Positioning theory

Positioning theory provides a framework through which the fine-grained dynamics of social episodes can be studied. At the heart of this work lies the position, a sociological concept that has been used to refer to a person’s status or constellation within a community (Bjerre, 2021, 266). However, beginning in the 1990s, position took on a new meaning as Rom Harré and other constructionist and post-structuralist theorists started to reconceptualise positions and related acts of positioning in terms of the distribution of rights and duties within a particular interaction. Drawing attention to how people locate themselves (and others) within conversation, this development also introduced a more overt focus on the ways in which the position obliges and limits the potential to act. Positioning theory was labelled as a theory in 1999 (Van Langenhove and Wise, 2019). Still relatively unchanged since then, it constitutes a multi-layered framework through which the impact of living in ‘an ocean of language’ (Harré, 2008, 32) can be analysed, including how people construct themselves – and have their opportunities and worlds constructed – through social encounters.

For information literacy, positioning theory presents an opportunity to consider the role that granular, social interactions play in shaping information landscapes (Lloyd, 2006). Involving a shift from thinking about information literacy itself to the ‘flow of talking and writing’ within which information literacy actions are set (cf. Moghaddam, Harré and Lee, 2007, 4), a focus on position-positioning relationships draws attention to language use and interaction, whether this is written, spoken or material. It also extends research examining the social sites of information practice (e.g. Tuominen, Savolainen and Talja, 2005; Lloyd, 2005) by interrogating the conditions that shape information environments, including the impact that discursive constructions have upon what kinds of knowledge are valued, who can access learning opportunities and claims about how information literacy should happen. In focusing on social encounters, this chapter follows Davies and Harré (1990, 45) to define discourse as an ‘institutionalised use of language and languagelike sign systems’ that both constitutes and forms a resource through which speakers and hearers negotiate social practice (Davies and Harré, 1990, 62).

Overview of positioning theory

At its heart, positioning theory centres on how people make sense of reality in a discursively constructed world.