TY - JOUR
T1 - Introduction
T2 - Developing discourse stance in different text types and languages
AU - Berman, Ruth A.
N1 - Funding Information:
1 The studies were funded by a major research grant from the Spencer Foundation, Chicago, for the study of Developing Literacy in Different Contexts and Different Languages, with the author of this article as principal investigator.
PY - 2005/2
Y1 - 2005/2
N2 - This article introduces the theme of 'discourse stance', the unifying focal point for this special issue, and delineates the three dimensions involved in this notion, as described in the position paper [Berman, Ruth A., Ragnarsdóttir, Hrafnhildur, Strömqvist, Sven, 2002. Discourse stance.Written Language and Literacy 5, 255-290] that forms the source study to the articles in this volume: orientation, attitude, and generality. It then summarizes predictions proposed there for how discourse stance will be realized in relation to the variables of development (four levels of age and schooling), genre (personal-experience narrative versus expository discussion), modality (written versus spoken texts), and target language (Dutch, English, French, Hebrew, Icelandic, Spanish, and Swedish). The article concludes by comparing common themes with language-particular findings that emerge from the analyses presented here. These analyses, conducted on directly comparable data-sets for the different languages, reveal certain shared trends across the sample. A range of lexico-syntactic features of linguistic structure and thematic content interact to express discourse stance; these differ markedly as a function of text type; and more mature speaker-writers express a less monolithic stance than younger schoolchildren. On the other hand, devices for agent downgrading or distancing of the speaker-writer from the contents of the text (such as impersonal use of 2nd person pronouns; generic pronouns like English we, French on, or Dutch men; and middle and passive voice compared with active voice) change in both amount and range both as a function of text type and of age and literacy level, and also cross-linguistically, reflecting different rhetorical options favored by speaker-writers of different languages.
AB - This article introduces the theme of 'discourse stance', the unifying focal point for this special issue, and delineates the three dimensions involved in this notion, as described in the position paper [Berman, Ruth A., Ragnarsdóttir, Hrafnhildur, Strömqvist, Sven, 2002. Discourse stance.Written Language and Literacy 5, 255-290] that forms the source study to the articles in this volume: orientation, attitude, and generality. It then summarizes predictions proposed there for how discourse stance will be realized in relation to the variables of development (four levels of age and schooling), genre (personal-experience narrative versus expository discussion), modality (written versus spoken texts), and target language (Dutch, English, French, Hebrew, Icelandic, Spanish, and Swedish). The article concludes by comparing common themes with language-particular findings that emerge from the analyses presented here. These analyses, conducted on directly comparable data-sets for the different languages, reveal certain shared trends across the sample. A range of lexico-syntactic features of linguistic structure and thematic content interact to express discourse stance; these differ markedly as a function of text type; and more mature speaker-writers express a less monolithic stance than younger schoolchildren. On the other hand, devices for agent downgrading or distancing of the speaker-writer from the contents of the text (such as impersonal use of 2nd person pronouns; generic pronouns like English we, French on, or Dutch men; and middle and passive voice compared with active voice) change in both amount and range both as a function of text type and of age and literacy level, and also cross-linguistically, reflecting different rhetorical options favored by speaker-writers of different languages.
KW - Cross-linguistic
KW - Form-function relations
KW - Genre
KW - Lexical and thematic content
KW - Modality
KW - Pronouns
KW - Rhetorical options
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=9144271911&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.pragma.2004.08.003
DO - 10.1016/j.pragma.2004.08.003
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AN - SCOPUS:9144271911
SN - 0378-2166
VL - 37
SP - 105
EP - 124
JO - Journal of Pragmatics
JF - Journal of Pragmatics
IS - 2
ER -