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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. • A discourse analysis of affect as an indexical resource during stance-taking in institutional contexts. • Further links semiotics with updated models of affective science. • Introduces the affective practice connotative inversion. • Explores affective practices that establish identities in two different institutional contexts, health services and academia. • Institutional identity is found to be indexed through lexical changes in connotative inversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]