Ushchyna V. Stancetaking in Contemporary English Risk Discourse

This dissertation offers a new socio-cognitive approach to discourse studies, allowing a multifaceted exploration of stance and stancetaking in contemporary English risk discourse. Integrating features of immediate and mediated discursive activities, stancetaking is seen here as both a subjective and an intersubjective discourse phenomenon, linking micro- and macro-levels of discourse interaction. The thesis examines linguistic and cognitive dynamics of stancetaking in communicative situations of risk and identifies the pragmatic interactional mechanisms used by the speakers for the alignment of their stances. The study characterizes stancetaking strategies in metacommunicative situations of risk outlining the socio-semiotic potential of their pragmatic and rhetorical realization.