourse stance also interacts with the notion of perspective —
although, again, the two are not the same. The term perspective is used in linguistic analysis
primarily in discussion of grammatical aspect, as in the distinction made by Smith 1991 of
“situation-type aspect” (or [space] Aktionsarten) vs. “viewpoint aspect” (cf. Goldsmith &
Woisetschlaeger 1982). In developmental studies of discourse analysis, perspective has been
considered largely in terms of “agentivity,”, with grammatical VOICE a major distinguishing
feature of different perspectives on a situation (Budwig 1990, Berman 1993, Berman & Slobin
1994:515–38). This is shown in our analysis contrasting the use of passive voice in several
languages (Jisa et al. 2002). Others talk about POINT OF VIEW, which Brown & Yule (1983:146–
48) relate to topic ordering in narratives. Relatedly, Li & Zubin 1995 assume that “choice of an
anaphoric referring expression — full NP, pronoun, or zero — might be a function of contextdependent cognitive factors”, in distinguishing linear from rhetorical continuity, as well as in the
two perspectives of expressive vs. reportive framing in narrative discourse. These and related
ideas are perhaps most broadly articulated by Chafe (1994:132), in terms of “point of view” and
of “immediacy” vs. “displacement,” taking as a starting point the “fact that consciousness is
oriented from the point of view of an experiencing self.”
(d) Distancing devices. In work which formed the background to the present analysis, we
considered the nature of such dev ices, in the sense of linguistic means used to express a
particular discourse stance along a range of distinctions — including personal(ized) vs.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 4
general(ized), immediate vs. detached, involved vs. distanced, specific vs. general, and subjective
vs. objective (Berman 1999, Jisa & Vigué 1999, Ravid & Cahana-Amitay 1999, Tolchinsky
1999). The present study attempts to refine and clarify these distinctions in a more principled
frame of reference (§2), as background to specification of the linguistic devices which serve the
over-all purpose of expressing discourse stance (§3).
Our proposal aims at a “top-down” approach to the analysis of discourse stance, at the same
time specifying the forms of linguistic expression which speaker/writers use in realizing this
aspect of text construction. We start by trying to define the functional parameters involved in this
notion (§2) and then examine the linguistic forms which speaker/writers deploy in expressing
stance (§§3–4). In this bidimensional approach to form/function relations, we are aided by the
methodology evolved for data collection and analysis, as laid out in Berman & Verhoeven 2002
(§1). Our sample provided us (uniquely in the research literature, to the best of our knowledge)
with directly comparable texts dealing with shared thematic content in narrative vs. expository
discourse, in both speech and writing, across four different age groups. The fact that exactly
parallel procedures were adopted across different languages means that we can directly address
the impact of available structural devices and of rhetorical preferences in a given target language
— a recurrent theme in the preceding articles of this collection.
Our characterization of discourse stance thus takes into account two genres of monologic
texts (for comparisons of narrative with other modes of discourse, see Bruner 1986, Giora 1990,
Stutterheim & Klein 1999), both written and spoken, in developmental perspective. Our major
motivation is to examine the complex interaction between linguistic forms and discourse
functions by considering a broad array of linguistic devices as giving expression to several
different dimensions of discourse stance. In the present context, we aim to provide a functionally
based overview that integrates topics discussed elsewhere in this collection, including the
lexicon, noun-slots, verb-slots, voice, and propositional attitudes.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 5
2. Conceptual framework
We consider the notion “discourse stance” as referring to three interrelated dimensions of textconstruction: ORIENTATION (Sender, Text, Recipient); ATTITUDE (Epistemic, Deontic,
Affective); and GENERALITY (of reference and quantification —specific vs. general). These are
functional dimensions which apply across texts, and so differ from what we term “Propositional
Attitudes”, whose scope is the (semantic) proposition or something like a (syntactic) sentence
(see Reilly et al. 2000).3 Central to our present proposal is the idea that all or any of these three
dimensions of stance -- orientation, attitude, and referential specificity or generality -- can be
alternated within a piece of discourse. A given text, may start out with a “sender” orientation as a
deictic center, and then switch to taking the text or even the recipient-addressee as a point of
reference and then either return to the speaker/writer perspective or not. Similarly, a single text
may contain any one or more of the three types of attitudes we are identifying — epistemic,
deontic, and affective — and it may be both specific and general in reference to persons, places,
and times.
2.1 Orientation
This dimension concerns the relation between the three participating elements in text production
and interpretation: sender (speaker or writer), text (narration or exposition), and recipient (hearer
or reader). A SENDER ORIENTATION is subjective, and is deictically centered on the
speaker/writer. It tends to be deontically judgemental or affective in attitude, and specific in
reference; it reflects personal involvement in the content of the text, relating to events and ideas
that the speaker/writer has experienced or thought about. These distinctions are always relative;
e.g., expressions like I think, je trouve, creo contain an epistemic predicate, yet they proceed
from a deictic, sender-oriented viewpoint. A RECIPIENT ORIENTATION is communicatively
motivated; it takes into account, or at least appears to be addressing, the hearer/reader quite
directly. This is found in expressions like you know, or use of 2nd person pronouns in a nonpersonal sense, with generic reference (Spanish “tu” arbitrario). Thus, when an Englishspeaking woman in the course of an oral narrative makes a generalization to the effect that
people who you know they take advantage of your trust”, this might be construed as more
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 6
recipient-oriented than the semantically corresponding people that are known to / who clearly
take advantage of one´s / a person´s trust).4 A TEXT ORIENTATION takes the object that is being
produced orally or in writing as a conceptual or cognitive point of reference. It relates the
representation of the content of the piece of discourse itself (cf. I’m not quite sure how to
formulate the problem, or What I´m going to talk (or write) about is …) to a totally distanced,
impersonal metatextual level of orientation, e.g. When discussing issues such as this …, or In
considering the topic of … In our database, expressions like the latter are confined to the older
subjects, mainly among university graduate adults, occasionally in the texts of high-school
adolescents.
2.2. Attitude
Distinctions of attitude also apply at the more local level of propositional attitudes (Reilly et al.
2000). But as has been noted, e.g. by Ochs 1996, such distinctions express a quite general
discourse stance as well. An EPISTEMIC attitude concerns a relation between a cognising
speaker/writer and a proposition, in terms of possibility, certainty, or the evidence for the
individual’s belief that a given state of affairs is true (or false). A DEONTIC attitude adopts a
judgemental, prescriptive, or evaluative viewpoint in relation to the topic. An AFFECTIVE
attitude, in contrast to the epistemic, concerns a relation between cognising speaker/writer and
5
their emotions (desire, anger, grief etc.) with respect to a given state of affairs. These
distinctions can thus be ranged on a cline — from the more objective, abstract, and universalistic
epistemic attitudes; through socially conditioned deontic attitudes, shared within a group familiar
to the speaker/writer; and on to the most subjective reactions and personal feelings that an
individual holds in relation to a given topic. Psychological studies on socio-cognitive and moral
development (e.g. Hersh et al. 1979), as well as the findings from discourse analysis in our own
sample (Berman & Verhoeven 2002, §4.1), indicate that the ability to combine and interrelate
these different attitudes flexibly and appropriately, in a single discourse context, is the hallmark
of a socially developed adolescent/adult.
2.3 Generality
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 7
This dimension concerns the degree of generalization vs. specificity of reference to people,
places, and times referred to in the text. To a large extent, this is a function of, or parasitic on, the
two previous dimensions, since speaker orientation is necessarily highly specific, while
cognitive attitudes may be quite general and universalistic in scope. We distinguish three levels
of expression in this respect: Personal or SPECIFIC in Reference (e.g. I / my parents think, my /
this boy’s father made me / him apologize); GENERIC (e.g. People / We tend to think, It depends
on your / one’s attitude); and IMPERSONAL (It´s well known, the fact that, Spanish se sabe,
French il faut). As the examples indicate, the linguistic means for expressing these different
levels of generality depend on the available devices and typological properties of the different
languages. But distinctions in generality of reference, as in orientation and attitude, are assumed
to be relevant regardless of the particular target language.
This three-pronged approach to discourse stance represents a deliberate attempt to view
language use and discourse rhetoric along clines of interacting factors, rather than in
dichotomous terms of written vs. spoken, personalized vs. objective, or involved vs. distanced.
This over-all conception is supported by our analysis of developing text construction abilities,
which aims at integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches to discourse analysis, from the
perspective of a multiplicity of linguistic forms that can be recruited to express a range of
discourse functions. It is facilitated by the database at our disposal, which allows us to do a
careful examination of comparable, specially elicited texts produced by non-expert subjects in
different languages, at four levels of Age (and schooling), in two Genres (narrative and
expository), and in two Modalities (speech and writing).
3. Linguistic forms of expression
Under this heading, we move from “function” (the notion of discourse stance) to “form,” in the
sense of overt linguistic markings of stance — morphological, syntactic, and lexical. The
breakdown in Table 1 was devised in the framework of a panel presentation concerned with
“Talking and writing about conflict situations at different ages and in different languages”
(Berman 1999).
Table 1 near here
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 8
Papers presented at the panel (Ravid & Cahana-Amitay 1999 for Hebrew, Jisa & Viguié 1999
for French, and Tolchinsky 1999 for Spanish) focused on the linguistic forms used to distinguish
the direct, immediate, and highly personalized perspective of personal-experience narratives from
the more distanced, abstract, and impersonal rhetoric of expository discourse. This analysis was
based on a contrast we drew between these two types of texts, working with a database collected
at a prior stage of the study reported on in here. In our current thinking about discourse stance, as
formulated in the preceding section, we have abandoned this rather dichtomous view to take
account of the complex nature of the topic as well as the form and content of the texts that we
have analyzed.
Nonetheless, there are good grounds, psychological and linguistic as well as developmental,
for setting narrative apart from other discourse genres (as cogently argued by Bruner 1986, von
Stutterheim & Klein 1989). This is particularly true in the case of personal experience narratives,
as compared with discussions of a topic such as we elicited (Berman 2001b). For example,
across age groups and languages, the dominant tense in the expository texts is the (timeless)
present, as compared with a preference for past tense forms in the narratives (Ragnarsdóttir et al.
2002). Across Age and Language, nominals functioning as surface subjects tend to be more
generic, impersonal, and/or lexical in expository texts, with a higher proportion of personal
pronoun subjects in narratives (Ravid et al. 2002). Again across Age and Language, expository
texts contain more modal-type predicate modifiers (like should, can) than the narratives, which
have relatively more aspectual verbs (like start, keep on). Where modal expressions do occur in
narratives, they are typically “agent-directed” (Reilly et al. 2002.)
The ideas presented in §2.2, concerning “a CLINE or continuum of rhetorical means for
moving from the personal to the general, from concrete to abstract, from specific to general, from
immediate to distanced, from involved to detached,” thus seem to provide a useful starting point
for examining our proposed characterization of discourse stance. Relevant linguistic distinctions
are as shown in Table 1, along the dimensions of word-internal morphology, lexicon, syntax, and
semantic content:
The way and the extent in which the devices in Table 1 are deployed will vary across a
number of dimensions: text type or genre — e.g. a personal narrative vs. fictive short story and
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 9
these compared with an academic text, a newspaper report, or a procedural text; modality –
speech or writing; target-language typology; available structural and rhetorical options; as well as
the rhetorical preferences and style of individual speaker-writers. For example, as shown in
earlier articles in this volume, use of passives and reliance on pronominal subjects and
impersonal constructions interact markedly with whether a language requires a surface subject in
simple clauses (a typological property which sets Spanish and Hebrew apart from the other
languages in our sample). And while all the languages in our sample have passive constructions
which are structurally quite productive, they show different distributional patterns across the
texts in the five languages examined for this topic.
The listing above demonstrates the multiple levels and types of linguistic devices involved in
expressing discourse stance. It also has an advantage over certain prior analyses since it departs
from a strictly dichotomous division in favor of a continuum or cline. The way it is presented
implies a directionality that is helpful for purposes of analysis, rather than being “correct” in
principle. It should not be taken to mean that the features to the left of the chart are in some sense
inferior to, or more juvenile, less developed, or less expressive than those to its right. The claim
is, rather, that a maturely expressive and rhetorically proficient text will be weighted to one end
of the scale or another in keeping with (a) the particular context of discourse and (b) the
communicative goals of speaker/writers on a given occasion. In fact, a hallmark of skilfully
proficient speaker/writers is that they use a wide range of these different devices in conjunction,
and that they do so flexibly, appropriately, and without putting the consistency of the text at risk.
The listing above is lacking in another important respect. It focuses on grammatically and
semantically definable categories, and so disregards RHETORICAL FEATURES of texts that are
crucial to expression of discourse stance. Foremost among these are the domains of DIRECT VS.
REPORTED SPEECH
and the use of DISCOURSE MARKERS, two topics that have figured widely –
and controversially -- in the literature.6 But even if we consider only the dimensions in the above
list, every single utterance expresses some type of discourse stance or another, so that in general
it might not be possible to refer to such a notion as a neutral or “default” stance.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 10
4. Selected illustrations
Unlike the other contributions to this volume, the text excerpts discussed in this section do not
provide a survey of the domain under investigation deriving from analysis of our database.
Rather, these excerpts are intended to illustrate the problems facing any attempt to operationalize
these notions, however intuitively satisfying they may be, and to demonstrate the insights that a
data-base like ours affords for tackling such problems.
The first few examples are excerpts that illustrate some of the linguistic options used by
speakers and writers of different ages in different genres.7 The excerpts are taken from texts
that vary in Age, Genre, and Modality; and they differ along the three dimensions of
orientation, attitude, and generality.
The first excerpt gives the first seventeen clauses of a total 68 in the personal experience
account told by an American high school student, a boy 17 years old.8
(1)
Uh, I guess the first one that comes to mind, since we were talking about my dad, I went to
middle school in La Jolla, and one of the kids in my classes, it turns out his dad was my
dad’s boss not directly, but his dad was an executive VP of the company, and my dad was
one of the guys that actually works in the lab, and so he was always, I dunno, just bugging
me, saying, you know, if you mess with me, my dad can have your dad fired and all this
stuff … [Eh02mnsb]
The first part of ex. 1 appears totally personalized, immediate, and involved. But closer
inspection of our three dimensions show that it intersperses features of more than a single
discourse stance. In ORIENTATION, it is predominantly sender-based, focusing on the speaker as
protagonist (e.g. I went, my classes, my dad) in relation to his classmate as antagonist (one of the
kids in my class, his dad / my dad), including also cognitively focused attitudinal statements in
the form of “discourse marking” expressions like I guess at the introduction to his story and I
dunno before introducing its high point. This orientation is shifted via direct speech to
protagonist “other” perspective (if you mess with me, my dad / your dad). It also introduces a
receiver orientation in the introductory segment (we were talking about …) and in the formulaic
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 11
discourse marker you know. In fact, the narrator starts out with reference to the text as an object
of reflection, the story as a product of the speaker’s activity in a way not found among the
younger children (the first one that comes to mind). In ATTITUDE, too, although the text is
generally in realis mode, reporting on past events, one of these reports includes reference to
hypothetical states of affairs (it turns out that, if you mess with me, my dad can have your dad
fired). On the dimension of GENERALITY, the entire excerpt is highly specific, in reference to
people and places, the only exception being the vague general term and all this stuff.
The bulk of this text falls solidly to the left of the list of forms in Table 1, with constant use
of 1st person, most clauses in past tense, all active voice, mainly singular number (pseudoexceptions are one of the kids in my class, one of the guys that actually works in the lab),
concrete nouns, and dynamic action predicates. But as the preceding analysis indicates, these are
general trends. In fact the text shifts stance back and forth — from speaker to text to hearer, from
statements of fact to hypothetical attitudes, and from specific to general. This interspersal of
elements reflecting different types of stance is rare in the texts of younger children, as shown by
the full text of a story told by a 4th grade girl on the same topic.
(2) I think I like pushed her [= the narrator’s sister] because of something, and then I ran away
and she was chasing me and then she and then I hid be … I um went down and then she
kicked me in the mouth. And and my mom told us to like stop and then she made us go to our
rooms. I think it was like ten minutes or five, and then um we came out, and we had to say
sorry, so we did. And that’s it. [Eg04mnsa]
This text adopts a “monolithic” discourse stance. It centers around the speaker as protagonist and
the “other” as antagonist, the predicates are all in past tense and highly dynamic, with no
expression of prepositional attitudes. The text is thus entirely sender-oriented, without direct
reference to the recipient, let alone to the text or the act of text construction as such. It is largely
specific and deictic in reference (I, she, we, us, my mom; the mouth, our room) and factual in
attitude, reporting on events without commenting on them. The most notable departures from a
speaker-oriented, highly specific, concretely personalized discourse stance are her use of the
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 12
expression I think at the beginning of the story and then again before the segment that marks its
resolution. This is textually inappropriate, since I think and its counterparts in other languages
(e.g., French je trouve, Spanish creo, Hebrew ani xošev(et) “are typically confined to expository
discourse among older subjects. The only expression of a propositional attitude in this text is
reference to being obliged to perform the speech act of apologizing (We had to say sorry). The
other departure from this monolithic discourse stance is represented in vaguely general references
to causal (I pushed her because of something) and temporal circumstances (it was like ten
minutes or five [sic]). Here again, more maturely proficient story-tellers would probably have
described these circumstances in quite specific terms. This suggests that even in the context of
oral narratives, which both this project and a range of other research have shown to be
structurally well mastered by age 9 years (Peterson & McCabe 1983, Berman & Slobin 1994,
Hickmann 1995), the younger subjects in our sample may not manifest the cognitive flexibility
and rhetorical skill necessary to alternate discourse stance in a well-motivated and clearly
formulated fashion.
This type of text is not an isolated instance. It closely corresponds to the oral expository text
of another 4th-grade English-speaking boy.
(3) I think, I think people should just try to um work stuff out and not just fight about it and just
go to someone that’s more intelligent pretty much and kind of wiser older than you probably
and see how that works out . And you should try to be nice to everyone even if you don’t like
like that person. [Eg05mes]
The discourse stance expressed here is also monolithic, but in reverse. The text is generalized
and non-specific in reference; except for the discourse-marking I think at the outset, its referents
are all generic (people, someone, everyone, that person; you). It is prescriptively deontic in
attitude, reflected in the fact that every single predicate is either modified by the modal should or
else is in imperative mood. As a result, the entire text is couched in an even more general irrealis
mood than would be the case with generalizations formulated in the timeless present tense. And
the text lacks a clearly centered orientation, whether to speaker, sender, or text.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 13
This does not mean that children of this age are either cognitively or linguistically incapable
of adopting a different stance within a given text. But such alternations are far less common in
their expository than in their personal experience narratives, where they are far more proficient
than in constructing expository texts (Berman 2001b). This is shown by the ending of the
narrative text from another 4th-grade English-speaking boy. He ends his narrative (the last 7 out
of 21 clauses), about a time when he was playing golf and he got mad and hit at the door of his
house with a golf club, as follows.
(4) And my mom was home, and then I had to go in. And then maybe today or during the
weekend or last weekend me and my dad got [sic] that stuff, where if you have dents on the
car you fill it in. And we got that, and we did that. And this weekend we’re maybe going to
paint over it [Eg14mns]
This 9-year-old describes the resolution to his narrative by a generalized statement in conditional
mood, with generic reference and in the timeless present tense (if you have dents ...), and he
concludes it by referring to another contingency, a possible event in the future (maybe we’re
going to). This contrasts markedly with the speaker-centered description of a highly specific
series of events that make up the bulk of the 21 clauses in this oral narrative. Note, further, that
the concluding clause is not really a generalized coda that relate story-time to storytelling time in
a fully generalized proposition, since the final statement is still specific and personal in reference.
This type of ending is typically juvenile and supports the observation by Tolchinsky et al. 2002
concerning the lack of generalized narrative codas, particularly among the younger subjects.
As is to be expected, these texts differ markedly from those of high school adolescents and
even more so in the case of adults. This is shown by the following oral narrative of an Englishspeaking highschool boy in ex. 5. Items marked in italics represent elements which make nonspecific reference of a kind not typically identified with personal experience narrative type
discourse. The text is segmented into paragraph-like narrative segments (setting, episodes etc.),
for ease of reading.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 14
(5) When I was I was in fifth grade, I finally stood up to someone in class that had that had been
bothering me for quite a while. And ever since kindergarten he had been a person who was
who was popular in the class, not because um not because he was someone that everyone
loved or really admired, it was because, it was more like because they were afraid of him and
they thought that if they they joined his pack, then it would be um safer for them.
And um he had made life really and the school year without fun for a number years for a
lot of people, and finally in in second grade I, no it was fifth grade, he finally went so far that
I actually I actually acted against him. I would have I would have just ignored it as as being
something that had been going on for a while, something that you know his nature.
And then um then he just he just interrupted a conversation that I was having with
someone and he told me to shut up and he pushed me and and I just and I just pushed him
back, you know because just to show him I wasn’t going to take that because it was my it was
my conversation and and he was he was almost like an uninvited person intruding into it.
And um he didn’t want to take that either, so he kicked me and I returned that to reinforce
what I was trying to say before.
And um that’s basically the end of it. He through through physical action, he learned what
what he couldn’t have learned through um speaking and compromising. And I know that’s
that’s what people always say is the key to solving conflicts, but there’s certain occasions
where that doesn’t work, I think. That’s it. [Eh08mns]
As shown by the underlined items, this account of a personal experience is sprinkled liberally
with quantifiers such as indefinite pronouns and non-specific lexical NPs. This is reinforced by
reference to non-agentive, generalized abstract nominals of the kind discussed by Reilly et al.
2002 (e.g. physical action, speaking, compromising, conflicts, occasions) in the concluding part
of the story. These combine with numerous other items of the kind listed to the right end of Table
1, to demonstrate how far this account deviates from a canonically personalized or involved
“narrative stance.” Its orientation shifts from the very beginning from being centered on the
speaker (who figures as the key protagonist only in the middle parts of the narrative) to
descriptive evaluation of the 3rd person “other” as antagonist. And where attitudes are expressed,
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 15
these tend to be epistemic rather than deontic in character, referring to contingent possibilities
(what he couldn’t have learned …”) or reflecting on the evidence for states of affairs (I know
that’s what people always say … but there’s certain occasions where …)
An even more complex and varied representation of discourse stance is illustrated by the
opening parts of the expository texts produced orally by three English-speaking adults in 6a–c. 9
(6) a. Okay, um let me think for a few minutes. Well, I’ve never been one to ah, I’ve never been
good at confrontation and er conflicts make me very uneasy very uncomfortable, so I try
to avoid them at any cost.
And as a young girl sometimes I would find myself being taken advantage of, so as an
adult I have learned that one needs to stand up for their boundaries and they need not,
they should not let take people, it’s in their best interest not to let people take advantage
of them.
So when confrontations arise between people and problems between people, the first
thing that I try to do is I try to look at my part in that confrontation and what did I do to
cause this person to react in the way that they reacted. What was my part? Because I feel
that everything is fifty-fifty, unless somebody’s just totally off their rocker and you know
and you know emotionally unstable.
So my first uh approach to a conflict in a situation is to see … [Ea03fes]
b. Okay, well I think that when you are talking about conflict, as with the story I just told
you, um sometimes you have verbal conflict, sometimes you have silent conflict,
sometimes you have written conflict, so the way you should address it is going to vary.
Um, speaking from experience, there’s a lot of times where there is conflict and I
think it is in the best interest of the relationship of two people maybe to let something lie
if it can be resolved on your own.
However there are other occasions where the subject of the conflict is very serious
and it needs to be addressed. Um if there are things going on where someone’s safety
someone’s wellbeing is endangered, then it must be addressed. Um in other situations it
might be more trivial, and it might cause a dangerous conflict if it is addressed.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 16
So I think that each conflict needs to be considered differently and the ways that you
resolve it need to be need to be considered separately as well. [Ea04fes]
c. I more or less wrote that whether it’s between adults or adults and children that there
ought to be some understanding to the stem the disagreement and that in the case of
adults they can or at least ought to be able to reason with one another, each finding out
what the other wants, and and then sort of you know making concessions to avoid conflict
altogether.
And in the case of children, while it might not be as easy to reason and may require
some more discipline, then then at least the adult should act in the child’s best interest
and try to get what he wants or she wants from the child by making the boy or girl
understand why it’s necessary, rather than using some kind of you know threat of
punishment or bribery.
But essentially it would probably be best to and possible to avoid it altogether if
people came to an understanding ahead of time. [Ea07mes]
These opening excerpts from three adult texts — which are similar to ones found in other
languages, but NOT in the other age groups in our study — illustrate a maturely proficient ability
to vary discourse stance in the on-going course of text production. They illustrate not only the
interaction of different linguistic features in expressing discourse stance, but also the fact that
choice of a particular form of expression is in each case optional, and could have been alternated
to modify the stance expressed slightly, without affecting the semantic or referential content of
the statements being made. These different features include nominal reference, particularly but
not only of grammatical subjects (as noted in Ravid et al. 2002) and of verb tense, mood, and
modality (as in Ragnarsdóttir et al. 2002, Reilly et al. 2002).
The three texts differ in basic orientation: Ex. 6a remains sender/speaker-oriented. Ex. 6b
starts out that way, then shifts to a more general, hence more distanced perspective on the topic.
Ex. 6c refers to self only in relation to the text that the individual wrote on the same topic, and
then moves to a totally “other” orientation. These multiply varied types of stance rely on a
skillful interplay of different degrees of specificity vs. generality of reference (from I, me, my to
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 17
generic adults, people, children, occasions, via impersonal it, there and on to abstract
nominalizations such as conflict, disagreement, punishment). Downgrading of agency is further
effected by use of passive voice. These factors combine with propositional attitudes that range
from expression of hypothetical contingencies and use of irrealis mood (when confrontations
arise …; you should address it …; whether it’s between adults or adults and children). They
involve a combination of sender-centered, recipient-centered, and text-centered orientations to
the abstract topic of discussion. These different levels and types of SHIFT in discourse stance —
within and most particularly across different segments of discourse, in the course of on-going
text production — highlight several more general themes that emerge from our study. They
reflect a mature ability to organize the online flow of information from a global, top-down
perspective, even in the spoken medium and even in the less easily accessible expository context
of discourse; this echoes the findings for text openings and closing by Tolchinsky et al 2002. The
shifts in 6a–c reflect differences in choice of individual rhetorical style that we find far more in
maturely proficient text construction, but rarely among school-age children (Berman 1988,
2001a). They most markedly reflect a cognitive ability to adopt multiple perspectives on an issue;
we find this typically among the older subjects in our study (as noted with respect to written texts
by Reilly et al. 2002).
The last two examples we consider reflect the two extremes in types of texts elicited in the
larger study: ex. 7, an oral narrative, and ex. 8, a written expository text, both produced by an
English-speaking man majoring in the sciences at graduate school. Items underlined indicate
communicative, interactive discourse items of the kind termed “markers of collateral discourse”
by Clark 1996.
(7)
Okay I don’t know why I’ll bring this up. But but just to okay just to say something.
Uh I had a friend in high school, and he uh he was a pretty good friend, but we kind of
uh there were some things about him I didn’t really like because uh he was kind of, he
had an evil side to him. Like he used to, he used to like catch squirrels and kind of
torture them or shoot birds and things like this. And then uh when we got a little older
you know he was very competitive. Like if I said I liked one girl, then he’d go and ask
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 18
her out or you know he’d chase after my girlfriend. So I guess that was a problem,
because because I was good friends with him, but at the same time he had this like a
dark side or something that you know I always knew was there.
And uh anyway we kind of fell you know lost touch after high school. But that I
don’t know why that came to mind. I mean we we always had a we never really had a
conflict, you know we were always friends, but there was always this you know
underlying how he felt about me. If there was something about me that he was kind of
… or if he was just generally competitive or you know. But it was kind of weird just
to have a friend who you kind of have this …
Maybe a lot of friendships are like that with a underlying I mean I don’t know
why that came to mind. [Ea01mns]
(8)
Conflicts and problems between people are often avoidable I believe, and yet they
seem to occupy a considerable amount of our time and energy, based on conversations
I have overheard in places like coffee shops.
I think people should take a moment and think .about why the problem is
occurring before taking on an automatic adversary role. If people with a conflict or
problem would try and consider the other person’s point of view perspective and
reason for being at the opposite side of the problem as them, then maybe a resolution
to the problem could be easily reached. It would not only help solve the problem, it
might help straighten out the other person of some deeper conflict and in half the
cases even the person .who is addressing the other side.
Of course not all problems can be dealt with in this way. The world is not a
perfect place. In these cases it is better to avoid the situation and minimize the
problem even to the point where it just fades away I believe. Problems, however, are
meant to be solved, and doing so is one of the challenges and joys of interactions with
other people. Being social is about cooperating, and solving the problems we have
with each other is what makes a society work. [Ea01mns]
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 19
Ex. 7 contains nearly one interactive type of “discourse marker” in every clause, as shown by the
underlined items.10 These are almost entirely absent from the essay written by the same man
about a problem of social relevance in ex. 8. This reflects a major distinguishing feature of
spoken vs. written texts in our data base from 4th grade on. The three instances of such
expressions in the essay are never of an interactive or communicative form of “collateral lexical
elements” like okay, just, kinda, like, as they are in the oral narrative. In contrast, the expressions
I think, I believe in the expository essay serve as SEGMENTATION markers, indicating that the
writer has finished a unit of discourse, or is about to begin a new one (Cahana-Amitay &
Katzenberger, to appear).
Both texts from this man reflect the varied nature of discourse stance in a given piece of
discourse. The personal experience narrative contains several text-oriented comments (I’ll bring
this up; okay, just to say something; I don’t know why that came to mind), both in the middle of
the narration and at its conclusion.11 There are numerous expressions of propositionally
modalized attitudes, particularly in the distancing effect achieved by attitudinal statements. There
are many instances of non-specific quantifiers and generalizations (there were some things about
him I just didn’t like; we were always friends but there was always this underlying …; if he was
just generally competitive); these are interspersed between the specific incidents related between
the protagonist rival. This feature is most marked just before the coda (which itself combines a
speaker-orientation with a text-based comment — I mean I don’t know why that came to mind),
in the form of a classic type of “evaluating” comment, generalizing and summing up the entire
narrative: maybe a lot of friendships are like that.
The expository essay of ex. 8 is largely text-oriented; it relies heavily on reference to general
states of affairs and entities like conflicts and problems, adversary role, a resolution to the
problem (non-specific), the world, the situation, challenges, joys, interactions, a society. But
interspersed with these generalities are use of 1st person reference, both generic (a considerable
amount of our time and energy) and deictic, the latter anchored in personal but generalized
experience (conversations I have overheard in places like coffee shops). What most distinguishes
ex. 8 in terms of stance, as distinct from thematic content and level of language use, is that it is
almost totally cognitive and epistemic in attitude, as expressed in such terms as it seems; people
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 20
should take a moment; if people would try … then maybe a resolution could be reached; it would
not only help …; it might help, it is better to avoid. This stance, too, is changed in the coda, in the
form of a totally definite statement which, while generalized, is not modally modified in any
way: Being social is about cooperating and solving … is what makes society work.
The question remains as to how these, and other features that play a role in discourse stance,
can be operationalized by means of analytical procedures that can be reliably applied across
different text types, and perhaps even quantified (some such proposals are noted in §6 below).
This is difficult in principle as well as practice, because the functional notion of discourse stance
is so complex and multifaceted (§2) and because such a varied range of linguistic forms and
subsystems are involved in its expression (§3). Another major problem – which, to the best of
our knowledge, has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature – is the confounding of
variables between Genre (personal experience narratives vs. expository discussions) and
Modality (spoken vs. written language), which are clearly demonstrated in exx 7–8, produced by
the same person on the same day.
5. Predictions
The preliminary, partial analyses provided in the preceding section combine — on one hand, with
the conceptual and linguistic framework we have proposed for analysing discourse stance, and on
the other hand, with the findings of the cross-linguistic analyses of different topics presented in
the preceding articles in this collection — to yield the following predictions.
5.1 Forms of linguistic expression: A “confluence of cues”
We assume that distinctions in discourse stance along the three dimensions we have specified
will find expression in a range of different linguistic forms, representing linguistic subsystems
which, in linguistic and even in discourse analysis, are often considered in isolation (see Berman
& Verhoeven 2002, §2.3). That is, various formal devices —including type of surface subject,
personal vs. impersonal pronouns, clause constructions, voice, and mode — will interact in
expressing discourse stance, and in shifting from one stance to another in the course of a given
text. Some of these issues have been demonstrated for the different variables in our study —
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 21
Language, Age, Genre (type of text), and Modality (spoken vs. written) — in earlier analyses
presented in the working papers of our project (e.g. Berman 1999, Berman & Sandbank 2000;
Jisa & Viguié 1999, 2000, Reilly et al. 2000, Tolchinsky et al 2000a). Others are reflected in the
findings for different topics in the articles that constitute the present collection.
5.2 Development of intratextual diversity: “From dichotomy to divergence”
A bias towards sender-orientation, affective attitudes, and specific reference will typify the
narrative texts of the younger children, as compared with an almost entirely generalized stance
and deontic atttitudes in their expository texts. With age, we predict an intermixing of different
orientations, attitudes, and levels of specificity of reference within a single text. Adults, in
particular, may adopt a personal orientation in part of their expository texts, and express textoriented cognitive attitudes in their narratives. Earlier analyses of our database (published in our
working papers vols. I (Aisenman 1999a) and III [Tolchinsky et al 2000b] in a range of domains,
including temporality marking and thematic content of the texts in our sample, have led us to the
developmental and genre-sensitive hypothesis of growing “divergence from the canonic” as a
function of increased maturity and improved abilities for text construction (see Berman &
Verhoeven 2002, §3.2). We suggest that, with age, personal-experience narratives come to
include more “evaluative” or “non-narrative” elements — and so incorporate a discourse stance
that expresses a text-focused orientation, epistemic attitudes, and generalized reference.
Conversely, the more mature expository texts will include personalized receiver- and/or senderoriented comments; they may express deontic judgements and affective attitudes; and they will
be less vaguely general, with specific illustrations of their generalized propositional content.
5.3. Development of rhetorical consistency: “Mixing” of stance
A related developmental prediction is that, when younger subjects do intersperse distanced
generalizations in their narratives, as well as personalized elements in their expository texts, they
may do so in ways that are rhetorically inconsistent or communicatively inappropriate. They may
also fail to mark these shifts in discourse stance by appropriately explicit linguistic means, a
hallmark of maturely proficient text construction (Berman 2001b).
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 22
5.4 Orientation: From sender/receiver communicative stance to text-internal autonomy
We expect even the youngest children in our sample to rely on both specific and generic means
of reference, and to adopt both personal and generalized stances. However, a (meta)textual
orientation will be found mainly among older speaker/writers, as indicated clearly by analyses of
opening and closing segments of text in Tolchinsky et al. 2002, because of factors of general
socio-cognitive development (see §5.7 below).
5.5 Attitudes
Analysis of propositional attitudes in the expository texts of younger children, as compared with
older speaker/writers, reveals a shift from affective to deontic to epistemic attitudes. This can be
related to quite general socio-cognitive developmental trends — from highly subjective,
personalized attitudes, to more socially conditioned views, and eventually to abstract, distanced,
and universalistic views on given states of affairs. Interestingly, just this development is revealed
by the thematic content of evaluative elements in personal-experience recollections of the same
event: the Gulf War of 1990, as related by Israeli pre-adolescents, adolescents, and adults (Segal
2001). The study revealed that the youngest age-group evaluated the events they reported in
subjectively emotional terms of how they felt on the occasion; the adolescents made socially
oriented commentary about the behavior of other people with whom they were involved in the
situation; and the adults gave cognitive evaluations of the situation in terms of general principles
and consequences. As noted by Reilly et al. 2002, this is highly consistent with Piagetian and
neo-Piagetian analyses of levels of socio-cognitive and moral development (e.g. Hersh et al.
1979, Selman 1980). However, in line with the prediction in §5.2, this does not imply any
monolithic development or clearcut dichotomy of academic-cognitive attitudes, on the one hand,
vs. social-communicative attitudes on the other. Clearly, mature speaker/writers can adopt
multiple stances on a given event or state of affairs, and they can integrate abstract propositional
theorizing on a topic with their personal social values, in keeping with different communicative
contexts.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 23
5.6 Generality of reference
This may be an area where cross-linguistic differences and the impact of Language typology are particularly
marked. For example, as demonstrated in earlier articles in this collection, the linguistic expression of an
“impersonal” stance interacts with whether the language requires overt subjects (cf. French on, Swedish man),
or whether it has strongly grammaticized word order constraints— as compared with the strictly subjectless se
marked impersonals in Spanish, and constructions with 3pl. masculine verbs in Hebrew (Thompson 1979,
Berman 1980). In English particularly, speakers (possibly to a greater extent than writers) make use of a very
mixed range of indeterminate pronouns (as illustrated by exx. 5–7 above).
5.7 Cross-modal distinctions: Discourse stance in spoken vs. written language
Differences between spoken face-to-face interaction and writing can be characterized in terms of
several factors, including the duration of the physical signal; the possibility of on-line feedback
and mutual adaptation between sender and receiver, and the distribution of expressive features —
words, tone of voice, gestures, facial expression etc. — across a given piece of discourse
(Strömqvist et al. 1999). All these features have consequences for the construction of stance. The
fact that the signal is long-lasting in writing (whereas it is of very short duration in speech)
allows for a greater ease of metalinguistic reflection and for more long-distance editing in the
written medium. With respect to stance, writing is thus more conducive to text orientation,
especially of a metalinguistic kind. Further, the possibility of on-line feedback and mutual
adaptation between sender and receiver in spoken interaction will tend to promote a greater
degree of recipient orientation than is the case in writing. The speaker is eager to elicit feedback
from the recipient with respect to uptake, understanding, and attitudinal reactions (Allwood et al.
1992).
In terms of Attitude, the simultaneous participation of tone of voice, gestures, and facial
expression in speaking is conducive to more affective attitudes in speech than in writing —
where the expression of affect needs to find a predominantly linear, lexico-syntactic distribution.
Further, the epistemic terms used in speaking tend to assume a time- and turn-saving quality,
because of the high time pressure and reduced room for planning that are typical of speech (I
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 24
suppose it could ...; I mean ...; not quite X, but rather Y.) In writing, epistemic terms can readily
be stripped of this particular quality. A similar argument could be made with respect to
quantifiers and the dimension of generality: Cognitively demanding quantification and
generalization can be expected to be commoner in writing than in speech. Many instances of
generalization in speech, e.g. In many cases ... or Most people would agree that ..., may not be
the outcome of careful quantification, but may rather be motivated by time and turn-taking
considerations.
5.8 Cross-linguistic contrasts
As noted with respect to the predictions in §§5.1–7, cross-linguistic differences will emerge in
choice of particular devices for expressing the three dimensions of discourse stance that we have
identified. These will depend on the repertoire of structural and lexical devices available in a
given language. For example, English (unlike French, Spanish, or Hebrew) affords a regular
alternation of grammaticized modals like can, must, should vs. more periphrastic semimodals
like be able to, have to, ought to, respectively, for the expression of prepositional attitudes.
Spanish and Hebrew have highly productive, morphologically marked middle-voice
constructions for downgrading of agency, and thus for expressing a less personal stance, but
English makes restricted use of such constructions, realized mainly in shifts of syntactic valence.
As this suggests, the range of devices available to speaker/writers will interact with quite general
typological features of different target languages, as well as with rhetorical preferences of the
kind noted for picture-book narrations in Berman & Slobin (1994:611–41) and in the study of
passive constructions by Jisa et al. 2002.
5.9 Shared developmental trends
On the other hand, the general developmental trends for discourse stance predicted in the
preceding sections -- for orientation and attitude as well as for the development from
dichotomous intra-genre distinctions at younger ages compared with the diversity and rhetorical
flexibility manifested by mature speaker-writers within the same text -- are not expected to differ
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 25
markedly as a function of target language. This is because we assume that the development of
discourse stance, as we define it here, involving multifaceted relations between speaker/writer,
text, and receiver, is related to more general patterns of cognitive, socio-cognitive, and metacognitive development. The domain of discourse stance is thus expected to reflect broader
developments in advanced cognition, as revealed by converging evidence from studies across
varied populations and domains undertaken from very different perspectives.
While not wishing to make claims for universality or identical rates of development,
scholars quite generally agree on the existence of important developments starting
in middle childhood and continuing into adulthood. The most radical of these is the shift from
concrete/physical to a general potential for abstract/formal reasoning that emerges around 11-12
years of age in multiple domains and proceeds on into adulthood (Moshman 1998). With the
advent of formal thought, there is a gradual reversal of the direction of thinking between reality
and possibility in the subject´s method of approach. Possibility no longer appears merely as an
extension of an empirical situation, but instead reality is now secondary to possibility (e.g. Piaget
1924/1972). Moshman (1998) argues that “the central locus of developmental change in
cognition beyond childhood is in reasoning – that is, in the deliberate application of epistemic
constraints to one´s own thinking" (p. 947), while other studies, too, indicate that genuinely new
metacognitive skills appear in middle childhood and flourish in adolescence (in addition to
Moshman 1998, see, for example, Flavell, Miller & Miller 1993). Increased information
processing capacity, automaticity, and familiarity with a wider range of content knowledge (Case
1985), reduces the load on the cognitive system, and enables adolescents and adults to focus on
higher-order processes such as planning, organizing, monitoring, and evaluating, while holding
in mind several different dimensions of a topic or a problem in situations where younger children
are more likely to be focus on a single issue or idea (Keating 1990).
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 26
Another finding from developmental psychology of relevance to the present study is the
existence of a genuine developmental progression in conceptual domains that are closely related
to the task faced by our subjects; these include perspective-taking abilities (Selman 1980;
Gurucharri & Selman 1982) and moral reasoning (Kohlberg 1984). Thus, similar sequences and
order of developmental levels or phases have been observed in a numerous studies across these
and related domains, although with some variation in rate. Selman & Kohlberg, for example,
describe several developmental levels that reflect an age-related change in focus from the
observable/physical to the abstract/formal and an increasing capacity to differentiate and
coordinate an increasing number of perspectives at an increasing distance from one’s own point
of reference or deictic center. Children progress from egocentered beings who may be unaware
of any perspective other than their own (Stage 0, or preschool children, in Selman’s model) to
sophisticated social-cognitive theorists who can keep several perspectives in mind, and compare
each of them to their own as well as to the view that “most people” would adopt (stage 4, late
adolescence and adulthood). The gradeschool children and the bulk of the junior high school
students in our samples are likely to be at Selman´s level 2. Children at this level easily
differentiate between their own and the other´s perspective, and they will adopt one or the other
of these, but they are as yet unable to coordinate different perspectives concurrently. The parallel
stage in Kohlberg´s theory is that of preconventional morality (level 2) where self-interest (or
concern for the interest of one protagonist) determines the moral value of an action. At Selman´s
level 3, starting in preadolescence, the individual is able to "step outside" a social interaction, to
assume a third-person point of view, and to evaluate and coordinate the perspectives of different
participants in a situation. At this phase of development, young people can readily adopt the
perspective of the group to which they belongs: family, friends, and peers. Moral reasoning is in
the conventional stage, where social approval guides reasoning about justice and actions, but as
yet without any expression of generalized principles or values. This level is not firmly
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 27
established until age 15-16 (Walker et al, 1987), the age of our the high school subjects in our
study. At Selman´s level 4, beginning in adolescence, the individual takes a perspective outside
of self and immediate group, as noted above. Morally, this is the stage of law and order
(Kohlberg´s level 4). Later still, at Kohlberg´s post-conventional stage 5, the individual takes
into consideration the relativity of laws, rules and values, and universal ethical principles.
Without wishing to imply any kind of one-to-one relationship between discourse stance
and cognitive development, we feel safe in predicting that the development of discourse stance
will reflect the cognitive, socio-cognitive, and meta-cognitive patterns outlined above. The two
younger age-groups are likely to be predominantly at Selman´s stages 2, and Kohlberg´s
preconventional stage of moral reasoning, whereas the highschool adolescents will be
predominantly at stage 3 in Selman´s and Kohlberg´s theories, and the adults will have reached
stages 4 and 5. Sender and receiver orientations in our characterization of discourse stance will
thus be easily accessible for even our youngest subjects. In contrast, distancing the
speaker/writer and adopting an autonomous text-orientation seems to require (as a necessary
although not sufficient condition) a socio-cognitive and meta-cognitive level achieved only by
the high-school students and adults in our sample. Similarly, affective and deontic attitudes
closely correspond to the socio-moral levels likely to predominate in the two younger age groups,
whereas epistemic attitudes will gain ground among adolescents and adults. We expect the
younger subjects in our sample to adopt a discourse stance that encompasses a rather narrow
range of perspectives, one that is close to their own. Advanced (formal) cognition, higher order
meta-cognitive skills, and relativistic socio-moral reasoning are evidently necessary components
of multifold perspective-taking and the rhetorically diverse and flexible discourse stance adopted
by the more mature high school students and adult speakers/writers in our sample – as reflected
in the sample texts in exx. 6 through 8 of §4 above.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 28
6. Tentative conclusions and desiderata
In addition to the convergent impact of a range of linguistic forms from different subsystems —
verb tense and verb semantics, transitivity and voice, as well as nominal reference and
determiners — the view presented here illustrates a key facet of human discourse in general, and
of discourse stance in particular. There is no “one way” of talking or writing about a given topic,
or even about the same state of affairs in the external world. As is shown clearly by Jisa et al.
2002, speakers and writers have RHETORICAL OPTIONS in the perspectives they adopt towards a
given situation — not only in WHAT they choose to say or write about something, but also in
HOW
they choose to word this content. This ties in with another general motif of the analyses in
this collection: Concern with form/function relations, and with how linguistic devices are used to
meet specific discourse functions, must take into account the facts that a given linguistic form
can meet a RANGE of functions (e.g., the pronoun you is used for specific deictic reference, or
impersonally for generic reference), and that a particular discourse function — in our case, the
notion of “discourse stance” — can be met by a variety of forms. In developmental perspective,
prior work on linguistic and narrative development has shown that, with Age, the range of forms
used for any function, as well as the range of functions met by any given form, expand and
become increasingly flexible across time. Furthermore, he present study shows that, with
increased maturity and higher levels of literacy, the expression of linguistic form/discourse
function relations becomes not only more elaborate, but also more consistent and more
appropriate to a specific communicative setting.
We hypothesized that discourse stance would be critically affected by an intersection of
Genre and Modality. That is, oral personal-experience narratives could be expected to express a
more communicatively sender/receiver orientation, more affective attitudes, and more
personalized specific reference — in contrast to written, topic-based expositions, which would
tend to be more text-based in orientation, more cognitively epistemic in attitude, and more
general in reference. The earlier articles in this collection demonstrate that, across the languages
in our sample, even the youngest children (9–10 year old grade-schoolers) distinguish clearly
between narrative and expository Genre in both linguistic usage and thematic content. We now
feel confident in concluding that they do so in the expression of discourse stance as well;
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 29
however, the tenor of their texts is less varied in two senses. They use a restricted range of
linguistic means to express the particular perspective they adopt, with respect to the events they
are describing or the topic they are discussing; and they tend to make a rigidly dichotomous
distinction between narratives and expository texts. However, with development and increased
experience with different types of text production, the interaction between Age, Genre, and
Modality reveals a less straightforward patterning. In terms of discourse stance, the personalexperience narratives of the younger children are highly communicatively oriented, affective, and
personalized, whereas older speaker/writers introduce a more distanced stance into their
personal-experience accounts. These take the form of generalized evaluative commentary on the
nature of such situations, interspersed across the narrative texts; these are particularly marked in
the introductory setting and the concluding coda segments. In the expository texts, in contrast, we
find that a trend which moves from generalities to specifics is embedded in, and elaborates on,
the generalized propositions formulated by the older speaker/writers. The expository texts of
younger children are almost entirely generalized, and so apparently abstract in nature. They
occasionally include hypothetical examples (what happens if/when people do certain things), but
they lack specific illustrative examples of relevant incidents in the past.12 Nor do the younger
children propose specific, concrete solutions to the problems they were asked to discuss. In
marked contrast, high-school students, and even more so university-graduate adults, combine (a)
a general, abstractly text-oriented stance with respect to the topic with (b) specific reference to
illustrative incidents and concrete proposals for how to tackle the problem and (c) personal
commentary on how the situation affects them as individuals. At the same time, the over-all
stance which mature speaker writers adopt, both in their narratives and especially in their
expository texts, is by and large more distanced, detached, and objective than that of the children.
Finally, some comments on desiderata. By laying out issues of principle concerning the
notion “discourse stance,” we hope that we have progressed to a point where it will be feasible to
operationalize the multiple factors involved in the topic. Several difficulties have been noted in
the course of this paper: the existence of confounding variables, particularly between text types
in terms of both Genre and Modality; the problematic interaction of discourse stance with
linguistic register in the sense of level of usage (colloquial everyday vs. more formal styles of
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 30
expression); the need to integrate top-down, macro-level analyses of discourse with bottom-up,
micro-level analyses; and the fact that each language not only has its own structurally defined
range of expressive options, but also has particular rhetorical preferences. Besides, it is not clear
whether one can or should attempt to quantify an issue which is intrinsically qualitative, since it
concerns choices which are optionally determined by the subjective motivations of
speaker/writers, on the one hand, and by the intuitive interpretations of hearer/readers (as well as
of analysts), on the other.13
A first step might be to examine the entire database in each language in order to define the
range of LINGUISTIC FORMS — bound morphology, lexical expressions, and syntactic structures
and processes — that can be alternated across the different dimensions of discourse stance. A
next step might be to analyse the clustering of these forms in the functioning of discourse stance,
with regard to the boundaries of CLAUSE PACKAGES as the basic units out of which texts are
constituted (see Berman & Verhoeven 2002, §1.5). One could also analyze such clusters in
relation to discourse SITES — e.g. settings; episodes; codas in narratives, introductions, and
bodies of text; conclusions in expository texts. Such a strategy has proved extremely effective in
the analysis of opening and closing elements by Tolchinsky et al. 2002. Alternatively, one might
analyse the functioning of particular LINGUISTIC SUBSYSTEMS — N-slot structure and content;
V-slot structure and content; active, passive, and middle voice; and modal expressions — in
terms of the role that they play in the expression of discourse stance. Finally, selected texts in
each language might be analysed to establish discourse stance PROFILES in relation to each of the
variables of the study: Age, Genre, and Modality.
In sum, we believe that the ideas that we have proposed for characterizing discourse stance,
together with our tentative suggestions for how to proceed with analysing this domain, as a
potential source of reference for future research of our own and others, taking as a starting point
the rich and carefully controlled database that this project has made available.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 31
Notes
*
The authors are grateful to Åsa Nordqvist (Göteburg University) for her helpful input on relevant
studies based on her research on the topic of direct and indirect speech.
1. The term “form” is used in the sense defined by Berman & Slobin (1994:18) as “an umbrella
term for a range of grammatical morphemes and construction types,” as well as lexical items and
expressions.
2. This is a crude generalization of a notion which has been the focus of considerable attention since
it was first proposed, including application to non-narrative texts (Giora 1990). The idea of
narrative evaluation is reconsidered in a collection devoted to Labov’s narrative research (ed. by
Bamberg 1997), with a retrospective article by Labov 1997 and some studies with a
developmental thrust (including Berman 1997). A pertinent “re-evaluation of narrative
evaluation,” using data similar to that of the present corpus, appears in Aisenman & Assayag
1999.
3. In fact, the concept of stance in the work of Biber, as noted in the introduction, can be seen as an
extension of the concept of propositional attitudes. However, where Biber’s treatment of stance
is confined to the relation between speaker/writers and the content of what they say or write, our
concept of the notion aims to integrate the speaker/writer’s attitude to the FORM of what is said or
written vs. the RELATION they express to the hearer/reader addressee.
4. These examples reflect possible cross-linguistic differences in the actual forms used to express
these different orientations. For example, 2nd person is used with non-personal, generic reference
quite widely in the Dutch and English texts of our sample, as well as in the Spanish and Hebrew
texts, particularly in the less formal spoken medium; but this extension from deictic to generic
reference is rare in such contexts in Icelandic, and French speaker/writers prefer on or nous.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 32
5. As noted in the introduction to the article on propositional attitudes by Reilly et al. 2002, the
notion of “affect” is not generally included in semantic analyses of modality. However, as
suggested in the concluding part of that article, it seems important to introduce this as a distinct
aspect of the attitudinal dimension of discourse stance, as a polar contrast to an epistemic stance.
Besides, research on narrative development shows that children typically refer to affective or
emotional responses to a given situation before they adopt an epistemic stance in relation to
mental states (Reilly 1992, Bamberg & Reilly 1996, Segal 2001).
6. For example, regarding direct speech, see Coulmas1986, Caldas-Coulthard 1987, 1994,
Nordqvist 2001; on discourse markers, Tannen 1984, 1989, Blakemore 1996, Schiffrin 1987,
Clark 1996, Georgakolopolou & Goutsos 1998, Jucker & Ziv 1998; and in developmental
perspective, Bereiter, Burtis, & Scardamalia 1988, Pak et al. 1996, Meng & Strömqvist 1999,
Katzenberger 2001 (submitted -- using data from our project), and Berman 2001a..
7. For the sake of convenience, the bulk of the examples are from the English-language texts
collected in San Diego by Sarah Kriz, Dana Saltzman, and Anita Zamora, under the direction of
Judy S. Reilly. Preliminary analyses of other languages in our sample show clearly that the ideas
presented are cross-linguistically generalizable, although the specific linguistic devices used in
each case will depend on the lexico-grammatical repertoires and the typological properties of the
different target languages, as outlined in Aisenman 1999b.
8. For ease of reading, we introduce standard spelling and conventional orthography and
punctuation into the transcript versions of these texts, which were segmented into clauses.
9. Examples are all deliberately from spoken language texts, in order to neutralize the effect of
Modality (Halliday 1989). . As noted in §5.8, written language will tend to mitigate a recipient
orientation; cf. also the discussion by Strömqvist et al. 2002.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 33
10. Earlier analyses suggest that the prevalence of such “little words” (Pak et al. 1996) differs across
individuals, and especially across cultures. They appear to be much commoner in the texts we
elicited in Californian English than in Israeli Hebrew and Iberian Spanish; they are even less
frequent in French, and rare in Icelandic. Yet across the sample, the general absence of such
discourse markers is a critical feature of the written texts compared with the spoken texts, even
from the youngest age group.
11. This suggests, as will be noted again in §6, that discourse stance, like all functional elements of
text analysis, needs to be related to SITE, i.e. the particular location and function of the segment
where an expression of is located in the text — setting, episode, high point, coda etc. in
narratives; introduction, elaboration, illustration, summary or conclusion in expository texts.
12. Except for references to the contents of the video clips shown at the outset of the elicitation, as
noted in the discussion of text boundaries by Tolchinsky et al. 2002.
13. One proposal for quantifying was to define a default profile for a given text type, taking oral
narratives and written expository texts as the two extreme cases. Then each text would be
evaluated in terms of the number of “deviations” from the least marked, most canonical forms of
expression for that text type. The pitfalls which such a proposal would encounter highlight the
intractibility of this problem.
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 34
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Authors’ addresses
Ruth A. Berman
Hrafnhildur Ragnarsdóttir
Dept. of Linguistics
Dept. of Psychology
Tel Aviv University
Iceland University of Education
Ramat Aviv 69978
Stakkahlid 105
Israel
Reykjavík, Iceland
rberman@post.tau.ac.il
hragnars@ismennt.is
Sven Strömqvist
Dept. of Linguistics
Lund University
Helgonabacken 12
SE 223 62, Lund, Sweden
sven.stromqvist@ling.lu.se
Berman et al. / Discourse stance / 01-4-3 / p. 43
Table 1. The cline of (im)personalization: Distancing devices
MORPHOLOGY:
Tense
Past
>
(General) Present
>
Future
Aspect
Progressive, imperfective
>
Perfective, telic
Mood
Realis
>
Irrealis, hypotheticals, contingencies
Person
1st/2nd
>
3rd [personal, anaphoric]
Number
Singular
>
Plural
Gender
Feminine
>
Masculine
>
Impersonal you > we >
they > one
Neuter
LEXICON:
Pronouns
Deictic, personal > Indefinite someone >
Verbs
Dynamic, physical > Dynamic abstract > Stative [affective > cognitive]
Nouns
Concrete objects
>
Events
>
Abstract properties, states
SYNTAX:
Subject NP
Personal pronouns > Lexical NP’s >
Voice
Active
> Middle [= mediopassives]
Abstract nominals > Subjectless clauses
>
Passive
REFERENTIAL (CONCEPTUAL) CONTENT:
Events > Activities [scripts, procedures ] > States [descriptions] >
Physical
>
Perceptual
>
Ideas
Affective > Cognitive
Specific, immediate, concrete
>
General, universal
Anchored in time/space
>
Abstracted away
Episodic
>
Generalized (semantic memory)