Shkamarda O. Stancetaking in the English-Language Internet Blog

The thesis examines the dynamics of stancetaking in the English-language Internet Blog. Stancetaking is defined in the research as a multifaceted communicative and cognitive activity that results in a stance – the discursive position of a stance-taker, or the subject of an ongoing discursive interaction. It is proved that stance is a complex discursive phenomenon, which reflects the attitude of the speaker / author of a written message to the topic of communication, other communicants and their respective stances as well as a variety of relevant individual and socio-cultural parameters of human interaction. The paper traces personal and social aspects of stancetaking activity in the discourse of a personal Internet-blog. It has been found out that Internet-blog is a hyper-genre of the Internet discourse of a multimodal nature, based on the blogger’s posts and readers’ comments, which contain verbal and nonverbal components. In the course of the study, the three types of the subjects of discursive interaction (stance-takers) in the blogosphere have been identified – the subject-as-author (the owner of the blog), the subject-as-subscriber (registered on a certain blog as a user) and the subject-as-guest (an anonymous commenter without a registration). Furthermore, the main lingual and non-lingual markers of their speech behavior were identified and analyzed. It has been established that on an Internet-blog the subjects involved in a process of discursive interaction construct a variety of stances of microsocial or macrosocial nature (both of them are universal). The individual and personal characteristics of a human being as a member of the primary social group are represented in microsocial stances. The macrosocial positions point to the characteristics of the stance-takers as representatives of the secondary social groups (professional, political, religious, cultural, occupational). It has been found out that the epistemic stances are based on the knowledge of the stance-taker about the topic of communication and /or about the other interaction participants, and also the extent to which he / she is convinced of the accuracy and credibility of the supplied information. A store of verbal and non-verbal means ensuring the construction of the above mentioned stances has been analyzed. The dissertation contains evidence that stancetaking is a dynamic, strategically designed and meaning-generating process resulting in the linguistic (or other) formulation of a stance. Hence, the strategy of the subject’s positioning on an Internet-blog has been defined as a plan of an optimal implementation of the speaker’s intentions and goals related to the manifestation of his / her own discursive stances and to the impact on the addressee’s cognitive and emotional spheres. The research contains classification of stancetaking communicative strategies deployed by the subject-as-author, the subject-as-subscriber and the subject-as-guest on the Internet blog. By positioning themselves in a discourse of a personal blog the stance-takers resort to global, local and verbal strategies based on an underlying principle according to which the subjective (personal) and inter-subjective (interpersonal) vectors of stancetaking practices are combined.