Language + Power Flashcards
(13 cards)
Theory of Politeness (Robin Lakoff)
- Do not impose
- Give options
- Make the receiver feel good
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Norman Fairclough)
Stages:
1) Building relationships through personalisation: use of personal pronouns, cultural references, informal lexical, grammatical + graphological choices create an informal + intimate register.
2) Manipulation of ‘members’ ‘resources’ or the readers cultural + cognitive understanding of the world: Cultural references in visual advertisements + linguistically in written + spoken texts are carefully selected to draw the implied/ideal reader into the ideologic of the text producer: their view of the world.
3) Building the consumer into an ideal receiver of the ideological message conveyed through picture or language. E.g. A british teenage girl magazine may refer to icons such as Justin Berber who are popular + convey a specific viewpoint about the values of teenage life.
* Consider how lexical, grammatical, graphological + pragmatic features are embedded in a text to draw on the reader’s set of cultural, social + political ideas.
Identity Theory (James Glee)
• Nature identity: your personality is reflected through what words you use
• Institutional identity: your job role is reflected through what words you use
• Discourse identity: what type of person you are in
everyday conversation is reflected through what words you use
• Affinity identity: your hobbies/interests are reflected
through what words you use
Sian Wareing
• Political power: power held by those with the backing of the law
• Personal power: power held by individuals because of their job role
• Social group power: power held by those in a dominant social group
Norman Fairclough
• Instrumental power: power used to maintain and enforce authority
• Influential power: power used to influence or persuade others
• Power in discourse: how power relationships are established through the language that is used
• Power behind discourse: the power that informs the way in which the text has been structured
• Synthetic personalisation: the artificial friendliness that institutions use to reinforce their power
Basic questions when analysing talk.
Who seems to lead the talk?
- Looking closely at how the talk moves on as each speaker takes his or her turn; alternative turns referred to as adjacency pairs.
- In some situations, pattern may be obvious- teacher/police officer may ask all the questions.
Who says what gets talked about?
- Ability to influence the subject/‘agenda’ of a conversation is usually a sign of personal status/dominance.
Who talks most?
- Answer to this question doesn’t always lead us to the dominant speaker. Sometimes, the most powerful person needs to say very little.
Who interrupts? Who backs down?
- If someone’s easily interrupted this may be a sign of low status, whereas the right to speak uninterrupted is often an indicator of conversational dominance.
Who gets to comment on what people say?
- In classrooms, teachers routinely say in response to students: ‘Good answer!’, ‘Well done!’, or ‘That’s right’ (or their opposites).
- However, when a teacher asks a particular searching questions, students seldom (rarely) say: ‘Good questions, sir’.
- The right to make judgements about what other people say is often a sign of status or power.
What are people trying to do to other speakers?
What do people really mean?
Power in discoursing elements to look out for.
- Declarative sentences, i.e. using the verb ‘to be’
- Imperatives
- Passive constructions
- Use of Modal Auxiliaries
- Bullet points
- False simplicity
- Asymmetry of power
- Lexical field
- Latinate lexis
Explain how the dominant participant is expected to act in an utterance.
- Initiate the conversation
- Set the agenda
- Control the topics
- Reinforce the required behaviour through positive feedback
- Interrupt
- Overlap
Explain how the submissive participant is expected to act in an utterance.
- Respond rather than initiate
- Say much less; even be largely silent
- Follow the set agenda of the conversation
- Use respectful, form of address, avoid familiarity
- Avoid assertiveness by not interrupting
- Use fillers + vague language
Van Dijk
- Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA): language isn’t neutral - reflects + reinforce power structures. Discourse is controlled by elites to shape how people think. Power is ideological - maintained through language rather than just direct force.
- Example: political speeches use phrases like ‘protecting our borders; to create us vs. them narratives - influencing immigration policies.
Basil Bernstein (1971)
- ’Elaborated Code’: formal academic language - wide vocab, complex sentences, correct grammar, e.t.c.
- ’Restricted Code’: informal, close-knit communities.
- Creates division between social classes.
Michel Foucault
- Discourse + Power: discourses refer to systems of lang, knowledge + meaning that shape how we think about the world. Lang not just a tool for communication - but way of constructing reality. Those in power control discourse, influencing what’s considered true, normal, or acceptable.
- Example: way mental health is discussed has changed over time. Previously instituions labelled people as ‘nmad’ or ‘insane’ giving doctors power over them. Today, discourse shifted to medical terms like ‘mental illnbess’, still grants authority to psychiatrists but with different framework.
- Power - Knowledge Relationship: those in power control what counts as knowledge. Lang used to reinforce this control, influencing how people see themselves + the world.
- Example: legal language (e.g. ‘innocent until proven guilty’) shapes how we understand justice + authority.
Deborah Cameron
- There are more similarities in the ways that males + females use language than differences.
- Argues that power derives from social roles which determine asymmetry in power in discourse.
