Source
Du Bois (2007), LIT-779 (“The stance triangle”, in Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in Discourse, pp. 139–182), read in full in NOTE-590.
What was actually shown
Three questions for any stance (§3). Who takes it, what its object is, and what stance it answers. Attested utterances show each answer is routinely outside the stance utterance: “I would love to go” is about Nicaragua, 40 lines earlier; “I totally agree” answers a directive 29 lines back.
Subjectivity takes an object (§4). “I’m glad”, “I know” and “I agree” are complete sentences and incomplete stances. “I’m glad” and “I’m so glad” differ less by so than by what each is glad about, which prior turns supply.
Marking the follow (§§5–6). In “I don’t like those” / “I don’t either”, the second speaker’s either cannot be dropped without pragmatic anomaly, and the first speaker cannot use it. Under conditions only partly stated (a stance follow juxtaposed with a resonant lead, subjective intentional predicates such as like, love, know, think, want; note 26), a resonant follow must be marked, too for positive and either for negative. Inside a formally parallel follow, differences (a rising Yeah?, want for love) calibrate alignment, which is scalar.
The account (49). “Stance is a public act by a social actor, achieved dialogically through overt communicative means, of simultaneously evaluating objects, positioning subjects (self and others), and aligning with other subjects, with respect to any salient dimension of the sociocultural field.” The triangle (Fig. 1): two subjects and a shared object, two evaluative vectors, one alignment vector, and positioning reflected back on each subject. Hence the gloss: “I evaluate something, and thereby position myself, and thereby align with you.”
What could have come out otherwise. The second speaker could have been free to omit either, and the first free to use it. In the excerpts, and by the cited study, neither holds.
What this does not say
- That the aspects cannot occur apart. Co-occurrence is shown in chosen examples (C1, moderate). The chapter does not search for alignment with no evaluated object, or evaluation that commits the speaker to no position. Such a case would break the “one act” claim.
- That participants use the triangle to infer the rest. That claim (C5) is illustrated only by the analyst’s reading.
- That every stance has a shared object. The general version rests on Tomasello’s shared orientation and is deferred (note 29; C6, weak).
- How often the too/either rule holds. No counts are reported here, the conditions are only partly given, and too/either are not always intersubjective (note 27).
- Anything about a speaker who is not the stance subject. Reported speech, animated voices and institutional speaking are set aside (note 13), and Goffman’s footing (LIT-780, unread) is where the triangle would be tested.
- Anything beyond American English conversation. One language, one register.
- That stance is the smallest unit of social action. Offered conditionally (C7).
Connections
- NOTE-590 gave this account’s empirical half as a candidate THEORY and did not file it. It is filed here as Proposed, with the triangle as the account and the too/either marking as its one stated prediction.
- QUESTION-076 asks whether readers can judge footing and stance reliably.
The chapter offers categories, not a reliability test, so no
answersedge is declared. - The shared object that binds two subjects is close in structure to the joint-attention and shared-intention accounts in social ontology (Tomasello, LIT-504; Gilbert, LIT-477), both unread. NOTE-590 marks that connection as the reader’s own.