Section B - Language and Power Flashcards
Who suggested the types of power?
Wareing
What are the 2 main types of power?
Instrumental Power
Influential Power
What are the 3 sub-types of power?
Social Power
Political Power
Personal Power
What is Instrumental Power?
Power that enforces authority and is imposed
What is Influential Power?
Persuasive power that makes us want to behave in a certain way
What are examples of Instrumental Power?
Law
Education
Business
Management
What are examples of Influential Power?
Advertising
Politics
Media
Culture
What is Political Power?
Power held by those working with the law
What is Personal Power?
Power as a result of occupation
What is Social Power?
Power as a result of membership of a group
What are examples of people with Political power?
Police
Judges
The Prime Minister
What are examples of people with Personal power?
Teachers
Solicitors
Doctors
Managers
What are examples of people with Social power?
Gang members
Club members
Group leaders
What type of prestige is associated with people with power?
Overt Prestige
What type of accent is associated with people with power?
Received Pronunciation
What linguistic features would you expect a person with power to use?
Vocatives
Challenges to face
Questions (starting adjacency pairs)
Imperatives
Field Specific Lexis (shows knowledge)
Formal Lexis and Register
Declaratives
Rhetoric devices
Pseudo-questions
Interruptions (simple/butting in)
What linguistic features would you expect a person without/with less power to use?
Mitigated directives
Interrogatives
Answer adjacency pairs
Smooth Speaker Switch/Overlap
High frequency lexis
Upwards convergence
Negative politeness
More politeness
Colloquialism/slang
Non-fluency features
Backchannel behaviour
What is Rhetoric?
The art of persuasive speaking or writing
What are some common Rhetorical Features?
Tripling (patterns of 3)
Antithesis
Specific use of pronouns for desired effect
Hyperbole
Understatement (Litotes)
Oxymoron
Allusion
Anaphora
Personification
Symbolism
Metonymy
Isocolon
Alliteration
Sibilance
What are Soundbites?
Carefully engineered excerpts of speech that the likes of Politicians repeat so that they will receive attention and summarise their campaign in a positive and fluent way
What are the dangers of Soundbites?
They can be taken out of context
They can become popular for the wrong reasons
They can flout Grice’s Maxims of manner and relevance
What is Antithesis?
The direct contrast of two ideas by joining them together or juxtaposing them
What is a Hyperbole?
Over-exaggeration for emphasis
What is a Litote?
Understatement to make a situation seem less important than it is
What is Anaphora?
The repetition of a word at the beginning of consecutive sentences
What is Allusion?
Referencing a famous figure or historical event
What is Metonymy?
Figurative Language that uses one term in place of something it is related to or associated with:
e.g. Downing Street —> The Prime Minister
Buckingham Palace —> The Royal Family
Hollywood —> American Film Industry
What is an Isocolon?
The use of clauses or phrases of equal length
What is Polyptoton?
The same word repeated with different endings/formation
e.g. grievous (adj)…grievously (adv)
What is Prescriptivism?
The idea there is a correct way to use language, and that this includes using Standard English, and Received Pronunciation.
Prescriptivists believe anything other than Standard English is wrong.
What is Descriptivism?
The idea that english should be described without having an opinion.
Descriptivists look at standard and non standard as 2 different types of english and argue that different judgements of language are social, not linguistic.
What did Lindsay Johns argue?
Prescriptivist.
He argued he felt he had more power than someone with instrumental power because of his knowledge and dialect.
He says people who do not use standard english or received pronunciation limit their chances in life as they distance themselves from mainstream society and present themselves as less knowledgable or high class than someone who does.
What was Norman Fairclough’s research on?
Synthetic Personalisation
What is Synthetic Personalisation?
Artificial friendliness that institutions use to reinforce their power
How is Synthetic Personalisation created?
1) Building relations through personalisation
- Use of personal pronouns (you), informal lexical and grammatical choices, and cultural references create and intimate register
2) Manipulation of the reader’s cultural and cognitive understanding
- Cultural references are selected carefully to draw the ideal reader in based on their view of the world
3) Building the consumer into the ideal receiver
- Conveying their ideological message through a picture or language
What part of Goffman’s Face theory is important in Power?
Face saving/Face threatening acts
What part of Grice’s Maxims are important in Power?
The level of Co-operation could show status of the speaker
It could also show how people react to power (accept/refute)
What parts of Tannen’s Genderlect theory are important in Power?
Men are competitive
- focused on status, hierarchy, and face
Women are cooperative
- focused on collaboration, less focus on negotiation of power
What concepts can construct/give someone power?
Social Class
Speech Formality
Accent/dialect
Authority
Family status
Gender
Appearance
Job
Publicity
What is it called when 2 speakers have the same amount of power?
Symmetrical Power
What is it called when 1 speaker has more/less power than the other?
Asymmetrical Power
What are examples of Asymmetrical Power Situations?
Teacher + Student
Job interview –> Interviewer + Interviewee
Police Officer + Public
Courtroom Judge + Convicted
Parent + Child
What are 2 examples where the speaker with less power have refuted the higher power of the other?
1) The Form and Function of Threats in Court - Sandra Harris in Language and Communication
- Mr A doesn’t accept the Judge has more power and is uncooperative
2) Fran Pridham’s The Language of Conversation
- Matt is uncooperative with his Mother
