Interactional Sociolinguistics
Reading
Week 8
Required Reading
Positioning: The discursive construction of selves
'Positioning' is a theory about interaction that was developed by two American psychologists named Bronwyn Davies and Rom Harré, but the basic ideas behind it can be found in a lot of the literature on strategy in warfare such as SunTse's The Art of War. Although the ideas of Davies and Harré are not the same as Sun Tse's, they share the common assertion that what matters most in interaction is not the fixed role that someone takes, but the way they manage to position themselves and others in the 'landscape' of the interaction and the culture.
'Positioning theory' takes as its starting point the dramturgical perspective of Goffman. Goffman's notion of the 'roles' that we play in interaction, however, is seen by Davies and Harré as much too static and simplistic. Rather than playing 'pre-fabricated roles', they say, we create 'positions' for ourselves and others within the multiple 'storylines' that are present in the interaction. We do not create these positions alone; the positions we are able to take up are also determined by the positions the person or people we are interacting with take up.
For 'positioning theorists', as for conversation analyst, conversation is joint action made up of a number of 'speech acts'. The 'force' or effect these speech acts have on the hearer and the situation, however, depends upon the 'storylines' that are activated in the interaction and the positions the speakers have taken up in them. Davies and Harré (1990) write : 'Positioning...is the discursive process whereby selves are located in conversation as...coherent participants in jointly produced storylines. There can be interactive positioning, in which what one person says positions another. And there can be reflexive positioning in which one positions oneself.'.
Thus, according to Davies and Harré, there is no 'fixed' self. The self is 'ongoingly produced', based on the various positions you have taken up or have been assigned in all of the different stories that make up your life.
The idea of 'storyline' is central to positioning theory. It gives us a way to link the ongoing mechanics of interaction with the 'bigger picture' (including the lives and 'histories' of the participants and their cultures). When we interact, the meaning and 'force' of what we say is dependent on the 'histories' that we bring to these interactions. Some of these histories are personal histories that we have with the people we are interacting with. It is easy to think of examples of things you have said to your friends whose meaning depends upon some past event or chain of events that you experienced together.
Another important kind of storyline are 'cultural storylines'. They are stories that are generated in our culture complete with different characters who have different kinds of characteristics and do different kinds of things. These stories have a very powerful effect on us, even when we don't realize it. Problems can arise when we are too unconscious of these storylines or when the 'story' that we are telling in our interaction is different from that the other person is telling.
Davies and Harré give an example of a man and woman in a foreign city. The woman is ill and so they go out together to try to find a pharmacy. After searching for some time, they find that there is no pharmacy in the area. The man says to the woman, 'I'm sorry to have dragged you out here since you are so ill.' The woman replies, 'You didn't drag me out here. I came of my own choice.' In this example, the man is assuming a kind of caregiver-patient storyline. He is trying to express sympathy and care to the woman by taking responsibility for their predicament. At the same time, this positions the woman as not having power to take care of herself, as being in a lower position than the man. In her response, the woman refuses this position, and positions the man in a kind of feminist storyline of being a typical male chauvinist who tries to position her as weak and powerless. The real problem in the conversation is that the two people are positioning themselves in two different storylines.
These storylines are so powerful, in fact, that sometimes we are unable to see past them. Davies and Harré give an example of telling a fairy tale with a woman hero to a group of school children. After hearing the story, the children still assume the man was the hero because they are so used to it being that way.
In this regard, studying positioning theory can also make us more sensitive to stereotypes and the power of cultural storylines to marginalize people.
Required Reading
Supplementary Readings
L. van Langenhove and Rom Harre,
'Introduction to Positioning Theory' (from Positioning Theory: Moral Contexts
of Intentional Action, Blackwell 1999, pp. 14-31). (e-group)
Patricia, E. O'Connor, 'You could feel it through the skin' Agency and Positioning in Prisoner's Stabbing Stories' (from Text 14/1, pp. 45-75)