Stancing: Strategies of entextualizing stance in newswriting

By stancing, I understand the process of taking one’s own position within organizational, institutional, and societal frames of reference and encoding it, through collaborative practices of text production, by using linguistic and further semiotic means. The article starts by discussing the key concept of stancing in more detail ( Section 1); then outlines progression analysis as the multimethod approach applied to identify stancing practices (Section 2); explains how progression analysis was applied in the Idée suisse research project (Section 3); presents exemplary findings from German- and French-speaking contexts (Section 4); and discusses how insights from field research can be generalized and contribute to increasing scientific and professional (meta-)linguistic knowledge and awareness related to journalistic stance and stancing (Section 5).

► Stancing is the process of taking a particular position and encoding it in a text.
► Progression analysis enables researchers to situate stance in a complex context.
► Grounded theory reconstructs stancing in journalism on macro, meso, and micro levels.
► Stancing interacts with newswriting at all levels and stages of newswriting.
► Stance is often marked in the absence, not in the presence of linguistic means.