(Framework) Discourse Studies 2011 Gales 27 46

Article
Identifying interpersonal
stance in threatening
discourse: An appraisal
analysis
Discourse Studies
13(1) 2746
The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1461445610387735
http://dis.sagepub.com
Tammy Gales
University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, USA
Abstract
Ideologies 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 threateners 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 writers 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.
Keywords
appraisal 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 stancetakers apparent level of
commitment to an act; furthermore, they can serve to align or disalign the stancetaker
Corresponding author:
Tammy Gales, Department of English, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, 800 Algoma Boulevard, Oshkosh, WI
54901, USA.
Email: galest@uwosh.edu
Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University on February 15, 2016
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 identifying 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 threatener 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, Galess 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 manifested. Within threat assessment frameworks, for instance, threats possessing detailed,
commanding forms that strengthen the threateners 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 threateners 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 realization 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 threateners 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 understanding 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
29
Gales
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). Appraisals 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 interpersonal connection between function and form. The results reveal functional patterns that
both strengthen and weaken the threateners 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 language, 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
30
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 authors underlying positionality and attitudinal meaning that is, the functioning of stance (Martin
and White, 2005).
2.2. Appraisal
Appraisals 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 authors positive and negative ethical evaluations of behaviors in terms of their normality, 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 authors ethical positioning
may influence both.
Engagement characterizes how writers, as social actors (Van Leeuwen, 1996), dialogically position themselves with respect to their audience or to propositions referenced within the text (Martin and White, 2005). Utterances can be either monoglossic
or heteroglossic. Monoglossic utterances make no reference to viewpoints other than
the authors. 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
31
Gales
relating to the writers 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. Analysis
Starting 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 abortion (National Abortion Federation, 2010: para 1). This particular threat (Text 1) followed 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
womens 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 womens 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 bombings in Sandy Springs and Midtown where carried out by units of the Army of God.
You may confirm the following with F.B.I. The Sandy Springs devices-gelatin-dynamitepower source 6 volt D battery boxes, Duracell brand, clock timers. The Midtown devices are
similar except no ammo cans, tupperware containers instead-power source single 6 volt lantern
batteries. Different shrapnel, regular nails 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.,
Marshalls e.t.c. We declare and will wage total war on the ungodly communist regime in New
York and your legaslative bureaucratic lackeys 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.
32
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
Peter
The 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 communist regime in New York and your legaslative bureaucratic lackeys 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 complications 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 preversion 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., Marshalls 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 threateners apparent level
of commitment to the act: Because I know how to make remote bombs and This is no
joke!! This is REAL.
33
Gales
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 inherent 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 complications, 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 manifestations of stance for analysis, and its more formal, organized structure, which offered more
clarity in comprehending the overall meaning within the threateners 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. Attitude
A 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 Gods Manual, whoever sheds mans 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 God

we
our people
abortion clinic
target
anyone in or around facilities that murder children
victims of retribution
F.B.I.
A.T.F.
Marshalls
ungodly, communist regime in New York
legaslative bureaucratic lackeys in Washington
personnel of the federal government
the Otherside
organizations
all those who push their agenda
targets
those who participate in the

murder of children
agents of the federal
government
sodomites
34
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 utilizing 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
09-11-01
YOU 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
35
Gales
the threateners judgments about each partys 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 23, 6, and 17 negatively judge the behaviors of abortion
doctors as being improper; 2021 do likewise for sodomite behaviors; 914 utilize
graduated repetition (discussed further in section 3.3) to negatively portray the veracity,
propriety, and tenacity of government officials, while 1516 utilize grammatical negation to judge the tenacity and ability of these officials. Lines 18 and 22 criticize the governments 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 victims, but a positive one for the Army of God seeking retribution.
However, when examining Rudolphs judgements of his own groups 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 Rudolphs interpretation 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, 45, 8, 19, and 23, painting a prosodic picture of immoral behavior. Thus, while
Table 2.Tokens of judgment
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Attitude token
Judgment
Appraised
bombings
murder of children
murder of children
attack
attack
murder of children
victims of retribution
wage war
ungodly
communist
regime
legislative
bureaucratic
lackeys
responsible (for murder)
preside over (murder)
mur[der] of children
destroying our people
attack
sodomite
sodomites
push their agenda
attack
innocent
causalties
-propriety
-propriety
-propriety
-propriety
-propriety
-propriety
+normality
-propriety
-veracity
-veracity
-propriety
-propriety
-propriety
-tenacity
+tenacity (neg.)
+capacity (neg.)
-propriety
-propriety
-propriety
-propriety
-propriety
-propriety
-propriety
+normality
+normality
act performed by the Army of God

act done by abortion doctors
act of bombing performed by the Army of God
people in or around facilities that murder
we
government agents in NY
government agents in DC
you
you
policy of perversion you issue
people targeted
people targeted
those in alignment with people targeted
people who die
innocent people who die
36
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 situations, 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 contrary to the ideologically expected stances of anger mentioned earlier. Here, Rudolph
offers no indication of personal emotion, thereby distancing himself from any sympathetic connection with the targeted victims. This tactic mirrors that of an omniscient
narrator, who creates the events from his own perspective, thus dominating and controlling 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 victims 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. Dont say anything, just listen. Were 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 consciousness 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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Gales
3.2. Engagement
While the analysis of attitude uncovered the writers perceived affective stances, the system
of engagement reveals the threateners apparent level of commitment and investment in
the threat, that is, his epistemic stance. Through these resources, an author can make assertions 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 authors underlying intent
and assumed level of commitment can be gained.
Table 3 offers the only two instances of what can be interpreted as tensionless utterances. 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 expansion (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 Bakhtins notion of dialogism more closely, the utterances have been encoded as heteroglossic in that they reference 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 authors 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 function to strengthen the threateners 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.
38
Table 3. Monoglossic utterances

26
27
The Sandy Springs devices-gelatin-dynamite-power source 6 volt D battery boxes

The Midtown devices are similar
Table 4. Heteroglossic utterances of contraction

Engagement marker
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
the bombings in Sandy Springs and Midtown where carried out by units of the
Army of God
the abortion clinic was the target
murder of 3.5 million children every will not be tolerated.
the attack therefore serves as a warning
the second device was aimed at agents
we declare and will wage total war
it is you who are responsible and preside over the mur of children and issue
the policy of perversion
we will target all facilities and personnel
the attack in Midtown was aimed at the sodomite bar
we will target sodomites, there organizations, and all those
when an attack is made against targets
a warning phone call will be placed
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 threateners 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 threateners 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-toone 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 threateners role and recalling a previous attack in
order to confirm the threateners 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
39
Gales
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? Thats 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. Dont 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 seriousness. Both strategies strengthen the threateners 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 ideological association with threatening language those that weaken a threateners 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 Matthiessens (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 4144 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
41
42
43
44
you may confirm the following with F.B.I.

those who participate in anyway in the murder of children may be targeted
anyone in or around facilities that murder children may become victims
the next facility targeted may not be empty
innocent people may become the primary causalties
40
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 threateners claims first, by adding a level of
conditionality to the direct proclamation that frames the utterances in lines 4144 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 threateners apparent level of commitment to this
realized threat.
3.3. Graduation
The 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 children), is intensified through its contextual use. Within the abortion debate, those in alignment 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 Rudolphs acknowledged 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
46
47
48
the murder of 3.5 million children

the murder of children
facilities that murder children
the mur of children
41
Gales
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 words 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 Its too profit-driven. Its too bureaucratic. Its too inaccessible. Its 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 lackeys, 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 metaphorical 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 threateners
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 Rudolphs 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
50
51
52
53
54
ungodly
communist
regime
legaslative
bureaucratic
lackeys
42
Table 8.Tokens of graduation intensification through metaphorical repetition

Graduation token
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
the Army of God

the target
targeted
attack
attack
victims
targeted
aimed at
wage war
target
attack
aimed at
target
attack
targets
innocent
causalties
3.4. Summary of stancetaking in the AG threat

The AG threat encodes stance in a variety of ways. First, epistemic stances, those which
most strongly reveal an authors 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 threateners control. Specifically, utterances that initially oriented the reader emphasized Rudolphs 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 Rudolphs 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 unusually 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 threateners 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
43
Gales
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 asymmetric 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 collocational pattern murder of children, he defines those being punished as murders and
intensifies his judgment against those who commit this crime. Similarly, through repetition of semantically negative strings of lexemes such as ungodly communist regime and
legaslative bureaucratic lackeys, 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 figurative war zone, wherein he is part of Gods army targeting and attacking those who
disobey his higher laws. In each case, the threateners level of perceived commitment is
strengthened through his alignment with Gods army, and his judgments of the behaviors of the participants, who are frequently nominalized to create emotional distance
between the threatener and his victims, are clearly enunciated. Thus, through the systems of Appraisal, Rudolphs 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. Conclusion
The 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 Rudolphs 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 possessing 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
44
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 authors underlying intent in proffering the threat
(e.g. to instill fear, to negotiate interpersonal relationships, to justify an act of retribution) 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 language (Napier and Mardigian, 2003), as opposed to one that also possesses mitigating,
conditional forms that weaken a threateners 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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Discourse Studies 13(1)

with another person or proposition or to reproduce and reinforce a socially situated

Discourse Studies 13(1)

analysis of these linguistically manifested stances by uncovering prosodic meaning

Discourse Studies 13(1)

As a genre, then, threatening communications share a social purpose to threaten and,

Table 1. References to social actors

the Army of God

units of the Army of God

those who participate in the

Discourse Studies 13(1)

the threateners judgments about each partys behaviors, an unexpected perspective

Table 2.Tokens of judgment

act performed by the Army of God

Discourse Studies 13(1)

Discourse Studies 13(1)

Table 3. Monoglossic utterances

The Sandy Springs devices-gelatin-dynamite-power source 6 volt D battery boxes

Table 4. Heteroglossic utterances of contraction

Table 5. Heteroglossic utterances of expansion

you may confirm the following with F.B.I.

Discourse Studies 13(1)

Table 6.Tokens of graduation intensification

the murder of 3.5 million children

represents a form of government that is criticized in Westernized democracies, and

Table 7.Tokens of graduation intensification through semantic repetition

Discourse Studies 13(1)

Table 8.Tokens of graduation intensification through metaphorical repetition

the Army of God

3.4. Summary of stancetaking in the AG threat

Discourse Studies 13(1)

Channell, J. (2000) Corpus-Based Analysis of Evaluative Lexis, in S. Hunston and G. Thompson

Discourse Studies 13(1)

Napier, M. and Mardigian, S. (2003) Threatening Messages: The Essence of Analyzing

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