THE CONSTRUCTION OF STANCE IN CONFLICT NARRATIVE.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

BOWER, ANNE REBECCA.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania.

Subjects (All):

Linguistics.

0290.

Local Subjects:

0290.

Physical Description:

384 pages

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 45-05A.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

This study investigates the ways and means by which speakers present themselves in oral narratives of personal experience that deal with interpersonal conflict. The narratives are about the hard feelings, complaints, confrontations, quarrels and fistfights that arise between residents on two working class, Irish-American, neighborhood blocks in inner city Philadelphia. Two aspects of personal narrative about conflict are taken as problematic, what is it exactly that speakers are talking about, and, how do they talk about it.

This study takes the point of view that a serious concern with linguistic description and theory must incorporate a major commitment to ethnographic methodology and analysis. The data were collected in participant observation studies on the two neighborhood blocks (1973-1979). The social setting in which conflict arises, the meaning of conflict for residents in terms of the social structure of block life, and the way in which residents handle conflict are analysed and shows that reasonable, rational behavior is the ideal in handling conflict. It is the central issue that speakers are concerned with in conflict narrative, where speakers present their behavior in terms of this ideal, i.e. they construct a stance for themselves.

The construction of stance is examined at three inter-related levels of narrative: in the overall structure of the narrative, in the evaluative function of the narrative specifically, and in the grammatical constructs that constitute the narrative and evaluative clauses. The semantic and grammatical components of two evaluative devices--evaluative brackets and deliberative listing--are analyzed with regard to their function in the construction of stance. With these devices speakers justify, explain, and maximize their actual behavior in the conflict situation in terms of the ideal of reasonable behavior. In this way, speakers use the resources of the language to present themselves as reasonable actors in conflict situations.

Notes:

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-05, Section: A, page: 1383.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1984.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175.

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.