Affective stance

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Affective stance
Author(s):	Aija Logren (Tampere University, Finland) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5750-8185)
To cite:	Logren, Aija. (2024). Affective stance. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: [ ]

Affective stance refers to a participant’s display of their emotional orientation to a stance object: something or someone that is evaluated from an emotional perspective. Instead of an expression of internal emotional state, affective stance is considered a socially situated, enacted and interactional construction of emotion, which the participants can mobilize and modify (Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012; Gramner & Wiggins 2020; Ochs 1996; Selting 2010; Sorjonen & Peräkylä 2012). Some scholars treat affective stance as one of several types of stance (e.g., epistemic, deontic, instrumental, and moral) (Goodwin 2007; Stevanovic & Peräkylä 2014; Wu 2004), others consider it omnipresent: any stance-taking action has potential for affect, hence affective stance is relevant even in its absence (Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012).

In previous literature, displays of affective stance have been found in numerous action environments, such as assessments and rejections (Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012), refusals and compliance (Goodwin et al. 2012), complaining, blaming and pain displays (Weatherall & Robles 2021) – potentially it can be found in any interactional occasion where the emotional orientation to a particular stance object is relevant for the participants. Affective stance is particularly salient in storytelling, in which the teller displays the emotional valence of the events they have experienced, and thus provides means for the recipient to understand what it was like to experience it (Couper-Kuhlen 2012; Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012; Ruusuvuori & Peräkylä 2009; Stivers 2008; Voutilainen et al. 2014).

Displays of affective stance make relevant a response showing a similar affective stance vis-à-vis the speakers (Weatherall & Robles 2021). A preferred response can be achieved, for example, by repeating or mirroring specific parallel elements of the original stance-taking in the response (Goodwin et al. 2012; Ruusuvuori & Peräkylä 2009; Stivers 2008).

The display and reciprocity of stances are finely organized and timed, (Ruusuvuori & Peräkylä 2009, Bateman 2020, Voutilainen et al. 2014), so that the stance is often conveyed by the first speaker early on in their turn, and supported by the recipient already while the first speaker’s turn is still ongoing. For example, the recipient may mirror or upgrade some of the multimodal features such as facial expressions, body posture and gestures that were used by the first speaker. When the first speaker’s turn is complete, the recipient may repeat or redesign some of the syntactic and lexical means, as well as mirror or upgrade the prosody and vocalizations (Couper-Kuhlen 2012; Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012; Goodwin et al. 2012; Ruusuvuori & Peräkylä 2009; Stivers 2008; Voutilainen et al. 2014). Some features, such as agitated prosody or defiant gestures, can be easily recognized as conveying a particular kind of stance, whereas the emotional valence of other features, such as nodding, is highly dependent on the context they are produced in (Couper-Kuhlen 2012; Goodwin et al. 2012; Stivers 2008).

The following example (1), taken from Ruusuvuori & Peräkylä (2009), demonstrates affective stances of the first speaker and the recipient. Speaker B has received a pendant as a gift and shows it to her friend A. In her invitation to take a look at the pendant (lines 1-2), B does not display her affective stance verbally, but her smile (throughout frames 1-3) communicates her positive affective stance towards the pendant to her co-participant. The positive affective stance is reciprocated by A, by her smiling facial expression (frame 3) and positive lexical assessment (line 6). Thus, the response by the recipient shows a similar affective stance to the first speaker’s affective stance, and in so doing, the positive affective orientation towards the stance object is endorsed.

(1) (Ruusuvuori & Peräkylä 2009)

       

The reciprocity of stance has been called ‘affiliation’ (Stivers 2008), or ‘alignment of the affective stances’ (Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012; Weatherall & Robles 2021), which refers to displays of similarity of the emotional orientations of the co-participants towards the stance object (Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012). Nevertheless, instead of reciprocating the stance of the previous speaker, recipients may also disaffiliate/disalign with the previous stance and thus show their lack of acceptance of it (Bateman 2020; Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012). Hence, responses to affective stance-taking are displays of affective stance on their own (Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012).

Via affiliation/alignment and disaffiliation/disalignment of stances, affective stance contributes to sense-making and construction of values and morality (Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012; Stivers 2008). By taking a stance, a speaker positions themselves towards the stance object (i.e., shows that they are the kind of person who would make that kind of affective evaluation of that kind of an object), and in so doing, exposes their stance to be compared and challenged (Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012). By affiliation/alignment of affective stance, the co-participants endorse the stance, and by disaffiliation/disalignment, they contest it (Bateman 2020; Goodwin et al. 2012). The social meaning of affective stance is thus shaped in the sequence of stance displays and responses, and is then consequential for the social relationships of the participants and for the understanding of morality they either share or dispute.

Because of the consequentiality and delicate nature of stance-taking, affective stance is subtly monitored and modified in interaction (Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012). Affective stance displays are often ambivalent, complex or they alternate during the turns of talk, and it is argued that speakers may maintain strategic ambiguity of their stance (Du Bois & Kärkkäinen 2012, Voutilainen et al. 2014). Moreover, the recipients subtly communicate (e.g., with facial expressions) whether their stance is in line or not with the first speaker’s stance already during the first speaker’s turn. The first speaker may then modify their affective stance during their turn, so that eventually an affiliation/alignment of the affective stances, i.e., a similar emotional orientation to the described object is achieved (Ruusuvuori & Peräkylä 2009; Stivers 2008). Thus, affective stance is considered a collaborative achievement of the co-participants through constant positioning and alignment of affective evaluations.

Additional Related Entries:

• Affiliation
• Alignment
• Display of empathy
• Emotion
• Empathy
• Intersubjectivity
• Stance

Cited References:

Bateman, A. (2020). Young children’s affective stance through embodied displays of emotion during tellings. Text & Talk, 40(5), 643-668.

Couper-Kuhlen, E., (2012). Exploring affiliation in the reception of conversational complaint stories. In A. Peräkylä & M.-L. Sorjonen (Eds.), Emotion in Interaction (pp. 113—146). Oxford University Press.

Du Bois, J.W & Kärkkäinen, E. (2012). Taking a stance on emotion: affect, sequence, and intersubjectivity in dialogic interaction. Text & Talk, 32(4), 433-451.

Goodwin, C. (2007). Participation, stance and affect in the organization of activities. Discourse & Society, 18(1), 53–73.

Goodwin, M., Cekaite, A., & Goodwin, C. (2012). Emotion as Stance. In A. Peräkylä & M.-L. Sorjonen (Eds.), Emotion in Interaction (pp. 16-42). Oxford University Press.

Ochs, E. (1996). Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. In J.J. Gumperz & S.C. Levinson (Eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity (pp. 407–437). Cambridge University Press.

Ruusuvuori, J. & Peräkylä, A. (2009). Facial and verbal expressions in assessing stories and topics. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 42(4), 377–394.

Rydén Gramner, A., Wiggins, S. (2020). Enacting emotion: Embodied affective stance in a medical education fiction seminar. In S. Wiggins & K. Osvaldsson Cromdal (Eds.), Discursive psychology and embodiment: Beyond subject-object binaries (pp. 221-245). Palgrave Macmillan.

Selting, M., (2010). Affectivity in conversational storytelling: an analysis of displays of anger or indignation in complaint stories. Pragmatics, 20, 229—277.

Stevanovic, M., & Peräkylä, A. (2014). Three orders in the organization of human action: On the interface between knowledge, power, and emotion in interaction and social relations. Language in Society, 43(2), 185–207.

Stivers, T. (2008). Stance, Alignment, and Affiliation During Storytelling: When Nodding Is a Token of Affiliation. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 41(1), 31–57.

Voutilainen, L., Henttonen, P., Kahri, M., Kivioja, M., Ravaja, N., Sams, M. & Peräkylä, A. (2014). Affective stance, ambivalence, and psychophysiological responses during conversational storytelling. Journal of Pragmatics, 68, 1–24.

Weatherall, A., & Robles, J. S. (2021). How Emotions Are Made in Talk. John Benjamins.

Wu, R.-J. (2004). Stance in Talk: A Conversation Analysis of Mandarin Final Particles. John Benjamins.

Additional References:

Goffman, E. (1978). Response cries. Language, 54(4), 787–815.

Golato, A. (2012). German 'oh': Marking an emotional change-of-state. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 45(3), 245-268.

Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and embodiment with situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32(10), 1489–1522.

Goodwin, C. (2017). Co-operative action. Cambridge University Press.

Hakulinen, A., & Sorjonen, M.-L., (2012). Being equivocal: affective responses left unspecified. In A. Peräkylä & M.-L. Sorjonen (Eds.), Emotion in Interaction (pp. 147-173). Oxford University Press.

Jaffe, A. (2009). Introduction. In A. Jaffe (Ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic perspectives (pp. 3–28). Oxford University Press.

Kaukomaa, T., Peräkylä, A. & Ruusuvuori, J. (2013). Turn-opening smiles: Facial expression constructing emotional transition in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 55, 21–42.

Kupetz, M., (2014). Empathy displays as interactional achievements-Multimodal and sequential aspects. Journal of Pragmatics, 61, 4-34.

Peräkylä, A., & Ruusuvuori, J. (2012). Facial expression and interactional regulation of emotion. In A. Peräkylä & M.-L. Sorjonen (Eds.), Emotion in Interaction (pp. 64–91). Oxford University Press.