Affective Stancetaking in the English Communicative Situation of Risk.

Abstract. The article deals with the study of psycholinguistic and sociocognitive dynamics of stancetaking in the communicative situation of risk. The concept of risk presupposes decision making, while the process of decision making is seen here as a stancetaking on risk. A speaker’s stance includes subjective expressions of the speaker’s attitude towards the object of conversation, his mood, evaluations, perspective, knowledge, point of view and opinion. Stances are reflected at different levels of language: lexis, grammar, style, and pragmatics. The main focus of the research is on the affective component of stance as a manifold of axiological evaluation and emotional attitude of the speaker to risks. The overall theoretical framework for the study synthesizes dynamic approaches to discourse analysis, which form an interface of mind, discourse interaction and society.