Beyond modality and hedging: A dialogic view of the language of intersubjective stance

This article offers a framework for analysing the linguistic resources of intersubjective positioning, meanings which have elsewhere been treated under such headings as modality, polarity, evidentiality, hedging, concession, intensification, attribution and consequentiality. Drawing inspiration from Bakhtin/Vološinov’s dialogic perspective, it proposes that this lexicogrammatically diverse grouping can be brought together on discourse semantic grounds, namely that they all provide the means for speakers/ writers to take a stance towards the various points-of-view or social positionings being referenced by the text and thereby to position themselves with respect to the other social subjects who hold those positions. The paper offers a typology of these resources, with categorizations attending to differences in the way the textual voice engages with the alternative voices and/or pointsof-view being referenced or activated by the text. It argues, for example, that these resources can be broadly divided into those which entertain or open up the space for dialogic alternatives and, alternatively, those which suppress or close down the space for such alternation. The typology has emerged from continued research into the interpersonal functionality of discourse, research interested in how language construes social roles and relationships and in the potential of language to operate rhetorically to influence beliefs, attitudes, expectations and modes of interrelating. In order to demonstrate the application of the typology to the exploration of such questions, the paper singles out one issue for close attention—the linguistic mechanisms by which texts naturalise certain value positions and construct for themselves ideal, model or compliant readerships.