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Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 32:1 (2022) ► pp.80–103

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Well-prefaced constructed dialogue as a marker of stance in online abortion discourse

ORCiD logo with link | Coastal Carolina University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 2 August 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.20063.fle
Abstract
This paper offers an analysis of well-prefaced constructed dialogue as a stance-taking resource in written discourse on abortion. Drawing from four corpora collected from editorials, blogs, Twitter, and Reddit, I demonstrate that writers use the discourse marker well to indicate a stance of disalignment and convey negative attitudinal information when there is tension between the writer’s beliefs and those expressed in the constructed dialogue; the discourse marker allows the writer to position and align themself to construct a specific identity that reinforces a positive-self, negative-other evaluation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Discourse marker well in constructed dialogue
  • 3.Stance framework
  • 4.Methods
    • 4.1Data and corpus collection
    • 4.2Identifying constructed dialogue
  • 5.Stance-taking with well in constructed dialogue
    • 5.1Constructed dialogue as reported thought: Disalignment with self
    • 5.2Constructed dialogue as reported speech: Disalignment with others
    • 5.3Engaging with the proximal and the distal
      • 5.3.1Proximal stance subjects and objects: In the immediate context
      • 5.3.2Distal stance subjects and objects: Absent others
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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