Adverbial stance types in English

Abstract

The present paper identifies various speech styles of English as marked by stance adver‐bials. By stance we mean the overt expression of an author's or speaker's attitudes, feelings, judgments, or commitment concerning the message. Adverbials are one of the primary lexical markers of stance in English, and we limit ourselves in this paper to adverbial marking of stance (the attitudinal and style disjuncts presented in Quirk, Green‐baum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985). All occurrences of stance adverbials are identified in the LOB and London‐Lund corpora (410 texts of written and spoken British English), and each is analyzed in its sentential context to distinguish true markers of stance from adverbials that serve other functions (e.g., as manner adverbs). The adverbials marking stance are divided into six semantic categories, and the frequency of occurrence for each category in each text is computed. The six categories are labeled (1) honestly adverbials, (2) generally adverbials, (3) surely adverbials, (4) actually adverbials, (5) maybe adverbials, and (6) amazingly adverbials. Using a multivariate statistical technique called cluster analysis, texts that are maximally similar in their exploitation of these stance adverbials are grouped into clusters. We interpret each cluster by consideration of the frequent stance adverbials in the cluster, the situational characteristics of the texts in the cluster, and functional analyses of the stance adverbials in individual texts. Although the stance adverbials are grouped into categories on the basis of their literal meanings, the clusters are interpreted in terms of the discourse functions of the adverbials; in several cases, our analysis shows that the discourse functions of stance adverbials differ considerably from the functions suggested by their literal meanings. With respect to the adverbial marking of stance, eight styles are identified, including “Cautious,” “Secluded from Dispute,” and “Faceless.”