According to Biber et al.(1999: 966), stance means more than attitude.Stance includes personal feelings, attitudes, value judgments, and assessments.In this sense, stance is both personal and interactive.It involves a bilateral evaluation and highlights tenor, i.e.the addresser-addressee relationships.Stance may vary from genre to genre and from situation to situation.Like modal value, it is not static, but dynamic.
Biber et al.(1999: 872）show that the overall positions of stance adverbials vary from register to register, as sketched in Table 3.2.
As for the relationships between the positions and functions of stance adverbials, Biber et al.(1999: 872-874）find:
(A）Virtually every semantic category of stance adverbial can be placed in medial positions.Adverbials conveying certainty, likelihood, and actuality are often placed immediately before or after the operator.
(B）The higher percentages of initial stance adverbials in fiction, news and academic prose over conversation correspond to the use of prepositional phrases and certain style and attitude stance adverbials which are rare in conversation.
(C）The higher percentage of final position in conversation, fiction and news than in academic prose corresponds largely to the more frequent use of finite clauses in those registers.
The study by Biber et al.(ibid）gives hints for people to discover stance and its lexicogr- ammatical realization based on text types and other contextual factors.
3.4.3 Social distance
MSAs convey the interpersonal meaning of social distance for the needs of social interactions.Like Brown & Levinson (1987), Martin (1997, 2000), and White (2005, 2006), Scollon & Scollon (1995: 44-49）agree that power and solidarity exist as ideological aspects in discourse.However, Scollon & Scollon (ibid）differ from them in identifying three politeness systems for social distance, i.e.deference, solidarity and hierarchy, instead of two systems, i.e.power and solidarity.Suppose P = power, D = social or psychological distance, + = with, and - = without.Then, the three systems could be defined as follows:
(A）Deference: -P, +D (that is, there is no power difference but there exists social or psychological distance)
(B）Solidarity: -P, -D (that is, there is no power difference, nor is there social or psychological distance)
(C）Hierarchical: +P, +/-D (that is, there is power difference, and there is either social or psychological distance, or there is not)
This tripartite division of ideology seems to work better than the bipartite division (power and solidarity）for the analysis of the interpersonal meanings of MSAs.White (2005）claims that dialogical contraction devices (e.g.of course, naturally and always）help speakers/writers to construe a relationship of alignment and solidarity.While this claim may be true, the view that dialogical expansion devices (e.g.possibly, in my view, and perhaps）are conducive to the construal of power may not be right.Thus, it may not be wise to place ideology on the bipolar scale.Using the tripartite division of ideology, however, people could account for the working of the MSAs adequately.
To sum up, it can be found that the interpersonal meanings, namely, value, stance, and social distance, target at the functions of MSAs at the clause, text and ideological levels respectively.Nevertheless, they are not isolated from each other.Instead, they are interwoven as a whole so that the attitudes or judgments delivered can be highlighted in communication.
3.5 Summary
This chapter presents the theoretical framework adopted in this dissertation.The theoretical perspectives employed for the analysis of interpersonal meanings are cognitive linguistics, pragmatics and SFL.It should be noted that these three theoretical perspectives are taken simultaneously in analyzing the roles of modality supplementing played by MSAs, though the basic framework of analysis is the interpersonal metafunction illustrated in SFL.
The use of MSAs reflects how experience is construed by means of conceptualization.It should be noted that on many occasions MSAs are both evidential and epistemic markers, and therefore the use of multiple MSAs for an MV is nothing strange.
The employment of MSAs mirrors how people manipulate their attitudes according to their pragmatic needs.Judged in this way, MSAs tend to be devices of membership and attitude clarification at the same time.
MSAs may be utilized as a result of generic needs and the necessity for appraisal.In turn, MSAs mirror tenor and shape generic structure to a large extent.Hence, it is justified to postulate that there is a dialectical relationship between MSAs and genre according to SFL while integrating some ideas from other linguistic schools.
MSAs highlight three types of interpersonal meanings, namely, value, stance and social distance.These interpersonal meanings are the roles MSAs play as a means of modality supple- menting.
Chapter 4 will tackle the classification and functions of MSAs based on these theoretical considerations.Together with the theoretical framework proposed in this chapter, the analysis to be done in Chapter 4 will serve as a foundation for the explorations of the lexicogrammatical realization of interpersonal meanings by MSAs in Chapter 5, and the empirical studies on MSAs in Chapter 6.