Katharina Meissl | KU Leuven (original) (raw)
WLG 87 by Katharina Meissl
Wiener Linguistische Gazette, 2021
Identity is assumed to be a discursive construct, often showing a close connection to notions of ... more Identity is assumed to be a discursive construct, often showing a close connection to notions of ethnicity and language. In this paper, we investigate the identity construction of three young Italians living in Vienna. We examine which factors contribute to their (non-)identification with Italy and Austria with a special regard to language. Embedded in the framework of language biographical research and drawing on aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis we analyze three individual interviews along with language portraits and one group interview with the same three participants. Contrary to our prior assumptions, our analysis shows that all three participants unambiguously identify as Italian. Their identification is characterized by an essentialism that closely connects the concepts of identity, language, and ethnicity.
Papers by Katharina Meissl
Stance-taking, the public act of positioning oneself towards objects, people or states of affairs... more Stance-taking, the public act of positioning oneself towards objects, people or states of affairs, has been studied in many fields of research. Recently, its multimodal realization in interaction has received increasing attention. The current contribution aims to take stock of research on multimodal stance-taking so far, and present possible avenues for future research. We systematically gathered and appraised 76 articles that investigate the involvement of bodily-visual resources in stance-taking in interaction. The critical appraisal focused on two dimensions of the stance act: form-function relations constituting it, and its dynamic organization in interaction. Regarding form-function relations, we found systematic involvement of specific bodily-visual resources in different stance-acts, as well as patterns of multimodal intensification and mitigation of stances. As for its dynamic organization, the review discusses how stance-taking is organized temporally throughout an interaction, with all participants involved carefully negotiating and adapting their stances to one another. Finally, attention is paid to the broader context of stance-taking, including its role in different social and societal contexts. Based on the review, we were able to identify several gaps in the literature, and avenues for future research. We argue that much potential for broadening the scope of research lies in increasing the methodological diversity in approaching multimodal stance-taking, as well as in cross-linguistic studies and varying settings and participant constellations. In conclusion, research into multimodal stance-taking is vibrant, with ample opportunities for future work. This review can be considered as a call to action to move beyond the premise that stance-taking is multimodal, and further investigate this intriguing and fundamental human capacity.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2024
Although research into multimodal stance-taking has gained momentum over the past years, the mult... more Although research into multimodal stance-taking has gained momentum over the past years, the multimodal construction of so-called stacked stances has not yet received systematic attention in the literature. Mocking enactments are a prime example of such complex social actions as they are layered both interactionally and stance-related, and they rely significantly on the use of bodily visual resources, depicting rather than describing events and stances. Using Du Bois' Stance Triangle as a framework, this study investigates mocking enactments as a case study to unravel the multimodal aspects of layered stance expressions. Drawing on three data sets-music instruction in Dutch, German, and English, spontaneous face-to-face interactions among friends in Dutch, and narrations on past events in Flemish Sign Language (VGT)-this study provides a qualitative exploration of mocking enactments across different communicative settings, languages, and modalities. The study achieves three main objectives: (1) illuminating how enactments are used for mocking, (2) identifying the layers of stance-taking at play, and (3) examining the multimodal construction of mocking enactments. Our analysis reveals various different uses of enactments for mocking. Aside from enacting the target of the mockery, participants can include other characters and viewpoints, highlighting the breadth of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Second, we uncover the layered construction of stance on all axes of the Stance Triangle (evaluation, positioning, and alignment). Third, we find that mocking enactments are embedded in highly evaluative contexts, indexed by the use of bodily visual resources. Interestingly, not all mocking enactments include a multimodally exaggerated depiction, but instead, some merely allude to an absurd hypothetical scenario. Our findings contribute to the growing body of literature on multimodal stance-taking, by showing how a nuanced interpretation of the Stance Triangle can offer a useful framework for analyzing layered stance acts.
Papers of the Linguistic Society of Belgium
On the background of the increased interest in the phenomenon of stance-taking (i.a. Englebretson... more On the background of the increased interest in the phenomenon of stance-taking (i.a. Englebretson 2007, Debras 2015) this contribution explores the notion of contrast pairs (Weeks 1996, Messner 2020) as it is instantiated in orchestra instruction during rehearsal, an inherently stance-laden activity given its focus on evaluating and improving the musicians’ collective performance. Contrast pairs are sequences of closely juxtaposed depictions (Clark 2016, or “illustrative expressions” in Weeks 1996), which serve the instructional comparison of undesired and desired (orchestral) performances. In this contribution, we report on an exploratory analysis of a corpus of approximately ten hours of video recordings of orchestra rehearsals (Schrooten & Feyaerts 2020). Through a close reading of two examples, we shed light on the sequential and multimodal complexity of contrast pairs and identify steps for further analysis. We argue that, due to their evaluative and contrastive nature, contras...
Frontiers in Communication
Stance-taking, the public act of positioning oneself toward objects, people or states of affairs,... more Stance-taking, the public act of positioning oneself toward objects, people or states of affairs, has been studied in many fields of research. Recently, its multimodal realization in interaction has received increasing attention. The current contribution aims to take stock of research on multimodal stance-taking so far, and to present possible avenues for future research. We systematically gathered and appraised 76 articles that investigate the involvement of bodily-visual resources in stance-taking in interaction. The critical appraisal focused on two dimensions of the stance act: form-function relations constituting it, and its dynamic organization in interaction. Regarding form-function relations, we found systematic involvement of specific bodily-visual resources in different stance acts, as well as patterns of multimodal intensification and mitigation of stances. As for its dynamic organization, the review discusses how stance-taking is organized temporally throughout an intera...
Frontiers in Communication, 2022
In this contribution, we examine the way in which orchestra conductors use the space around them ... more In this contribution, we examine the way in which orchestra conductors use the space around them to convey aspects of musical dynamics. In music, dynamics refers to the intensity of volume of notes and sounds and its interpretation is highly context-bound. We approach dynamics as a phenomenon of emergent and construed meaning in interaction, induced by the music score and the interpretation in situ by musicians and the conductor. Conductors' movement-based instructions on dynamics result in highly complex usage events. This study aims at disentangling these instances by asking how conductors move and use the space around them to instruct on (un)desired aspects of musical dynamics, zooming in on movement direction as a central formal feature. We find ourselves at the crossroads of cognitive and interactional linguistics, aligning with existing studies on the interactional and contextually embedded nature of music interaction. From a cognitive linguistic perspective, this endeavor translates as the identification of the construal mechanisms (metaphor, specificity and viewpoint) that underlie and therefore motivate movement directions in the specific instances under examination. The analysis is based on 10h of video data from a corpus recorded during rehearsals of five conductors instructing their respective orchestras in Dutch. Our data reveal that conductors use different movement patterns, some of which appear to involve opposite movement directions for expressing a similar music dynamical aspect, e.g., depending on the usage event, a vertical upward movement can mean both a request for playing louder and softer. By taking into account different construal mechanisms, we are able to provide an encompassing multimodal analysis, in which these allegedly deviating oppositional movements appear as consistently motivated (metaphorical) expressions, which profile a similar target concept involving different viewpoints.
Mit der #MeToo-Kampagne im Herbst 2017 erlebte die öffentliche Debatte über sexualisierte Gewalt ... more Mit der #MeToo-Kampagne im Herbst 2017 erlebte die öffentliche Debatte über sexualisierte Gewalt einen bemerkenswerten Aufschwung. In der Berichterstattung darüber schien ein Geschlechterkonflikt inszeniert zu werden, der basierend auf der hegemonialen Auffassung einer Geschlechterdichotomie die Opposition von Frauen und Männern im Kontext sexualisierter Gewalt hervorhebt. An welchen Stellen und durch welche sprachlichen Mittel der Aspekt Gender in Zeitungsberichterstattung über #MeToo relevant gesetzt wird, stellt das Forschungsinteresse der vorliegenden Arbeit dar. Ebenso wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche Argumentationsmuster der diskursiven Darstellung von sexualisierter Gewalt und involvierten Akteur*innen zugrunde liegen. Im Rahmen des Wiener Ansatzes Kritischer Diskursanalyse (vgl. Reisigl & Wodak 2016) sowie unter Einbezug feministisch medien- kritischer Perspektiven wird eine qualitative Analyse österreichischer Tageszeitungen (Der Standard, Kleine Zeitung, Kronen Zeitung,...
WLG 93 by Katharina Meissl
Wiener Linguistische Gazette, 2023
In October 2017, the Austrian actress Nina Proll published a Facebook post, criticizing the #MeTo... more In October 2017, the Austrian actress Nina Proll published a Facebook post, criticizing the #MeToo campaign and its participants for ›weakening women‹. The post instigated supportive and critical reactions. This Critical Discourse Study analyzes the reactions to Proll’s post in six Austrian newspapers between October 25th 2017, and March 31st, 2018. It sheds light on argumentative patterns in the Austrian discourse on #MeToo. The analysis reveals (i) diverse representations of Proll through personal and professional attributions; (ii) ambiguous definitions of sexual harassment, (iii) the reproduction of myths about sexual violence.
Wiener Linguistische Gazette, 2021
Identity is assumed to be a discursive construct, often showing a close connection to notions of ... more Identity is assumed to be a discursive construct, often showing a close connection to notions of ethnicity and language. In this paper, we investigate the identity construction of three young Italians living in Vienna. We examine which factors contribute to their (non-)identification with Italy and Austria with a special regard to language. Embedded in the framework of language biographical research and drawing on aspects of Critical Discourse Analysis we analyze three individual interviews along with language portraits and one group interview with the same three participants. Contrary to our prior assumptions, our analysis shows that all three participants unambiguously identify as Italian. Their identification is characterized by an essentialism that closely connects the concepts of identity, language, and ethnicity.
Stance-taking, the public act of positioning oneself towards objects, people or states of affairs... more Stance-taking, the public act of positioning oneself towards objects, people or states of affairs, has been studied in many fields of research. Recently, its multimodal realization in interaction has received increasing attention. The current contribution aims to take stock of research on multimodal stance-taking so far, and present possible avenues for future research. We systematically gathered and appraised 76 articles that investigate the involvement of bodily-visual resources in stance-taking in interaction. The critical appraisal focused on two dimensions of the stance act: form-function relations constituting it, and its dynamic organization in interaction. Regarding form-function relations, we found systematic involvement of specific bodily-visual resources in different stance-acts, as well as patterns of multimodal intensification and mitigation of stances. As for its dynamic organization, the review discusses how stance-taking is organized temporally throughout an interaction, with all participants involved carefully negotiating and adapting their stances to one another. Finally, attention is paid to the broader context of stance-taking, including its role in different social and societal contexts. Based on the review, we were able to identify several gaps in the literature, and avenues for future research. We argue that much potential for broadening the scope of research lies in increasing the methodological diversity in approaching multimodal stance-taking, as well as in cross-linguistic studies and varying settings and participant constellations. In conclusion, research into multimodal stance-taking is vibrant, with ample opportunities for future work. This review can be considered as a call to action to move beyond the premise that stance-taking is multimodal, and further investigate this intriguing and fundamental human capacity.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2024
Although research into multimodal stance-taking has gained momentum over the past years, the mult... more Although research into multimodal stance-taking has gained momentum over the past years, the multimodal construction of so-called stacked stances has not yet received systematic attention in the literature. Mocking enactments are a prime example of such complex social actions as they are layered both interactionally and stance-related, and they rely significantly on the use of bodily visual resources, depicting rather than describing events and stances. Using Du Bois' Stance Triangle as a framework, this study investigates mocking enactments as a case study to unravel the multimodal aspects of layered stance expressions. Drawing on three data sets-music instruction in Dutch, German, and English, spontaneous face-to-face interactions among friends in Dutch, and narrations on past events in Flemish Sign Language (VGT)-this study provides a qualitative exploration of mocking enactments across different communicative settings, languages, and modalities. The study achieves three main objectives: (1) illuminating how enactments are used for mocking, (2) identifying the layers of stance-taking at play, and (3) examining the multimodal construction of mocking enactments. Our analysis reveals various different uses of enactments for mocking. Aside from enacting the target of the mockery, participants can include other characters and viewpoints, highlighting the breadth of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Second, we uncover the layered construction of stance on all axes of the Stance Triangle (evaluation, positioning, and alignment). Third, we find that mocking enactments are embedded in highly evaluative contexts, indexed by the use of bodily visual resources. Interestingly, not all mocking enactments include a multimodally exaggerated depiction, but instead, some merely allude to an absurd hypothetical scenario. Our findings contribute to the growing body of literature on multimodal stance-taking, by showing how a nuanced interpretation of the Stance Triangle can offer a useful framework for analyzing layered stance acts.
Papers of the Linguistic Society of Belgium
On the background of the increased interest in the phenomenon of stance-taking (i.a. Englebretson... more On the background of the increased interest in the phenomenon of stance-taking (i.a. Englebretson 2007, Debras 2015) this contribution explores the notion of contrast pairs (Weeks 1996, Messner 2020) as it is instantiated in orchestra instruction during rehearsal, an inherently stance-laden activity given its focus on evaluating and improving the musicians’ collective performance. Contrast pairs are sequences of closely juxtaposed depictions (Clark 2016, or “illustrative expressions” in Weeks 1996), which serve the instructional comparison of undesired and desired (orchestral) performances. In this contribution, we report on an exploratory analysis of a corpus of approximately ten hours of video recordings of orchestra rehearsals (Schrooten & Feyaerts 2020). Through a close reading of two examples, we shed light on the sequential and multimodal complexity of contrast pairs and identify steps for further analysis. We argue that, due to their evaluative and contrastive nature, contras...
Frontiers in Communication
Stance-taking, the public act of positioning oneself toward objects, people or states of affairs,... more Stance-taking, the public act of positioning oneself toward objects, people or states of affairs, has been studied in many fields of research. Recently, its multimodal realization in interaction has received increasing attention. The current contribution aims to take stock of research on multimodal stance-taking so far, and to present possible avenues for future research. We systematically gathered and appraised 76 articles that investigate the involvement of bodily-visual resources in stance-taking in interaction. The critical appraisal focused on two dimensions of the stance act: form-function relations constituting it, and its dynamic organization in interaction. Regarding form-function relations, we found systematic involvement of specific bodily-visual resources in different stance acts, as well as patterns of multimodal intensification and mitigation of stances. As for its dynamic organization, the review discusses how stance-taking is organized temporally throughout an intera...
Frontiers in Communication, 2022
In this contribution, we examine the way in which orchestra conductors use the space around them ... more In this contribution, we examine the way in which orchestra conductors use the space around them to convey aspects of musical dynamics. In music, dynamics refers to the intensity of volume of notes and sounds and its interpretation is highly context-bound. We approach dynamics as a phenomenon of emergent and construed meaning in interaction, induced by the music score and the interpretation in situ by musicians and the conductor. Conductors' movement-based instructions on dynamics result in highly complex usage events. This study aims at disentangling these instances by asking how conductors move and use the space around them to instruct on (un)desired aspects of musical dynamics, zooming in on movement direction as a central formal feature. We find ourselves at the crossroads of cognitive and interactional linguistics, aligning with existing studies on the interactional and contextually embedded nature of music interaction. From a cognitive linguistic perspective, this endeavor translates as the identification of the construal mechanisms (metaphor, specificity and viewpoint) that underlie and therefore motivate movement directions in the specific instances under examination. The analysis is based on 10h of video data from a corpus recorded during rehearsals of five conductors instructing their respective orchestras in Dutch. Our data reveal that conductors use different movement patterns, some of which appear to involve opposite movement directions for expressing a similar music dynamical aspect, e.g., depending on the usage event, a vertical upward movement can mean both a request for playing louder and softer. By taking into account different construal mechanisms, we are able to provide an encompassing multimodal analysis, in which these allegedly deviating oppositional movements appear as consistently motivated (metaphorical) expressions, which profile a similar target concept involving different viewpoints.
Mit der #MeToo-Kampagne im Herbst 2017 erlebte die öffentliche Debatte über sexualisierte Gewalt ... more Mit der #MeToo-Kampagne im Herbst 2017 erlebte die öffentliche Debatte über sexualisierte Gewalt einen bemerkenswerten Aufschwung. In der Berichterstattung darüber schien ein Geschlechterkonflikt inszeniert zu werden, der basierend auf der hegemonialen Auffassung einer Geschlechterdichotomie die Opposition von Frauen und Männern im Kontext sexualisierter Gewalt hervorhebt. An welchen Stellen und durch welche sprachlichen Mittel der Aspekt Gender in Zeitungsberichterstattung über #MeToo relevant gesetzt wird, stellt das Forschungsinteresse der vorliegenden Arbeit dar. Ebenso wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche Argumentationsmuster der diskursiven Darstellung von sexualisierter Gewalt und involvierten Akteur*innen zugrunde liegen. Im Rahmen des Wiener Ansatzes Kritischer Diskursanalyse (vgl. Reisigl & Wodak 2016) sowie unter Einbezug feministisch medien- kritischer Perspektiven wird eine qualitative Analyse österreichischer Tageszeitungen (Der Standard, Kleine Zeitung, Kronen Zeitung,...
Wiener Linguistische Gazette, 2023
In October 2017, the Austrian actress Nina Proll published a Facebook post, criticizing the #MeTo... more In October 2017, the Austrian actress Nina Proll published a Facebook post, criticizing the #MeToo campaign and its participants for ›weakening women‹. The post instigated supportive and critical reactions. This Critical Discourse Study analyzes the reactions to Proll’s post in six Austrian newspapers between October 25th 2017, and March 31st, 2018. It sheds light on argumentative patterns in the Austrian discourse on #MeToo. The analysis reveals (i) diverse representations of Proll through personal and professional attributions; (ii) ambiguous definitions of sexual harassment, (iii) the reproduction of myths about sexual violence.