Literary Positioning

5 Key excerpts on "Literary Positioning"

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  eBook - ePub

  Positioning Theory in Applied Linguistics

  Research Design and Applications

  • Hayriye Kayı-Aydar(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  2016 , p. 23). With all these constant shifts and changes in the world, language learning and teaching processes are becoming even more complex than before. I see a strong potential in positioning theory to understand this complexity and advance knowledge in the areas of learning and teaching additional languages.

  Positioning theory, as a “trans-disciplinary conceptual and analytical framework” (Slocum -Bradley, 2009 , p. 79), allows applied linguists “to adequately understand and address social issues, which are not bound by disciplinary divisions” (ibid.). Given its strong focus on social context , identities, and social interaction, positioning theory has much to offer in understanding the nature of interactions and participation in bi/multilingual contexts. Furthermore, positioning theory pushes us to rethink “taken-for-granted” story lines in the context of second/foreign language teaching and learning, cultural stereotypes (see Van Langenhove & Harré , 1994 ), as well as dichotomized constructs that describe learners or speakers of additional languages, characterizing SLA (see Canagarajah , 2007 ). Whitsed and Volet (2013 ) acknowledge, for example, that in the context of the internationalization of language education, “taken-for-granted story lines abound, for example, ‘the academically challenged and problematic international student ’ vs. ‘the less challenging domestic student’ story line” (p. 722). Positioning theory enables us to expose and challenge such story lines and assumptions. In the next section, I elaborate on the link between positioning theory and applied linguistics research, and further explain why positioning theory is relevant to applied linguistics. I then continue with a discussion about the relationship of positioning to a number of important applied linguistics concepts, such as culture , language socialization

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  Language, Text and Context

  Essays in stylistics

  • Michael Toolan(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  Mulvey (1981) . However, positioning is simply asserted by these theorists; there is little attempt to trace formal features in the text which might serve as markers, to the reader, of this positioning.

  THE POSITIONING OF THE READER

  It is surprising that in literary studies there has been so little work which considers the positioning of the reader at any length. There have been theories of reader-response and reception theories (e.g. Suleiman and Crosman 1981 ), but they have been primarily concerned with examining a consensus of interpretation through the notion of the implied or ideal reader. Even those critics who do consider reader positioning pay little attention to the formal features in the text which signal the dominant reading to the reader. In order to formulate a mode of analysis which considers formal features and the way they relate to context and reader address, I would like to consider the work of Louis Althusser on interpellation and obviousness and then go on to discuss the work of critics who have been concerned with the notion of positioning of the reader.

  Louis Althusser’s work on ideological state apparatuses (1984: 1–60) is an interesting combination of Marxist theory and psychoanalysis, and has received a great deal of attention. The basis of his argument is that ideological state apparatuses are those elements whose indirect effect is to reproduce the conditions of production within a society. In order for a capitalist society to continue to function, workers must be made to recognize their position within that society and accept those roles. This happens through two main mechanisms: the repressive state apparatuses, consisting of the police, the army, and the state, which achieve this aim through force or violence; and the ideological state apparatuses, consisting of the educational system, the media, and so on, which achieve this aim through a constant barrage of images and information which map out the role of the subject. The effects of repressive state apparatuses have been well documented and it is on the ideological state apparatuses that Althusser concentrates. He describes the way in which individuals are called into a position of subjecthood – when you recognize your role/s in society, you become a subject in both senses of the word: you are a subject in that you are an individual psyche, and you are also subject to the state and authority. In this way, you are forced to mis/recognize the imaginary (i.e. ideological) conditions of your relation to the means of production. Althusser states that interpellation or hailing is one of the mechanisms whereby this is achieved; he gives the much-cited and maligned example of a police officer in the street calling ‘Hey you’. In the process of turning round, the individual has recognized not only her/himself as an individual who may be guilty of something, but also as a subject in relation to a position of authority. Thus, interpellation constructs the subject into a role or position in the very act of hailing it.

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  Style and Social Identities

  Alternative Approaches to Linguistic Heterogeneity

  • Peter Auer(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  In the search for analytical ways of estab-lishing those - however tenuous - links, a number of related concepts are time and again invoked as mediators, as providing the necessary mid-level between the micro and the macro. To mention just few, such concepts in-clude footing, frame, stance, evaluation, involvement, and last but not least positioning. When talking about stance as one of concepts with unclear and overlapping reference, Coupland and Coupland make an argument 394 Alexandra Georgakopoulou that could be easily extended to all of them, namely that their value is to direct us to orders of discourse in the mid-range of social contextualiza-tion, somewhere between identities and the roles associated with the man-agement of turns or particular communication genres (2004: 29). In that respect, they can be seen as a useful corrective to analytic approaches which assume that identities can be read off from the surface forms of talk (Coupland and Coupland 2004: 29). In an attempt to advance our understanding of linking individual lan-guage choices with social identities, this chapter will employ the concept of positioning as a point of entry into processes of identity construction through certain stylistic choices in the conversations of a group of female adolescents. Although potentially applicable to all types of discourse, it is fair to say that positioning has largely informed research on narrative and identity constructions. Within narrative analysis, a volume of relevant stud-ies have directly departed from Davies and Harré's (1990) seminal paper, in which positioning is defined as referring to the discursive process whereby selves are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced story lines (48) - the latter part of this definition alluded to in the title of this chapter.

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  Conversations of Intercultural Couples

  • Kellie Goncalves(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Akademie Forschung

    (Publisher)

  For Harré and van Langenhove 1999), positions are ephemeral and individuals simultaneously situate themselves and are situated by others through their discursive practices within a specific time and place. For these authors, positioning is achieved within a mutually determining triad in which posi-tions, storylines and the social force of utterances influence how positions are taken up or refuted based on the social or perlocutionary force of the speech act, which in turn may generate a new storyline, topic shift or episodic structure (Tannen 1990). In exemplify-ing how positioning is achieved, Harré and van Langenhove (1999) look at pronoun use, which indexes speakers’ narrative voices as well as the choice of vocabulary. Several researchers (Benveniste 1971; Wales 1996; Wortham 1996; De Fina 2003; Cramer 2010) have investigated the indexical nature of pronoun use. Within the con- 114 Modes of positioning text of positioning, others have investigated linguistic strategies such as modalization, constructed dialogue and meta-pragmatic descriptors (Wortham 2001; Bell 2006; Moita-Lopes 2006; Ribeiro 2006; Wortham and Gadsden 2006), which index particular positions within various contexts. Drawing on Bucholtz and Hall’s sociocultural linguistic model, while emphasizing how positioning is done, also highlights the intricacy and complexity of examining identity at various analytical levels on the micro-level of conversation. In this chapter, I discuss 6 modes of positioning outlined by Harré and van Langen-hove 1999. Throughout my discussion, I provide examples from my data to underscore the various modes of positioning.

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  Heteroglossia and Language Play in Multilingual Speech

  Pedagogical and Theoretical Implications

  • Darren LaScotte, Elaine Tarone, Darren LaScotte, Elaine Tarone(Authors)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 7  Language play and social positioning in L2 narrative retells

  Darren LaScotte

  Kendall King

  Abstract

  Research on language play in a second or foreign language (L2) has focused on the immediately relevant social context and setting, showing how speakers manipulate elements of their language(s) for sarcasm, irony, or personal amusement (e.g., Broner and Tarone 2001 ; Forman 2011 ; LaScotte and Tarone 2019 ). This chapter expands upon this work by demonstrating the need to take into account not just the immediate social context as a frame of reference, but also the broader community and network of persons (Hymes 1994 ). Grounded in Bakhtinian sociocultural theory, this chapter takes up the construct of social positioning (Davies and Harré 1990 ) to analyze L2 narrative retells and to demonstrate the importance of the broader cultural and historical context in everyday L2 talk. In positioning theory, identity is constantly (re)produced and negotiated in and throughout discourse and emerges at different levels – in the storyworld (Level 1), vis-à-vis one’s interlocutor during the speech event (Level 2), and in relation to dominant discourses in society (Level 3) (see Bamberg 1997 ; De Fina 2013 ). Applying this theoretical lens to interview data collected with L2 speakers of English, we analyze how speakers use language play to position themselves in relation to other characters in the storyworld and to their interlocutor, and how such positioning reflects and simultaneously constructs larger social ideologies and discourses (De Fina and King 2011 ). This work demonstrates the value of close analysis of L2 language play in broader social and political contexts. Theoretical and practical implications for L2 teaching and learning are discussed.

  1  Introduction

  Inherent to the study of language, a social tool, are its social dimensions. Through grammatical, lexical, and/or phonological forms, language carries social meanings that can index various personal, communal, and/or societal circumstances, histories, ideologies, emotions, and identities. And, as such, studying language requires that one take into account not just the immediate social context as a frame of reference but the whole community and network of persons (Hymes 1994 ). Therefore, in the study of language and, more specifically, discourse, we argue that social context includes not just the immediate interactional setting in which discourse and its verbal and nonverbal aspects take place, but also includes what has previously been said and any shared cultural or historical knowledge belonging to the community of speakers (Gee 2011 ). Such inclusion allows for a deeper understanding of the different ways in which linguistic forms are associated with and/or become associated with what Bakhtin called “the ‘social languages’ of different classes, ethnic groups, age groups, generations, and so on” (Maybin 2008

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