Language and Power Key Terms Flashcards
A group with shared values and approaches to reading
Discourse community
Power held by those with the backing of the law
Political Power
Power held by individuals as a result of their roles in organisations
Personal power
Power held as a result of being a member of a dominant social group.
Social group power
Power used to maintain and enforce authority
Instrumental power
Power used to influence or persuade others
Influential power
The ways in which power is manifested in situations through power; actual word/action level things
Power in discourse
The focus on the social and ideological reasons behind the enactment of power
Power behind discourse
A set of belief systems, attitudes or a world view held by an individual or groups
Ideology
Constructions that express degrees of possibility, probability or certainty
Epistemic modality
Constructions that express degrees of duty, necessity and obligation
Deontic modality
The way in which advertising and other forms of communication use personalised language such as the second-person pronoun ‘you’ to construct a relationship between text producer and receiver
Synthetic Personalisation
A marked difference in the power status of individuals involved in discourse
Power asymmetry
An alternative term for asymmetrical, highlighting the power one speaker has over another.
Unequal encounter
A speaker with a higher status in a given context, who is therefore able to impose a degree of power.
Powerful participant
Those with less status in a given context, who are subject to constraints imposed by more powerful participants
Less powerful participants
Ways in which powerful participants may block or control the contributions of less powerful participants, for example through controlling content or interrupting
Constraints
The rewording of another’s contribution by a powerful participant to impose a certain meaning or understanding
Formulation
Talk that is primarily interactional in orientation and is geared towards establishing relationships
Small talk (Phatic)
A more indirect way of exercising power and control through conversational constraints
Repressive discourse strategy
Linguistic behaviour that is open in its exercising of power and control
Oppressive discourse strategy
