Lexis, Discourse Prosodies and the Taking of Stance : A Corpus Study of the Meaning of ‘Self-proclaimed’

Abstract: This study is concerned with the description of the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of the attributive adjective self-proclaimed, employing corpus-linguistic methodology to explore its meaning from user-based data. The initial query provided the material from which a lexical pro-file of the target word was constructed, systematically describing collocational data, semantic preferences, semantic associations and discourse prosodies. Qualitative analysis of sample con-cordances illustrated the role of the target word in expressing different kinds of meaning-bearing stances. The results demonstrate the importance of context and communicative functionality as constraints determining meaning, determining the discourse prosodies of self-proclaimed as one of either negation; accepted-positive and accepted-negative. Further, the analysis of self-proclaimed as a stance marker indicates the linking evaluative meanings of extended lexical units to the project of linguistic description of intersubjective stancetaking as a possibly fruitful venue for research