Multimodal stance-taking – A systematic literature review

Abstract

Stance-taking, the public act of positioning oneself towards objects, peoples or states of affair, has been studied in many fields of research. Recently, its multimodal realization in interaction has received increasing attention. The current contribution aims to take stock of research on multimodal stance-taking so far, and present possible avenues for future research. We systematically gathered and appraised 76 articles that investigate the involvement of bodily-visual resources in stance-taking in interaction. The critical appraisal focused on two dimensions of the stance act: form-function relations constituting it, and its dynamic organization in interaction. Regarding form-function relations, we found systematic involvement of specific bodily-visual resources in different stance-acts, as well as analyses of how stances can be intensified or downplayed multimodally. As for its dynamic organization, the review discusses how stance-taking is organized temporally throughout an interaction, with all participants involved carefully negotiating and adapting their stances to one another. Finally, attention is paid to the broader context of stance-taking, including its role in different social and societal contexts. Based on the review, we were able to identify several gaps in the literature, and avenues for future research. We argue that much potential for broadening the scope of research lies in increasing the methodological diversity in approaching multimodal stance-taking, as well as in cross-linguistic studies and varying settings and participant constellations. In conclusion, research into multimodal stance-taking is vibrant, with ample opportunities for future work. This review can be considered as a call to action to move beyond the premise that stance-taking is multimodal, and further investigate this intriguing and fundamentally human capacity.

Multimodal marks of iteration in discourse

“…A first observation concerning the discourse uses of OVER AND OVER concerns their appearance in the vicinity of segments with strong displays of epistemic, affective, or deontic stance (Andries et al 2023) in all examples presented in this study. Although these displays of stance might be encouraged by the television speech genre, the iterative aspectual meaning of OVER AND OVER, as a way to express a speaker's conceptualization of a process through time, needs to be examined in light of the other resources speakers use to position themselves towards states of facts, people, or objects (Andries et al 2023).…”

Mocking enactments: a case study of multimodal stance-stacking

“…Furthermore, although the Stance Triangle is modality agnostic in theory, traditionally, the focus of stance-taking research has been on lexico-grammatical and to a lesser extent prosodic means (Biber and Finegan, 1989;Couper-Kuhlen, 2012;Wang et al, 2022). Over the past years, interest in multimodal research on stance-taking has increased (Andries et al, 2023). Research in this domain highlighted that the whole body can be used to take a stance, with individual semiotic resources operating flexibly depending on the interactional needs.…”

“…Although there is considerable evidence for the inherent multimodal nature of stance-taking (Andries et al, 2023), there are still many open questions. One aspect that has not received systematic attention yet concerns the construction of so-called stance-stacks (Dancygier, 2012) in which multiple stances are communicated simultaneously.…”