Identifying interpersonal stance in threatening discourse ...download.xuebalib.com/4wn8ZOaRb5l2.pdf · stance in threatening discourse: An appraisal analysis Tammy Gales University

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Corresponding author:Tammy Gales, Department of English, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, 800 Algoma Boulevard, Oshkosh, WI 54901, USA.Email: [email protected]

Identifying interpersonal stance in threatening discourse: An appraisal analysis

Tammy GalesUniversity of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, USA

AbstractIdeologies about threatening language from scholarly and practitioner communities of practice reflect a genre replete with stances of violence and threatener control, wherein authorial intent is more strongly attributed to threats possessing characteristics that strengthen a threatener’s role in or commitment to the act (e.g. commitment modals, certainty adverbs) (Gales, 2010). Using the resources of Appraisal analysis (Martin and White, 2005), this article examines the ways in which interpersonal stances, or a speaker or writer’s commitment to or attitudes about a person or proposition (Biber et al., 1999), are manifested and function in a realized threat of violence. The analysis reveals that threateners use myriad rhetorical strategies to convey interpersonal meaning (Martin and Rose, 2003) and take stances that both strengthen and weaken their apparent level of commitment, thus contradicting the one-sidedness of threatening language ideologies and demonstrating the need for further research on stancetaking in threatening discourse.

Keywordsappraisal analysis, language ideologies, Systemic Functional Linguistics, stance, threatening discourse

‘One of the most important things we do with words is take a stance’ (Du Bois, 2007: 139). When viewed across a text, particular indices of stance, or the ways in which speakers and writers linguistically demonstrate their commitment to or attitudes about a person or proposition (Biber et al., 1999), can significantly influence the emotions and reactions of an audience as well as demonstrate the stancetaker’s apparent level of commitment to an act; furthermore, they can serve to align or disalign the stancetaker

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28 Discourse Studies 13(1)

with another person or proposition or to reproduce and reinforce a socially situated ideology, thereby making stance an extremely powerful construct (Biber, 2006; Martin and White, 2005).

Aptly, over the past two decades, researchers have increasingly focused on identify-ing ways in which interpersonal stances manifest and function across a variety of registers (e.g. Biber, 2006; Conrad and Biber, 2000), genres (e.g. Bednarek, 2006), and language varieties (e.g. Friginal, 2009; Precht, 2003). Yet threatening communications – a socially defined genre with strong ideological links to stances of violence and threat-ener control (Gales, 2010) – have, until recently, received little attention. A corpus-based investigation of stance in threats revealed that threats are indeed replete with lexical and grammatical markers of stance; yet the linguistic markers and their corresponding functions do not always adhere to those expected in threats (Gales, 2010). Those studying and assessing threatening behavior have linked angry, insulting, and pejorative language (Milburn and Watman, 1981), language describing violent behaviors and weapons (Turner and Gelles, 2003), and profanity (Davis, 1997) with threatening language, offering a heightened sense of violence and anger within the genre. For example, in workplace violence threats, it is stated that ‘almost all of those persons who do commit acts of violence use profanity and other offensive language – before, during, and after the act – to describe or discuss both the victim and the violence itself’ (Davis, 1997: xiii); however, Gales’s study revealed that only 24 percent of the threats in her corpus actually possessed profanity or clearly insulting language.

Additionally, Gales (2010) found that the distribution of linguistic markers and their corresponding functions does not divide neatly along threat realization lines – a finding also contrary to reported ideologies about how threatener intent is linguistically mani-fested. Within threat assessment frameworks, for instance, threats possessing detailed, commanding forms that strengthen the threatener’s role or apparent commitment to an act (e.g. ‘he will die this Tuesday’, ‘I will shoot him between the eyes’) are labeled ‘high’ level, while those lacking strengthening forms or possessing mitigating, conditional forms that weaken the threatener’s role or level of commitment (e.g. ‘I may get …’, ‘perhaps we will build a fertilizer bomb’) are labeled ‘low’ level (Napier and Mardigian, 2003: 18). However, empirical data show that while some forms do occur more in one threat realiza-tion category than the other (realized vs non-realized threats), overall, the linguistic forms and their corresponding functions occur with relative frequency in both threat realization categories (Gales, 2010). Thus, while ideologies link violent, commanding forms that strengthen a threatener’s role in or commitment to an act to high level threats (i.e. those that are more likely to be realized), the mitigating, weakening forms that do occur in realized threats are overshadowed or completely masked, creating an incomplete under-standing of the genre. This process of erasure, wherein a linguistic phenomenon is made invisible in order to match the ideological frames of an individual or social group (Irvine and Gal, 2000), has barred us from perceiving authorial stances in threatening language in their entirety. And, as these incomplete images of real threats are disseminated throughout the relevant communities of practice, they become enregistered and ‘socially recognized as indexical of speaker attributes by a population of language users’ (Agha, 2005: 38) – in this case a population of threateners – thereby solidifying our incomplete understanding of



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stance in threats. These social processes can have grave implications for those studying and interpreting stance in pragmatic situations, wherein interpersonal meaning is negotiated between two socially situated parties – especially between a threatener and his or her victim. Thus, it is essential to examine threatening language empirically rather than intuitively based on folk linguistic impressions of language (Preston, 2007), since manifestations of stance, when taken collectively and in context, provide a more holistic picture of how commitment and intent are demonstrated, how interpersonal relationships are negotiated, and how meaning is created in this discursive act.

This article draws upon the findings of previous corpus-based work (Gales, 2010) and explores manifestations of authorial stance that occur at a lexical, clausal, and intra-textual level in an authentic threat text – the Army of God (Text 1)1 – through the discourse analytic systems of Appraisal (Martin and Rose, 2003; Martin and White, 2005). Appraisal’s systems – attitude, engagement, and graduation – allow for a close, structured analysis of interpersonal meaning in context as it occurs across this realized threat of violence.

Section 2 theoretically situates and outlines the discourse analytic tools of Appraisal; section 3 presents the analysis of the Army of God threat, which emphasizes the interper-sonal connection between function and form. The results reveal functional patterns that both strengthen and weaken the threatener’s role in the proposed act and demonstrate the value of utilizing a discourse analytic system such as Appraisal, which allows the analyst to approach language as a socially-situated meaning-making resource (Halliday, 1978). Finally, section 4 synthesizes these functional findings as they relate to stancetaking in threatening discourse.

2. Theoretical framing

2.1. Systemic Functional Linguistics

This research is situated within the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday, 1978). Within this model, language is viewed as social practice and is a result of the interplay between its two fundamental aspects – its systematicity and its functionality (Martin, 1997). Critically for this study, the latter is reflected in discourse through the internal grammatical structure within language, that is, the functions of language provide the motivations for language form and structure (Halliday, 1978). Within SFL, meaning is created as a function of the larger human experience and is encoded in language in three interconnected layers – language (grammar and discourse), social context, and genre (Martin, 1997).

At the level of language, there are three general functions for which we use lan-guage, one of which, the interpersonal, serves ‘to enact our social relationships’ (Martin and Rose, 2003: 6). Stance is central to the interpersonal aspect of language and is manifested through linguistic markers which are strewn throughout a text, ‘forming a ‘‘prosody’’ of attitude’ – or discourse cohesion (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) – that reflects interpersonal meaning (Martin and Rose, 2003: 27). Appraisal (Martin and Rose, 2003; Martin and White, 2005) is a discourse analytic framework that allows




analysis of these linguistically manifested stances by uncovering prosodic meaning across whole texts (Martin and Rose, 2003). Collectively, the Appraisal systems approach the linguistic resources in texts as systematic constructions of interpersonal meaning which, through close discourse analysis, reveal much about an author’s under-lying positionality and attitudinal meaning – that is, the functioning of stance (Martin and White, 2005).

2.2. AppraisalAppraisal’s three distinct systems are attitude, evaluation, and graduation. Attitude highlights how feelings are mapped within texts, covering the categories of emotion, ethics, and aesthetics. The first category, affect, encodes positive and negative emotions of happiness, security, and satisfaction. Second, judgment focuses on forms that encode an author’s positive and negative ethical evaluations of behaviors in terms of their nor-mality, capacity, tenacity, veracity, and propriety. Finally, appreciation marks aesthetic evaluations of things, phenomena, or processes (Martin and White, 2005). Analyses of authorial attitude in threat letters offer a means of investigating how serious a threat is, why the threat is being offered, and the ways in which the author’s ethical positioning may influence both.

Engagement characterizes how writers, as social actors (Van Leeuwen, 1996), dia-logically position themselves with respect to their audience or to propositions refer-enced within the text (Martin and White, 2005). Utterances can be either monoglossic or heteroglossic. Monoglossic utterances make no reference to viewpoints other than the author’s. These include bare assertions, that is, utterances taken to be factual and those that assume the audience is aligned with the speaker. Heteroglossic utterances do reference other viewpoints; they refer to, reflect, and/or negotiate the stances of those who came before, while at the same time anticipate forthcoming stances of new audiences (Bakhtin, 1981). This includes utterances presented as bare assertions but proffered to an audience that is assumed to be in disalignment with the author – as is often the case in threats, wherein the threatener is naturally poised against his or her audience. Heteroglossic utterances can expand to allow other voices to participate in the discourse or, as in the case where disalignment is expected, contract to close off debate. However, in both heteroglossic situations, the voices of others – past, present, and future – are acknowledged, ultimately opening the door to debate, discussion, and a negotiation of power.

Finally, authors can scale up or down the strength of their utterances through the third system: graduation (Martin and White, 2005). Within attitude, authors utilize graduation to demonstrate greater or lesser degrees of positive or negative feelings; within engagement, writers utilize graduation to intensify or diminish their apparent level of involvement or investment in the discourse.

The analytic systems of Appraisal permit us to move beyond intuitive, ideologically based assessments of the function of language and approach the linguistic resources offered in threats as systematic constructions of meaning. Specifically, stances relating to the emotions of the writer are outlined through the systems of attitude, while stances



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relating to the writer’s level of commitment or investment are highlighted through the system of engagement. Graduation plays a role in both systems, serving to downgrade or heighten each form of evaluative meaning in context. Ultimately, the Appraisal resources offer a theoretically grounded framework that allows us to examine the construction of meaning, the negotiation of power, the intersubjective positioning of social participants, and the ways in which they are prosodically construed across whole texts.

3. AnalysisStarting in 1997, Eric Robert Rudolph sent a series of threatening letters to media outlets under the name The Army of God (AG), ‘an underground network of domestic terrorists who believe that the use of violence is appropriate and acceptable as a means to end abor-tion’ (National Abortion Federation, 2010: para 1). This particular threat (Text 1) fol-lowed in the wake of the Atlanta, Georgia-based Centennial Olympic Park bombing of 27 July 1996, which happened during the 1996 Summer Olympics; the bombing of a women’s health clinic on 16 January 1997; and the 21 February 1997 bombing of the Otherside Lounge, an ‘alternative lifestyle nightclub’ (US Department of Justice, FBI, 1997: 3). In the nightclub bombing, as claimed in the threat, a second bomb was located near law enforcement agents; it was defused before it could detonate. On 29 January 1998, also as predicted, another bombing took place at a women’s health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, killing one person and severely injuring another (US Department of Justice, FBI, 1998), thereby fulfilling the claims made by this threat.

Text 1: The Army of God (AG)

The bombing’s in Sandy Spring’s and Midtown where carried out by units of the Army of God. You may confirm the following with F.B.I. The Sandy Springs device’s-gelatin-dynamite-power source 6 volt D battery boxes, Duracell brand, clock timer’s. The Midtown device’s are similar except no ammo can’s, tupperware containers instead-power source single 6 volt lantern batteries. Different shrapnel, regular nail’s instead of cutt nails. The abortion clinic was the target of the first device. The murder of 3.5 million children every will not be “tolerated.” Those who participate in anyway in the murder of children may be targeted for attack. The attack therefore serves as a warning: anyone in or around facilities that murder children may become victims of retribution. The next facility targeted may not be empty. The second device was aimed at agents of the federal government i.e. A.T.F., F.B.I., Marshall’s e.t.c. We declare and will wage total war on the ungodly communist regime in New York and your legaslative bureaucratic lackey’s in Washington. It is you who are responsible and preside over the mur of children and issue the policy of preversion that destroying our people. We will target all facilities and personnel of the federal government. The attack in Midtown was aimed at the sodomite bar (the Otherside). We will target sodomites, there organizations, and all those who push their agenda. In the future when an attack is made against targets where innocent people may become the primary causalties, a warning phone call will be placed to one of the news bureaus’ or 911.




Threats comprise a unique category of communicative events in that they share a common communicative purpose (i.e. broadly to threaten); however, they do not necessarily share the same kinds of formal schematic categories (Van Dijk, 1997) that characterize such easily recognizable genres as news articles, which possess a headline and an introduction summarizing the most important points, or scientific articles, which contain sections describing the method used and the data analyzed. Rather, as exemplified in Text 1 above and Texts 2 and 3 below, threats can vary greatly in length, organizational structure, and level of formality.

Text 2: School Bombing

IM GONNA BOMB this School @ 4/17/09

Text 3: Car Bombing

PeterThe best think you can do is get the fuck away from 7979. Because I know how to make remote bombs. I gonna blow you & your car up in it. It may not be tomorrow, next week, or it may be Thur. […]2 This is no joke!! This is REAL. Not the movies so if I were you I watch your back every minute & every second

What commonly connects these threats is not the content of each (i.e. in this case, they are bomb threats), but rather the fact that they all possess one or more complications in the form of a threatening speech act, which explicitly (Texts 1 and 3) or implicitly (Text 2) positions two or more social actors against each other. Specifically, Text 1 possesses five threatening complications: Those who participate in anyway in the murder of children may be targeted for attack; anyone in or around facilities that murder children may become victims of retribution; We declare and will wage total war on the ungodly com-munist regime in New York and your legaslative bureaucratic lackey’s in Washington; We will target all facilities and personnel of the federal government; and We will target sodomites, there organizations, and all those who push their agenda. These complica-tions are interspersed among utterances that function as justifications for the threatened acts (e.g. The murder of 3.5 million children every will not be “tolerated.” and It is you who are responsible and preside over the mur of children and issue the policy of prever-sion that destroying our people.) and orienting utterances that allow the reader to follow the organizational structure of the threat (e.g. The abortion clinic was the target of the first device. and The second device was aimed at agents of the federal government i.e. A.T.F., F.B.I., Marshall’s e.t.c.). The single complication in Text 2 (IM GONNA BOMB this School), however, is immediate and comprises the bulk of the text. Text 3, the only text to begin with a personal address to the recipient, possesses two complications, the first of which is direct (I gonna blow you & your car up in it.), while the second is veiled (if I were you I watch your back every minute & every second). These utterances are both preceded by personal validations that function to bolster the threatener’s apparent level of commitment to the act: Because I know how to make remote bombs and This is no joke!! This is REAL.



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As a genre, then, threatening communications share a social purpose – to threaten – and, despite the fact that there can be a wide range of schematic variation in threats, as ‘is inher-ent in the dialogic relationship between language and context’ (Eggins and Martin, 1997: 236), they are linked through their inherent possession of one or more threatening compli-cations, which place participants in adversarial roles. The AG threat (Text 1), in particular, was chosen for extended analysis due to its longer length, which provided more manifesta-tions of stance for analysis, and its more formal, organized structure, which offered more clarity in comprehending the overall meaning within the threatener’s narrative.

The following sections examine interpersonal stance in the AG text through the Appraisal systems of Attitude (3.1), Engagement (3.2), and Graduation (3.3). Section 3.4 summarizes the findings.

3.1. AttitudeA critical examination of the relationships between social actors (Fairclough, 2003; Van Dijk, 1991; Van Leeuwen, 1996) reveals four primary groups of participants: the Army of God, of which the writer is a part; those who participate in anyway in the murder of children; agents of the federal government; and sodomites. Table 1 outlines the ways each group is referenced.

Throughout the text, the writer refers to himself as part of a larger organization, whose mission is to bring death to the new world order. By invoking the name of the Army of God, Rudolph gives biblical value to his cause. According Genesis 9:6, a founding tenet in the Army of God’s Manual, ‘whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed’ (National Abortion Federation, 2010: para 13). Based on this creed, the name Army

Table 1. References to social actors

Social actor Additional referents

the Army of God units of the Army of Godweour people

those who participate in the murder of children

abortion clinictargetanyone in or around facilities that murder childrenvictims of retribution

agents of the federal government

F.B.I.A.T.F.Marshall’sungodly, communist regime in New Yorklegaslative bureaucratic lackey’s in Washingtonpersonnel of the federal government

sodomites the Othersideorganizationsall those who push their agendatargets




of God has been used to further extremist anti-abortion causes since the 1980s, bringing retribution – an act performed by God throughout the bible – to those who disobey this higher law. Thus, Rudolph aligns himself with an organization and creed of biblical value, which would be positively appreciated in the eyes of its supporters. Then, by uti-lizing strategies of inclusion/exclusion (e.g. We declare and will wage total war vs It is you who are responsible, destroying our people) and specific/generic classifications (e.g. the Army of God vs those who participate in anyway in the murder of children and the ungodly communist regime in New York), the threatener sets up a dichotomous situation between his positively positioned group and those who deserve punishment.

Within the Communicated Threat Assessment Reference Corpus (CTARC),3 this positive/negative alignment of social actors is common in threats of a violent nature. For example, in the anthrax threat (Text 4) sent to Senator Tom Daschle in October following the catastrophic events of 9/11, a similar ‘us vs them’ dichotomy can be seen.

Text 4: Anthrax

09-11-01YOU CAN NOT STOP US.WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.YOU DIE NOW.ARE YOU AFRAID?DEATH TO AMERICA.DEATH TO ISRAEL.ALLAH IS GREAT.

Here, the two categories of actors are we and Allah vs you, America, and Israel. Those in the first category are great and possess the Anthrax, that is, the weapon which gives them control over the situation; in contrast, those in the latter category are going to die, should be afraid of the death coming to them now, and can not stop the attack from happening, that is, they are powerless. Similarly, in a threat (Text 5) sent in June 2007 to US-based newspapers regarding Goldman Sachs, an investment banking and securities firm, we and the organization A.Q.U.S.A. are powerfully positioned against Goldman Sachs.

Text 5: Goldman Sachs

GOLDMAN SACHS.HUNDREDS WILL DIE.WE ARE INSIDE.YOU CANNOT STOP US.A.Q.U.S.A.

Here, the author gains control over the situation by claiming to be an anonymous insider, which places Goldman Sachs, who is powerless to stop hundreds of their employees from dying, in a negatively construed state of weakness. However, these kinds of critical analyses do not provide a complete picture for the AG threat; through an examination of



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the threatener’s judgments about each party’s behaviors, an unexpected perspective regarding the positive/negative ‘us vs them’ scenario is revealed.

The tokens of judgment against the offending parties (i.e. the abortion doctors, government officials, and sodomites) first appear to support the positive/negative ‘us vs them’ dichotomy (Table 2). Lines 2–3, 6, and 17 negatively judge the behaviors of abortion doctors as being improper; 20–21 do likewise for sodomite behaviors; 9–14 utilize graduated repetition (discussed further in section 3.3) to negatively portray the veracity, propriety, and tenacity of government officials, while 15–16 utilize grammatical nega-tion to judge the tenacity and ability of these officials. Lines 18 and 22 criticize the gov-ernment’s creation of a policy of perversion and their supportive role in the agenda of sodomites. Finally, 7, 24, and 25 normalize the fact that those who frequent abortion clinics or sodomite bars will become victims of revenge – a negative event for the vic-tims, but a positive one for the Army of God seeking retribution.

However, when examining Rudolph’s judgements of his own group’s behavior (also Table 2), even though the Army of God is presumably valued and positively appreciated in the eyes of extremists and the acts of terror are justified and supported by Rudolph’s inter-pretation of the bible, he represents the acts in a negative manner. Specifically, through a repetition of lexical tokens infused with negativity, he portrays the behaviors as improper in lines 1, 4–5, 8, 19, and 23, painting a prosodic picture of immoral behavior. Thus, while

Table 2. Tokens of judgment

Attitude token Judgment Appraised

1 bombing’s -propriety act performed by the Army of God 2 murder of children -propriety act done by abortion doctors 3 murder of children -propriety act done by abortion doctors 4 attack -propriety act of bombing performed by the Army of God 5 attack -propriety act of bombing performed by the Army of God 6 murder of children -propriety act done by abortion doctors 7 victims of retribution +normality people in or around facilities that murder 8 wage war -propriety we 9 ungodly -veracity government agents in NY10 communist -veracity government agents in NY11 regime -propriety government agents in NY12 legislative -propriety government agents in DC13 bureaucratic -propriety government agents in DC14 lackey’s -tenacity government agents in DC15 responsible (for murder) +tenacity (neg.) you16 preside over (murder) +capacity (neg.) you17 mur[der] of children -propriety act done by abortion doctors18 destroying our people -propriety policy of perversion you issue19 attack -propriety act of bombing performed by the Army of God20 sodomite -propriety people targeted21 sodomites -propriety people targeted22 push their agenda -propriety those in alignment with people targeted23 attack -propriety act of bombing performed by the Army of God24 innocent +normality people who die25 causalties +normality innocent people who die




there is a dichotomous line drawn between the Army of God and the other participants in this threat as demonstrated through the critical discourse analysis above, the threatener does not judge his own behavior, even though it is biblically supported, to be any better than that of the offending parties. This stance is contradictory to many ‘us vs them’ situa-tions, as was exemplified by Texts 4 and 5 earlier, in which clearly defined groups are separated by a positive/negative asymmetry, respectively (Reynolds et al., 2000).

Additionally, there are no instantiations of personal affect in this text, which is con-trary to the ideologically expected stances of anger mentioned earlier. Here, Rudolph offers no indication of personal emotion, thereby distancing himself from any sympa-thetic connection with the targeted victims. This tactic mirrors that of an omniscient narrator, who creates the events from his own perspective, thus dominating and con-trolling the characters in the scene (Hale, 2006). This lack of emotion further reflects ‘an aloof, cool verbal style’, which has been linked to controlling behavior (Weintraub, 2003: 145) and, as seen in CTARC, can be found in realized threats, especially in those wherein the threatener calls upon religion to support his or her cause. For example, in the anthrax threat (Text 4) above, positive affect is expressed for Allah, with whom the threatener is aligned, but the threatener offers no emotion regarding the intended vic-tims of the threat – only a judgment about their assumed inability to stop the attack and a declarative statement about their impending death. A similar lack of affect can be seen in one of the repeated threats made to Washington, DC area police in October 2002 in the DC Sniper case (Text 6), wherein 10 people were killed and three were critically injured.

Text 6: DC Sniper

Good morning. Don’t say anything, just listen. We’re the people that are causing the killing in your area. Look on the tarot card. It says, ‘Call me God. Do not release to the press.’ We have called you three times before, trying to set up negotiations. We have got no response. People have died . . . Get your people . . .

In this text, other than a positive appreciation of the morning in Good morning, the authors, who take on the role of God, claim responsibility for the recent shootings by stating that they are causing them to occur; thus, they are explicitly controlling the events. Yet, like the Anthrax and AG threats, there is no personal affect, which clearly separates and distances the threateners from their victims – the people who have died – while allowing them to command the scene in an omniscient, God-like manner.

Thus, the AG threatener, who calls upon religion to support his cause, clearly possesses control over the other participants through an unemotional, omniscient style and draws a clear line of separation between himself, the victims, and his own organization; yet, because ‘perceived religious obligations and/or divine messages transcend social con-sciousness and social obligations’ in many cases of religious terrorism (Schbley, 2006: 292), the negatively infused lexis through which Rudolph represents his own behavior is backgrounded to the importance of the cause, offering an unusual juxtaposition to the positive/negative alignment of social actors often found in threats of a violent nature.



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3.2. Engagement

While the analysis of attitude uncovered the writer’s perceived affective stances, the system of engagement reveals the threatener’s apparent level of commitment and investment in the threat, that is, his epistemic stance. Through these resources, an author can make asser-tions that are to be accepted as fact, close off discourse to contradictory voices, or open up the dialog for negotiation, thereby strengthening his position of power, distancing himself from the threat, or weakening himself in the eyes of the recipient, respectively.

As noted earlier, utterances are either monoglossic – they reference no other voices, offer bare assertions, and assume an audience that is in alignment with the utterance – or heteroglossic – they reference multiple voices, allow for further discourse, and assume disalignment with the audience (Martin and White, 2005; White, 2005). However, in a Bakhtinian sense, every ‘utterance is a link in a very complexly organized chain of other utterances’ (1986: 69) and thus, no utterances can be monoglossic under this framework. Yet even within this strict definition of heteroglossia:

we are reminded that even the most ‘factual’ utterances, those which are structured so as to background interpersonal values, are nevertheless interpersonally charged in that they enter into relationships of tension with a related set of alternative and contradictory utterances. The degree of that tension is socially determined. (White, 2005: 19)

Thus, while this strict definition of heteroglossia is acknowledged, I depart from this categorization in the case of utterances that produce no social tension between a writer and recipient; in these instances, the utterances have been encoded as monoglossic. In an examination of stance in threats, in particular, this distinction is deemed important, as assertions that are indeed bare will play no role in the authorial stance being offered; however, assertions that may, on the surface, appear to be monoglossic but create tension due to disalignment with the audience will mark authorial stance – and through the use of contracted, heteroglossic forms, a deeper awareness of the author’s underlying intent and assumed level of commitment can be gained.

Table 3 offers the only two instances of what can be interpreted as tensionless utter-ances. Specifically, in 26 and 27, the threatener offers an intimate description of two previously detonated bombs in order to establish his credibility and signal his status as a member of the Army of God. And while prefaced by a heteroglossic utterance of expan-sion (You may confirm the following with F.B.I.), which invites the recipient to participate in the verification of these details, these utterances are offered as bare assertions in that they are verifiable facts with which the recipient would not be able to disagree.

However, throughout the remainder of the threat, following Bakhtin’s notion of dialo-gism more closely, the utterances have been encoded as heteroglossic in that they refer-ence other voices, assume disalignment with the audience – thus raising tension – or invite further dialog, all of which play a role in the functioning of the author’s stance.

Table 4 presents the large number of utterances that appear to be bare assertions, but are assumed to produce tension between the threatener and recipient. These utterances func-tion to strengthen the threatener’s role as they contract the discourse, that is, they close off the discourse to further debate or discussion, allowing the threatener to control the scene.




And, while these utterances ‘are lexico-grammatically diverse’, all of the examples except 33, 35, and 37 can be categorized as explicitly objective realizations, wherein the threatener’s role is obscured and the act is emphasized through a top-level or main clause (Martin and White, 2005: 130). This strategy distances the threatener from the actual threat – even though he remains in control of it – and foregrounds or emphasizes the proposed act and those targeted. Furthermore, the utterances in 31 and 39 confirm the threatener’s apparent seriousness of intent. Specifically, by recalling the attack on the abortion clinic in 29, the threatener affirms the fact that he attacked once, thereby strengthening the warning proffered in 31; likewise, 39 demonstrates forethought about the claim in 38, which implies that another attack will be made in the future. These tactics can be seen in similar threatening cases wherein the threatener takes stances that strengthen his or her demonstration of intent; yet, interestingly, these markers do not always translate into action, supporting previous studies that have questioned a one-to-one correspondence between language and behavior (Lord et al., 2008). For example, Text 7 presents excerpts from a threat that was sent to multiple police departments in 2005 and demonstrates both of the previous strengthening strategies – using objective realizations in order to obscure the threatener’s role and recalling a previous attack in order to confirm the threatener’s high level of assumed commitment – even though the large-scale bombing described here did not take place.

Text 7: Lampley Hollow

[…] Sunday is the final day of Founders Day. On that day a minimum of 20 people will die there. Here is how it will happen: Your department will receive a phone call ten minutes to the

Table 3. Monoglossic utterances

26 The Sandy Springs device’s-gelatin-dynamite-power source 6 volt D battery boxes27 The Midtown device’s are similar

Table 4. Heteroglossic utterances of contraction

Engagement marker

28 the bombing’s in Sandy Spring’s and Midtown where carried out by units of the Army of God

29 the abortion clinic was the target30 murder of 3.5 million children every will not be “tolerated.”31 the attack therefore serves as a warning32 the second device was aimed at agents33 we declare and will wage total war34 it is you who are responsible and preside over the mur of children and issue

the policy of perversion35 we will target all facilities and personnel36 the attack in Midtown was aimed at the sodomite bar37 we will target sodomites, there organizations, and all those38 when an attack is made against targets39 a warning phone call will be placed



Gales 39

top of an hour, to announce the countdown. At the hour, the first explosion* will occur. Approximately six will die, mainly family members, and the bomber. This will start a panic, with people running in all directions. One of those directions will be toward the second bomber. Six seconds after the first explosion the second will occur, a distance from the first. Six more dead. NOW for the big one. […] *You remember the bomb in the planter last summer? That’s right, the iron pipe bomb, with an electronic igniter. It was powered by four AA batteries in an Electronic Supply pack, with a time delay. Don’t count on a misfire this time. We worked out the ignition problems with that design.

Specifically, the threatener uses objective realizations (e.g. 20 people will die, Here is how it will happen, Your department will receive a phone call, the first explosion will occur, six will die), which emphasize the threatened act and those targeted over his or her own role in the actual act, and recalls a previous act of bombing (you remember the bomb in the planter last summer?. . .), which demonstrates his or her apparent level of serious-ness. Both strategies strengthen the threatener’s perceived stance as one of unwavering commitment and volitional control, demonstrating that strengthening strategies, which have been more strongly associated with high-level threats (Napier and Mardigian, 2003), are found in both threat realization categories.

On the other side of the issue are those strategies that have been erased from ideo-logical association with threatening language – those that weaken a threatener’s role in or commitment to an act (Gales, 2010). In the AG threat, the most interesting aspect of heteroglossic interaction relates to utterances of expansion that ultimately weaken the threatener in this realized threat.

In Table 5, each of the five instances of expansion are marked as such for the same reason – due to their use of the modal may. Comparing the frequency of use in the AG threat to the sub-corpus of realized threats within CTARC, it is apparent that in the AG text, may is used at a much higher rate of frequency, occurring five times per 258 words (or at a normed rate of 19 times per 1000 words), while in CTARC, may4 occurred nine times per 2818 words (or three times per 1000 words).

Within Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2004) framework of modality, may expresses a low level of probability, as it does in reported ideologies about threatening language (Gales, 2010), and in lines 41–44 – those with relevance to the threatened act – may is oriented objectively, that is, the focus of the act is on the victim rather than the subjective actor who would be performing the act. In CTARC, only one of the instances in realized

Table 5. Heteroglossic utterances of expansion

Engagement marker

40 you may confirm the following with F.B.I.41 those who participate in anyway in the murder of children may be targeted42 anyone in or around facilities that murder children may become victims43 the next facility targeted may not be empty44 innocent people may become the primary causalties




threats functions in a similar manner: As some day it may hapen that a victom must be found.; the other instances express permission, as in 40, rather than possibility. Thus, while this objective, probabilistic use of may is fairly uncommon in realized threats, it serves the function here of weakening the threatener’s claims first, by adding a level of conditionality to the direct proclamation that frames the utterances in lines 41–44 – The murder of 3.5 million children every will not be “tolerated”, and second, by inserting a level of uncertainty into the otherwise firmly constructed threat. Specifically, in the first case, if the recipient stops the murder of children, he or she can prevent the threat, thereby allowing room for negotiation based on this directly declared condition. However, in the latter case, if the murders do continue, the use of may indicates an uncertain level of probability as to whether or not Rudolph will carry out the threatened act. Both functions interestingly serve to weaken the threatener’s apparent level of commitment to this realized threat.

3.3. GraduationThe system of graduation uncovers one of the most prominent stance resources utilized by Rudolph – repetition (Martin and White, 2005), which is only visible by mapping the prosody of meaning across an entire text. Here, repetition occurs in three distinct ways; Rudolph uses collocational repetition, semantic repetition, and figurative, or metaphorical, repetition in order to support and strengthen his stance.

First, the threatener emphasizes his stance by repeating the same lexically infused collocation: murder of children (Table 6). Murder is lexically intensified in that it is a form of killing done with malice and forethought (Random House College Dictionary, 1988); children, while not intensified in the same manner (i.e. it is not a form of chil-dren), is intensified through its contextual use. Within the abortion debate, those in align-ment with the right to choose tend to favor the term ‘fetus’, as this term is ‘more neutral and value-free because of its status as a scientific, medical term’, whereas those against this right favor more animate terms such as ‘baby’ and ‘unborn child’ (Ferree et al., 2002: 276). Thus, by repeatedly collocating murder and children, the threatener takes a firm stance against those who willfully kill unborn children.

The second use of repetition is semantic. The threatener creates strings of terms that are related in a semantically negative manner (Table 7). Specifically, the threatener begins the string in 49 with ungodly, which we assume is negative due to Rudolph’s acknowl-edged dedication to the Army of God; this is followed in 50 and 51 by communist, which

Table 6. Tokens of graduation – intensification through collocational repetition

Graduation token

45 the murder of 3.5 million children46 the murder of children47 facilities that murder children48 the mur of children



Gales 41

represents a form of government that is criticized in Westernized democracies, and regime, which, while technically defined as a neutral system of government, has been shown to be used in situations where the speaker is critical of and wishes to attack the targeted opponent (Channell, 2000). This process of resemanticization, or the rewriting of a word’s meaning (Hasan, 2003), can also be seen with the token in 53 – bureaucratic. While used to describe a form of government characterized by a specific hierarchy of employees (Random House College Dictionary, 1988), the first three hits in COCA, the Corpus of Contemporary American English,5 were: hiding behind a bureaucratic answer to this seems to me to be disingenuous; a laborious and intimidating bureaucratic hurdle that would stop most people in their tracks; and It’s too profit-driven. It’s too bureau-cratic. It’s too inaccessible. It’s too complicated (2010). After a brief analysis of COCA, it is clear that these examples are fairly representative of the negative ways in which bureaucratic is used in modern American English. Finally, the threatener closes the string in 54 with lackey’s, which inherently possesses subservience in its definition, and, through this graded process of semantic repetition, even lexical items that may have had questionable interpretations, such as legaslative in 52, take on the negative tone of their surrounding tokens.

Finally, the threatener uses lexical repetition in a manner that constructs a meta-phorical scene within which the threat is set – that of war, as identified in 63 (Table 8). Through the prosodic use of primal, militaristic terms that begin with the threatener’s alignment with the Army of God in 55, Rudolph builds upon this image and uses it to frame his position as that of a soldier hunting his enemy. In 56, 57, 61, 64, 67, and 69, for example, the murderers of children, government agents, and sodomites become targets of this hunt – those Rudolph is aiming at in 62 and 66 for attack in 58, 59, 65, and 68. This metaphor is also demonstrated through the nominalized and oftentimes vague terms used to refer to the opposing parties (e.g. those who participate in anyway in the murder of children, personnel of the federal government, ungodly communist regime, sodomites, etc.), a strategy often employed during times of war (Bernard et al., 2003). By dehumanizing those targeted for attack, they become inanimate entities, against which the threatener is able to defend himself from an emotional response; this process can help explain Rudolph’s use of affectless, contracting language discussed in the previous two sections. Rudolph completes the description of his metaphorical war in 60, 70, and 71, where the inevitable victims and innocent causalties of war are reported.

Table 7. Tokens of graduation – intensification through semantic repetition

Graduation token

49 ungodly50 communist51 regime52 legaslative53 bureaucratic54 lackey’s




3.4. Summary of stancetaking in the AG threatThe AG threat encodes stance in a variety of ways. First, epistemic stances, those which most strongly reveal an author’s apparent level of commitment, investment, and certainty, are primarily represented through contracting utterances, which close off the discourse to further debate or negotiation, strengthening the threatener’s control. Specifically, utter-ances that initially oriented the reader emphasized Rudolph’s previously carried out acts of terror, thus instilling his threat with more credibility and strengthening his sincerity in the eyes of the recipient, and objective utterances foregrounded possible future acts of terror and those targeted for attack over Rudolph’s backgrounded role as the threatener. However, contrary to reported threatening language ideologies discussed above, the threatener in this realized threat also weakened his epistemic stances through the unusu-ally frequent use of may, a modal expressing a low level of probability (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004). In all but one of the five instances, Rudolph utilized may in a manner that indicated uncertainty as to whether the act would be carried out or that added a level of conditionality to his claims, as the fulfillment of the threat was ultimately contingent upon the continuation of the recipients’ murderous behavior.

Second, the threatener’s attitudinal stances – those which express his linguistically manifested emotional state, judgments of behaviors, and aesthetic appreciations – are conveyed first and foremost through his alignment with the Army of God, giving biblical import to his cause. Through a critical discourse analysis, it first appears that Rudolph is creating a positive/negative ‘us vs them’ dichotomy between the actors participating in this threat – his Army of God vs murders of children, sodomites, and government agents who support these groups. And while this dichotomous situation is consistent throughout the text, the prosody of attitudinal markers reveal that Rudolph, while emotionally detached from the act, paints a linguistic picture through negatively infused lexis in which

Table 8. Tokens of graduation – intensification through metaphorical repetition

Graduation token

55 the Army of God56 the target57 targeted58 attack59 attack60 victims61 targeted62 aimed at63 wage war64 target65 attack66 aimed at67 target68 attack69 targets70 innocent 71 causalties



Gales 43

his own behaviors, like those of his enemies, are immoral. This finding is contrary to commonly constructed ‘us vs them’ situations wherein there is a positive/negative asym-metric portrayal of the two clearly defined parties (Reynolds et al., 2000), but in support of previous research on religious terrorists who suppress their own emotions in order to control others in support of what they perceive to be a higher obligation (Schbley, 2006).

Finally, Rudolph utilizes repetition, a resource of graduation, in a way that once again strengthens and supports his authorial stance. Specifically, through repetition of the col-locational pattern murder of children, he defines those being punished as murders and intensifies his judgment against those who commit this crime. Similarly, through repeti-tion of semantically negative strings of lexemes such as ungodly communist regime and legaslative bureaucratic lackey’s, Rudolph further explicates his judgments against his targets, adding to the clear delineation between his perceived mission from God and the behaviors of others. Finally, through metaphorical repetition, Rudolph constructs a figu-rative war zone, wherein he is part of God’s army targeting and attacking those who disobey his higher laws. In each case, the threatener’s level of perceived commitment is strengthened through his alignment with God’s army, and his judgments of the behav-iors of the participants, who are frequently nominalized to create emotional distance between the threatener and his victims, are clearly enunciated. Thus, through the sys-tems of Appraisal, Rudolph’s epistemic and affective stances are revealed as they occur individually and collectively across the text, uncovering functions that both strengthen and weaken his apparent level of commitment and position of power.

4. ConclusionThe stances identified through this discourse analysis address two larger issues – one methodological and one ideological. First, as is common in threatening communications, the participants held adversarial roles, that is, the threatener (us) vs the other textual participants (them), who must struggle through a crisis to attempt to restore balance and stability to the scene (Rothery and Stenglin, 1997). Yet the examination of affective stance demonstrated that a critical analysis of these interpersonal relationships did not provide a complete picture of Rudolph’s underlying attitudes about the threatened act or his role within it. Through the structured framework of Appraisal, it was revealed that the threatener did not set up a positive/negative asymmetric relationship that is common in clearly defined in/out group categorizations (Reynolds et al., 2000); instead, while he remained empty of affect and thereby distanced himself from the other participants, he judged his actions on an equally negative plane, aligning himself with those possess-ing similar behavioral characteristics – religious terrorists who do not accept their own behavior as proper, but subdue their emotions in order to serve what they perceive to be a higher objective (Schbley, 2006). Thus, through Appraisal, analysts can delve deeper into underlying affective and epistemic stances through prosodic realizations of interpersonal meaning.

Second, this text possessed epistemic stances that strengthened and weakened the perceived level of commitment and involvement of the threatener. For instance, Rudolph strengthened his position of power through contracting heteroglossic utterances, which were lexico-grammatically diverse; yet he weakened his position through heteroglossic




utterances of expansion, marked here by the repeated use of the possibility modal may, which instilled a prosodically realized level of doubt and conditionality to the threat. This highlights the fact that threateners convey a range of interpersonal meaning – meaning which may depend on the author’s underlying intent in proffering the threat (e.g. to instill fear, to negotiate interpersonal relationships, to justify an act of retribu-tion) and on the semiotic resources available (Blommaert, 2005; Martin and White, 2005). This finding contradicts reported ideologies about the language of realized or high level threats, which envision a genre comprising commanding, strengthening lan-guage (Napier and Mardigian, 2003), as opposed to one that also possesses mitigating, conditional forms that weaken a threatener’s role or apparent commitment level. The erasure (Irvine and Gal, 2000) or masking of linguistic aspects that fall outside popular and scholarly expectations – that is, those that weaken or mitigate realized threats – can have grave consequences for those studying and assessing threatening discourse, demonstrating the need for more empirical research on authentic threats that will broaden our understanding of the ways in which stance actually manifests and functions in this oftentimes dangerous genre.

Notes

1. Texts 1, 4, 5, and 6 are public record; no identifying information has been changed. Texts 2, 3, and 7 are not in the public domain; all identifying information has been changed. All texts were accessed through the Communicated Threat Assessment Reference Corpus (CTARC), including any original non-standard language use (e.g. misspellings, incorrect lexical choice, unusual punctuation), and are used with permission from the Academy Group, Inc.

2. Where noted (with ellipses) in texts 3 and 7, a portion of the text was cut for purposes of anonymity and space.

3. A privately owned corpus of authentic threat letters with over 152,000 words. It is housed at the Academy Group, Inc. in Manassas, Virginia.

4. Instances of May that referred to the month were removed from this count.5. A publicly available corpus of over 410 million words: http://www.americancorpus.org/.

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Tammy Gales received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of California, Davis and is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. Her current research interests integrate corpus analysis and various forms of discourse analysis, especially Appraisal, to address topics of language and the law as they pertain to diversity in the United States, to investigate forensic linguistic questions concerning the nature of threatening communications in contemporary American society, and to reveal language ideologies about the discourses within each genre.



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