Stance management in oral narrative

Abstract

Abstract This paper investigates how actively the speaker engages in taking stance at various levels in oral narrative. By using Du Bois’ (2007) stance theory, it shows that the meta-stance marker well, a discourse marker that performs the management of stance relations in conversational interaction (Sakita 2013a), plays a significant role in oral narrative as well. Well marks two central modes of stance-taking in a narrative. First, well manages the changes of local-spectrum stance-taking that occur among the utterances of/about characters or of the speakers who speak in their immediate, locally shared consciousness. Second, well typically manages the narrator’s broad-spectrum stance-taking with respect to the narrative event as a coherent whole. The latter corresponds to the use of well that is claimed to be unique for the context of the narrative (Norrick 2001). However, this paper shows that well in both local- and broad-spectrum scope functions as a meta-stance marker by managing stance relations. The paper demonstrates that stance is often embedded and effectively highlighted in resonance (Du Bois 2014), both in dialogic and monologic contexts.