CLIC Speaker Abstracts

Robin Shoaps (Linguistics, UCSB), February 21, 2003 (Haines 352 - 10AM-12PM).

"Morality in Grammar and Discourse: Modal Particles and Evaluative Stance-Taking in Sakapultek Wedding Counsels"

Using data from wedding counsels-a prime local domain in which morality is defined and negotiated-I will demonstrate how Sakapultek (Mayan) modal particles are deployed as moral evaluative stance-taking resources. I focus on the participation of the non-factual and modal particles t(aj), ni, and xa', in what I call "moral irony" and the role of the latter in the negotiation of moral personhood-or the ideal behavior and obligations of adult community members. Unlike English irony, in Sakapultek utterances receive "ironic" readings only if they are framed by the morally ironic construction. Sakapultek irony, like that of English, plays upon a division of Goffmanian speaker roles. I argue that moral irony is modal in that it projects a commitment event that is separate from a speaking event (Kockelman, forthcoming). It is "ironic" in the sense that it projects a principle as distinct from animator that is committed to a stance or action in the projected commitment event (Clift 1999).

Moral irony is "moral" because it negatively evaluates the stance represented in the commitment event by presupposing shared norms that are violated by it. Because the norms and the identity of the principle are usually implicit or presupposed, the interlocutor is actively engaged in co-constructing the evaluative stance, suggesting that stance-taking needs to be considered not as the direct transmission of a speaker's private interior states, but rather as a public interactive process. Moral irony is thus an implicit evaluative stance-taking strategy that positions speech event participants with respect to imagined principles whose stances and actions violate moral norms. I conclude by situating morally ironic constructions with respect to deontic stance-taking resources that imply degrees of assertion of speaker subjectivity in order to argue that the deployment of non-factual and modal particles fits into a larger discursive pattern in Sakapultek. The explicit indexing of speaker subjectivity as a locus of moral authority is associated with only a subset of social categories of interlocutors. More widespread are stance-taking strategies that make indirect or completely oblique reference to the speaker and which locate shared values as a locus of moral authority.