Stance in TED Talks: Strategic Use of Subjective Adjectives in Online Popularisation

This paper analyses “stance” in TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks, which are popularising speeches aiming at knowledge dissemination. Based on a corpus of the TED talks presented between 2006 and 2012, this study focuses on how the speakers express judgments and take up positions through subjective adjectives. Drawing upon Kerbat-Orecchioni (1980) and Felices Lago’s (1997) adjective classifications, the quantitative and qualitative study attempts to analyse the use of axiological evaluative adjectives, which are fully subjective, as they imply a qualitative evaluation adding a judgement to the modified noun. It has been noticed that TEDsters use vivid, descriptive subjective adjectives to establish a connection with the audience, which perceives a sense of similarity with the speaker. Like traditional scientific presentations, TED talks use adjectives conveying the relevance of their findings, while they distinguish themselves for the role given to aesthetic and emotional adjectives, practicality and veracity, also including the moral, political, and economic aspects involved in science. The work suggests that maybe TEDsters’ approach to science might possibly contribute to breach the expert/non expert barrier, considering science not as something distant, but as a human experience for both laypersons and professionals.