Stance-taking and social status on an online bulletin board: A qualitative and quantitative approach
(2014) SPVR01 20131Master's Programme: Language and Linguistics
English Studies
- Abstract
- In this study, I demonstrate that social hierarchy and power are important aspects for understanding the use of epistemic and evidential stance verbs in computer-mediated communication. The data for the study come from an online bulletin board about rhythmic gymnastics, where the construction of social roles is believed to play a role in the expression of stance. The members of the community are divided into three hierarchically distinct social ranks based on status and activity on the board. I investigate whether members of a higher rank use epistemic and evidential stance verbs in a more authoritative manner than members of lower ranks using two methodological frameworks. In the qualitative part of the study, I adopt the dialogical... (More)
- In this study, I demonstrate that social hierarchy and power are important aspects for understanding the use of epistemic and evidential stance verbs in computer-mediated communication. The data for the study come from an online bulletin board about rhythmic gymnastics, where the construction of social roles is believed to play a role in the expression of stance. The members of the community are divided into three hierarchically distinct social ranks based on status and activity on the board. I investigate whether members of a higher rank use epistemic and evidential stance verbs in a more authoritative manner than members of lower ranks using two methodological frameworks. In the qualitative part of the study, I adopt the dialogical discourse analysis to argue that epistemic and evidential stance is a dialogically constructed phenomenon that locally emerges between conversational co-participants. The quantitative part of the study employs the multifactorial usage-feature analysis, where two stance verbs think and seem are coded for a range of formal, semantic and extra-linguistic factors, which are believed to contribute to the differentiation of authoritative and tentative stance. The results show that bulletin board users of a higher rank exhibit a more authoritative and even aggressive use of epistemic and evidential stance verbs than users of lower ranks. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/4276062
- author
- Põldvere, Nele LU
- supervisor
-
- Carita Paradis LU
- Dylan Glynn LU
- organization
- course
- SPVR01 20131
- year
- 2014
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Corpus linguistics, computer-mediated communication, social hierarchy, dialogical discourse analysis, multifactorial usage-feature analysis
- language
- English
- id
- 4276062
- date added to LUP
- 2014-01-30 08:47:51
- date last changed
- 2014-01-30 08:47:51
@misc{4276062, abstract = {{In this study, I demonstrate that social hierarchy and power are important aspects for understanding the use of epistemic and evidential stance verbs in computer-mediated communication. The data for the study come from an online bulletin board about rhythmic gymnastics, where the construction of social roles is believed to play a role in the expression of stance. The members of the community are divided into three hierarchically distinct social ranks based on status and activity on the board. I investigate whether members of a higher rank use epistemic and evidential stance verbs in a more authoritative manner than members of lower ranks using two methodological frameworks. In the qualitative part of the study, I adopt the dialogical discourse analysis to argue that epistemic and evidential stance is a dialogically constructed phenomenon that locally emerges between conversational co-participants. The quantitative part of the study employs the multifactorial usage-feature analysis, where two stance verbs think and seem are coded for a range of formal, semantic and extra-linguistic factors, which are believed to contribute to the differentiation of authoritative and tentative stance. The results show that bulletin board users of a higher rank exhibit a more authoritative and even aggressive use of epistemic and evidential stance verbs than users of lower ranks.}}, author = {{Põldvere, Nele}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Student Paper}}, title = {{Stance-taking and social status on an online bulletin board: A qualitative and quantitative approach}}, year = {{2014}}, }