The proposed paper attempts to contribute to the debate on the interpretation of meaning-making and identity construction as intertextual phenomena. Adopting the perspective of discourse analysis, relevant extracts from a questionnaire on attitudes to accents are examined by applying the theories of framing (Bateson 1972; Goffman 1974; Tannen and Wallat 1987) and positioning (Davies and Harré 1990), also exploring the concept of the stance triangle (DuBois 2007).
The study argues that the dynamics of a hierarchical interaction are more reliably revealed when focusing on authentic discursive presentations of self rather than adhering to ritualised interactional patterns.