Well-prefaced constructed dialogue as a marker of stance in online abortion discourse

Abstract

This paper offers an analysis of well-prefaced constructed dialogue as a stance-taking resource in written discourse on abortion. Drawing from four corpora collected from editorials, blogs, Twitter, and Reddit, I demonstrate that writers use the discourse marker well to indicate a stance of disalignment and convey negative attitudinal information when there is tension between the writer’s beliefs and those expressed in the constructed dialogue; the discourse marker allows the writer to position and align themself to construct a specific identity that reinforces a positive-self, negative-other evaluation.