STANCE-TAKING FROM MULTIMODAL PERSPECTIVE: AN ANALYSIS OF INTERSUBJECTIVE STANCE

STANCE-TAKING FROM MULTIMODAL PERSPECTIVE: AN ANALYSIS OF INTERSUBJECTIVE STANCE

Author:  O.K. Iriskhanova, A.A. Petrov

Affiliation:  Moscow State Linguistic University

Abstract:  The study examines stance-taking in Russian dialogic speech as being realized in two modalities – verbal and kinetic. Based on empirical data obtained from twenty participants discussing the role of AI technologies for mankind, the research analyzes a most frequent type of positioning: intersubjectivization as a joint management of cognitive states by the addressee and the addresser through the alignment of viewpoints.
The findings demonstrate that intersubjectivy is verbally manifested through markers indicating agreement and disagreement, viewpoint blending, referring to the subject of stance-taking, contrasting viewpoints, as well as indicating the source of an opinion.
The study identifies the most frequent gestures associated with two subtypes of intersubjectivity – indicating agreement / disagreement and referring to the subject of intersubjectivization. For agreement / disagreement the gestures with the highest frequency, as compared to other stances, are the movements that are based on the mimetic (actional) schemas of beats, establishing contact, offering. The most frequent gestures for the 1st-person and the 2nd-person as subjects of intersubjective stance are gestures of contact (pointing, stretching out) and moving objects closer to oneself. Whereas for the 3rd-person gestures of swaying are more frequently used than for other stances.
It is also argued that a multimodal analysis of intersubjectivity should consider clustering of stances, i.e., co-occurrence of markers from different types and subtypes of positioning within a single elementary discourse unit.

Keywords:  stance-taking, intersubjective stance (intersubjectivization), gesture, mimetic (actional) schema, dialogic speech.

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Acknowledgments:  The research was conducted at Moscow State Linguistic University with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 24-18-00587.

For citation:  Iriskhanova, O. K., & Petrov, A. A. (2025). Stance-taking from multimodal perspective: an analysis of intersubjective stance. Voprosy Kognitivnoy Lingvistiki, 1, 17-27 (In Russ.).

Pages:  17-27