Stancetaking and the joint construction of zine producer identities in a research interview

Abstract

This article examines the construction of zine producer identities (self and other) during a research interview. Zines are self-published texts that circulate in mainly underground communities. In this study, I draw on dialogic understandings of the notion of 'stance' to show how a zine producer accomplishes a situated identity performance in the interview that also functions as an interdiscursive move in a larger conversation about the role Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethics should play in zine communities. Specifically, I show how this speaker displays stances in relation to recognizable social types within zine communities but also the canonical stances associated with these social types. I unpack the features that work in support of this stancetaking, including discourse markers, constructed dialogue, referring terms, and prosodic cues. The analysis also foregrounds how the interviewer's turns contributed to these emergent stance displays, which furthers our understanding of the dynamic social context of the research interview.

Confronting blackface

“…In this way, the notion of stance draws together aspects of what other authors have described as 'assessment,' 'affiliation,' 'footing,' and a range of other concepts (see Kiesling 2011 for a useful overview), up to the point that stance is occasionally criticized as too all-inclusive (see, e.g., Kockelman 2012). Its specific analytical purchase, however, lies in the grip it provides on the way these various elements are incrementally calibrated against one another as the speakers are sequentially (re)fashioning their respective stances in interaction (see, e.g., various papers in Englebretson 2007, Damari 2010, Stockburger 2015.…”

Negotiating an agentive identity in a British lifestyle migration context: A narrative positioning analysis

“…This paper shows what a focus on language in interaction can reveal, particularly concerning the ways that such processes of distinction develop linguistically as dynamic aspects of self‐representation. While the concept of stance has usefully identified indexicality in language, for example Stockburger's (: 237) exploration of stances against ‘stereotypical social types’, recent developments in positioning theory are more specifically tailored towards relations between the roles negotiated in interaction and prevailing social and moral themes. Analysing positioning as a social action at three levels of the interaction offers scope for revealing more complex and dynamic identity representations at the level of the story (tale), the interaction (telling) and the wider ideological level.…”