The 46th annual conference of the DGfS (German Linguistic Society) took place at the Ruhr University Bochum from 28 February to 1 March 2014 (https://www.dgfs2024.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/). A total of 14 working groups and 4 plenary lectures were devoted to the topic of "Language and Attitude" from a wide variety of perspectives and thus to the question of how language is used to relate to facts or persons through explicit attitudinal expressions or implicit attitude coding. The Panel "Pronoun use and stance taking" (https://www.dgfs2024.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/dgfs/programm/arbeitsgruppen.html.de) took on this question with a focus on the role of pronouns for the labelling of attitudes. The panel was organised by Antje Dammel, Wolfgang Imo and Jens Lanwer in order to develop the concept of Stance in more detail. Under Stance Taking Du Bois (2007) understands the expression of attitudes in relation to an object and in relation to other participants in the communication. Here, pronouns play a role in the coding of the latter two reference points of Stance The panel devoted itself to the desideratum of spelling out this role more precisely and in empirical studies in 16 contributions that were very diverse in terms of both content and methodology. Our project was also represented in cooperation with tHamburg with a presentation in cooperation with the sub-project "Person-referencing pronouns in drama". Laura Duve and Valeria Schick presented the central results of an empirical study entitled "'Man schaue und wundere sich' - Heische-Formeln mit man als Positionierungsressourcen in Hexenverhörprotokollen und Dramen des 17.-19. Jahrhunderts“. Heische-Formeln in their prototypical form man man + (X) + verb (3rd Pers. sg. conj. I) are only used in certain genresMan nehme Xin recepies) or consolidated phrasesMan stelle sich vor...), while they are a recurring and conspicuous structure in 17th-19th century dramas. A key finding was that the formula is mainly used by characters to elicit the action of a person in a lower position.
Panel "Usage of Pronouns and Stance Taking" at the conference of the DGfS (German Linguistics Society) 2024
