Stance in a Colonial Encounter
Stance in a Colonial Encounter
How Mr. Taylor Lost His Footing
How can materials from a 19th-century archive shed light on a concept of “stance” that might be useful in sociolinguistic research? Although “stance” has many intellectual genealogies, its application in sociolinguistics focuses mainly on a speaker's acts of self-positioning vis-à-vis interlocutors and objects in discourse, especially in face-to-face interaction. This chapter concerns a more distant time and place, and considers how those distances, and the multiple mediations that intervene between the original events and interpretations of them today, might contribute to ideas about stance. The historical case involves a dispute among missionaries in Onitsha (a town in eastern Nigeria) that erupted in violence in October 1868. A flurry of letters ensued, with much fault-finding, local rushing about, appeals to authorities (mission and Onitshan), and consequences for the mission personnel. The drama's central figure, John Christian Taylor, is known today mainly for his early descriptions of life in Onitsha and his work on Igbo linguistics—work that contributed, if indirectly, to his troubles in the aftermath of the quarrel. The chapter concludes that “stance” can usefully integrate many scales of analysis, provided that explanations do not lose sight of the unintentional, the coconstructed, and the nonreferential aspects of discourse.
Keywords: stance, Onitsha, John Christian Taylor, Igbo linguistics, discourse, unintentional, coconstructed, nonreferential
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
