Language: Language and Power
Language and power studies how language creates, sustains and challenges unequal relationships, distinguishing instrumental power, held through role or institution and enforced by sanction, from influential power, which persuades without the authority to compel, as in advertising, campaigning or journalism. Analysis draws on Fairclough's synthetic personalisation, Brown and Levinson's politeness theory of face and face-threatening acts, and Grice's maxims, examined in spoken data through turn-taking and interruption and in written data through lexical choice, nominalisation and the agentless passive.
Before you start
Make sure you're comfortable with these topics first:
Method
- Identify the discourse type and the power relationship it establishes before analysing anything: an institutional encounter, an advertisement, a political speech, a workplace exchange.
- For spoken data, count and characterise the interaction: turn length, who initiates and closes, interruptions and overlaps, topic shifts, and the distribution of questions. Unequal encounters are usually visible in the transcript's shape before any lexis is examined.
- Name the mechanism precisely. Say agentless passive, presupposition, or unmitigated imperative rather than formal language.
- For written persuasion, look for synthetic personalisation through second person address, inclusive we, and constructed common ground, and ask which relationship the text is pretending to have with the reader.
- Analyse politeness strategies as power in action: an imperative softened by a modal and an apology protects the hearer's negative face and often signals that the speaker must ask rather than tell.
- Track resistance as well as dominance. Marks are available for showing where a less powerful participant reclaims the floor, refuses a presupposition, or exploits an ambiguity.
- Connect the features into an argument about how power is constructed and maintained in this particular text, and evaluate the frameworks where the data does not fit them.
Worked example
Analyse this workplace transcript. Manager: 'right (.) so where are we with the Hendry account'. Ali: 'I've drafted the-' Manager: 'because it needed to be out Friday'. Ali: 'yeah I know I was going to say I've drafted it but I'm still waiting on the figures from-' Manager: 'get them today'. Ali: 'I'll chase them'.
- Establish the frame. This is instrumental power: the manager holds authority by institutional role and can impose sanctions, so the analysis should show how that authority is enacted linguistically rather than simply asserting it.
- Analyse the opening. The discourse marker 'right' followed by a pause claims the floor and marks the start of the agenda, and the manager's question sets the topic. Agenda-setting is the first power move in the transcript.
- Analyse the interruptions. Ali is interrupted twice mid-clause, and both interruptions are the manager's. The right to interrupt without repair is asymmetrical here, and the incompleteness of Ali's turns is visible on the page.
- Analyse 'because it needed to be out Friday'. The subordinating conjunction attaches a reproach to an unfinished answer, and the past modal 'needed' presupposes an agreed obligation that is never stated or negotiated. The presupposition does the accusing.
- Analyse 'get them today'. This is a bare imperative with no modal, no hedge and no politeness marker: a direct face-threatening act to Ali's negative face, unmitigated because the manager's status means the threat costs nothing.
- Analyse Ali's response and the contrast. 'I'll chase them' is compliant and minimal, and across the transcript Ali's turns shorten from an attempted explanation to four words. Note also that Ali's earlier turns are full of hedges and self-repair, which mark the less powerful position.
- Evaluate. Brown and Levinson's model explains the asymmetry of face work well, but the transcript also shows Ali attempting a metalinguistic reclaim in 'I was going to say', a small act of resistance that a purely top-down account of institutional power would miss.
Practice questions
Try each question, then tap to reveal the answer.
Q1Distinguish instrumental from influential power with one example each.Show answer
Answer: Instrumental power comes from institutional role and can enforce compliance, as in a judge sentencing or a manager instructing. Influential power persuades without authority to compel, as in an advertisement or a newspaper editorial.
Q2Define synthetic personalisation and give an example.Show answer
Answer: Fairclough's term for addressing a mass audience as though each member were an individual, creating false intimacy. Examples include 'because you deserve better' or 'we know your mornings are busy' in advertising.
Q3Explain how an agentless passive can exercise power.Show answer
Answer: By removing the actor from the clause, as in 'mistakes were made' or 'your account has been suspended', it presents a decision as an event with no responsible party, which forecloses challenge because there is nobody named to challenge.
Q4What does a presupposition do in a question such as 'when did you stop checking the figures?'Show answer
Answer: It embeds an unstated claim, that the addressee did once check and then stopped, as given rather than asserted. Accepting the question as asked concedes the claim, so the questioner sets the terms of the exchange.
Q5Explain the difference between a positive and a negative face-threatening act.Show answer
Answer: A positive face-threatening act attacks the desire to be liked and approved of, such as criticism or ridicule. A negative face-threatening act attacks the desire to act without imposition, such as an order or a demand on someone's time.
Q6Give two spoken features that typically mark a less powerful participant.Show answer
Answer: Any two of: hedging and epistemic modality, frequent self-repair, minimal responses and back-channelling, shorter turns, tag questions seeking approval, and yielding the floor when interrupted.
Q7How can flouting a Gricean maxim be an exercise of power?Show answer
Answer: A powerful speaker can flout quantity or manner without penalty, giving a deliberately vague or minimal answer, because the hearer is not in a position to demand more. The refusal to cooperate is itself the demonstration of status.
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a English exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Text A is a letter from an energy supplier to a customer: 'Dear Ms Reid, We're writing to let you know that your monthly payment will be increasing to 96 pounds from 1 March. We understand that no one likes to hear about a price change, which is why we've worked hard to keep the increase as low as possible. Your new rate has been calculated in line with current wholesale costs. If you'd like to discuss your options, our team is here to help.' Analyse how language is used to create and manage power in Text A.
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Evaluate the view that in institutional discourse, power is always held by the participant who speaks most.
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See real English past-paper questions, with official mark schemes →
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