“BUT THAT’S BECAUSE PEOPLE DON’T KNOW WHAT POLE DANCING IS”: CONTRIBUTIONS OF EVALUATION TO THE DISCURSIVE ANALYSIS OF STIGMAS

ABSTRACT In this article, we investigate an interaction between pole dancing practitioners, focusing on the reaction and the resistance related to the recurrent construction of stigmas about the activity. Inserted in the area of Contemporary Applied Linguistics, the research is centered on the observation of the discursive evaluative mechanisms negotiated by the interlocutors and their contributions to the reframing of the activity they practice. The microdiscursive analysis is based on the appraisal theory, imbedded in Systemic-Functional Linguistics. Evaluations produced mainly in the domains of affect and judgment are highlighted in order to foreground the stigmas problematized in participants’ discourses. The methodology is oriented by the qualitative paradigm and the corpus was generated in a recorded conversation between the first author and her pole dancing teacher. Our understandings suggest that participants conceive pole dancing as a liberating practice, creating a discourse that reframes it positively and that resists against conservative hegemonic views, such as the ones which stigmatize the activity and consider it a vulgar and deviant practice.