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The poetics of stance: Text-metricality, epistemicity, interaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2008

MICHAEL LEMPERT
MICHAEL LEMPERT
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Georgetown University, 37th and O Streets, NW, Washington, D.C. 20057, ml447@georgetown.edu
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Abstract

This article examines the text-metrical (“poetic”) organization of epistemic stance-taking in discourse, focusing on epistemic stance in a form of argumentation, Tibetan Buddhist ‘debate’ (rtsod pa) at Sera Monastery in India. Emergent text-metrical structures in discourse are shown to reflexively map utterance-level propositional stance into larger-scale, fractionally congruent models of interactional stance. In charting the movement from epistemic stance to interactional stance by way of poetic structure, the article argues for and clarifies the place of poetics in the study of stance.

Keywords

epistemic stancepoeticstextualitydialogueargumentinteractionTibetan
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 2008 , pp. 569 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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