The stance of stalking: a corpus-based analysis of grammatical markers of stance in threatening communications

Abstract

Threats made by stalkers have tremendous negative effects on the more than one million victims who receive them every year – from experiencing ‘psychological terrorism’ to undergoing physical harm ( Burgess and Marchetti, 2009 ). However, stalking, a criminal offence within the law, is ill-defined and difficult to prosecute, since the victim of stalking must demonstrate the stalker's intent to intimidate or cause ‘substantial emotional distress’ ( Black et al., 1990 : 717).Linguistically, such indicators of emotion and intent are manifested by markers of ‘stance’, a speaker/writer's culturally organised feelings, judgments or assessments about a recipient or proposition ( Biber et al., 1999 ). Through a corpus analysis of 397 authentic threats, I examine variation in the manifestation and function of overt grammatical markers of stance (adverbials, modals, and that- and to-complement clauses) between threats to stalk, harass and defame. Specifically, certainty verbs + that-complement clause constructions and prediction modals occurred at a significantly higher rate (p<0.001) in stalking threats – those in which the victims reported feeling intense fear or distress. In addition, strong co-occurrence patterns were found between these stance markers and pronouns. And, when using a qualitative social constructionist approach to examine distinctions in stance meaning and reveal underlying functional patterns, ( Precht, 2003 : 255), three distinctive functional patterns were revealed with the trigrams ‘I will be’, ‘I will have’ and ‘you know that’, wherein the stalking threatener is in complete volitional control of his or her own actions, demonstrates possession over the victim or an object related to the threat, and accuses the victim of a behaviour thought to be wrong, respectively.Therefore, while it has been demonstrated that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between linguistic markers and threateners' actions ( Gales, 2010 ; and Lord et al., 2008 ), through a closer examination of overt grammatical markers of stance – in combination with social psychology theories connecting speaker role, power and fear (e.g., Burgess and Marchetti, 2009 ) – linguists can help hone an understanding of stance in stalking threats and potentially contribute to the demonstration of a victim's claim of feeling fear.