Power and Authority Flashcards
What was Fairclough’s theory?
There is influential power and there is also instrumental power
What is influential power?
- Advertisement, politics, media, culture
- We are made to behave in a certain ways or adopt certain attitudes, without obvious force
- We are not coerced and no penalty for resistance
- Relies on acceptance of power and status
What is instrumental power?
- Law, education, business
- Explicit power imposed by state
- If we resist there is usually some sort of penalty
Powers behind discourse?
- Social order
- Power imposed by those higher in institutional hierarchy
- People likely to trust these institutions e.g. police, doctors, legal system etc.
Powers in discourse?
- How powerful participants control others and the tools they use
- Links to inequality as only present in unequal discourse
- E.g. doctor may have power through use of medical terminology or jargon
What was Thomas and Wareing’s theory 1999?
Identified other types of powers and divided power into three main types:
Personal Power-Teachers, parents, employers have power as consequence of their roles
Social Power-Some social groups have less power than others
Political Power-Controls many aspects of our lives e.g. how much we pay in taxes
Why is acronym usage powerful?
It is due to the exclusivity of it, they create a discourse community and those use the acronyms may feel powerful
What is the power of exclusive language
-An organisation may develop their own vocabulary to be part of a discourse community
What is a theory based communities?
Janet Holmes and Maria Stubbe ‘communities of practice’ (2003) was a concept developed by Jean Lage and Etienne Wenger. Holmes and Stubbe define it as ‘groups who regularly engage with other in service of joint enterprise who share repertoire of resources enabling them to communicate in verbal shorthand’ can be argued through use of jargon
