Evaluative affect in the social practice of institutional identity: Making a case for connotative inversion

This article presents a discourse analysis of affect as a social practice, and its semiotic role in stance-taking, and institutional identity. We make use of longitudinal ethnographic interviews from two different institutional contexts to explore how affect entwines with stance-taking to perform identities which emerge both synchronically and diachronically. We expose and discuss consistent patterns of affective practice, where speakers produce affected stances that highlight aspects of identity. We focus on a practice we have called connotative inversion: a switch in evaluation by a single speaker on the same discursive object over time. Via this inversion, a speaker performs competing, salient aspects of identity through materially present means. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.