Formulating hypothetical talk: An action-driven approach to communicating stance in business meetings

The article focuses on the deployment of hypothetical talk in CANBEC and CCI corpora business meetings examines its use as a discursive tool for communicating stance encounters where participants represent (potentially) incompatible positions. Through talk, interactants signal potential agreement resolution by testing other participants’ position their preparedness to shift view. It is argued that although introduced meeting may be hypothetical, communicated real. analysis provides insights into actions applied resolve impasse or conflict situations, particularly through rhetorical move formulating. Formulating aims summarize at particular instance time. act formulating requires an evaluative step part order consider contributions opposition formulation. is, therefore, interest examine how known – hence essentially unreal, speculative, potentially untrue even counterfactual can allowed feature discourse influence meeting’s outcome. Two theoretical models were understand this Du Bois’s (2007) “stance triangle” Hunston’s (1989, 1994, 2011) three functions evaluation. These offered new perspective role meetings, where, results demonstrate, used stance, test participants, advance speakers’ goals. By integrating two applying them formulated it was possible conceptualize process which evaluate upon making “real life decisions” information has initially been hypothetical.