Stance in Aggadic Terminology: A View from Linguistic Anthropology

Aggadic terminology is either assumed to be less rigorous than halakhic terminology or subsumed under literary criticism. However, aggadah does contain a wide variety of terms for markings what linguistic anthropologists call "stance": introducing evidence, marking the speaker`s degree of commitment to their speech, expressing a wide range of judgments about the speech of others, and reflecting the speaker`s emotions about statements, events, or states of affairs. This paper asks what patterns we could find in selected aggadic terminology if we subjected it to linguistic-anthropological analysis, using the category of "stance." This further promises to reveal overlaps between aggadah and halakhah, as the stance of speakers in both domains expresses their epistemological and moral views of the world.