language & power part 1
DESCRIPTION
11HRTRANSCRIPT
Language & Power
Verbal & Nonverbal Communication
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Power & Language
• Identify Categories of Power• Understand how Power is
encoded in conversation• Consider Status Markers that
determine power• Understand the role Phatic Talk
has in determining Power
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Categories of Power:
• PracticalPhysical actions, violence, skill, money,
goods or services
• Knowledge/ideasUsing knowledge to influence others
• PositionPower gained from position in a hierarchy
• PersonalPersonality, nurturing or caring
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What type of power is this?
• The power that parents have over children
• The power that newspapers have over readers
• The power that customers have over shop assistants
• Talking a bully out of thumping you
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Conversation is Ideological
• Conversations are human interactions where power is encoded
• All discourse is ideological (participants bring their world view and status to conversation)
Norman Fairclough
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All conversations are potentially “Unequal Encounters”
• Language encodes world views and status
develops a power relationship
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Power is being exerted …
• When one speaker is able to infer or decode inferences that lead to an inequality of relationship with the listener
• When our mind is moved from what we want it to dwell on to being engaged by a text (written or spoken)
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Status Markers that Determine Power
• Agenda-setting and topic management
• Turn-taking, holding and seizing the floor
• Forms of address• Phatic tokens• Utterance types and language• Directives
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Agenda-setting and Topic Management
• Who sets the agenda for what gets talked about? Who leads the talk?
• Who chooses or changes the topic?• Is this agenda allowed to be
ambushed or side-tracked?• How are side discussions managed?
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Turn-taking, holding and seizing the floor
• Who holds the power in terms of turn-taking?
• How are turns taken?• How are interruptions dealt with?• What happens if the turn-taking
“rules” are transgressed?• Who talks the most?• Who interrupts or backs down?
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Audience Address• I
suggests intimacy, straightforwardness or openness
• Yousuggests familiarity & friendship
• WeInclusive
• suggesting membership of a group with the speaker
Exclusive• separates the speaker’s group from the
audience
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Forms of address• What terms are used when directly
speaking to another person in the conversation?
• What does this tell you about the power relationships?
• Who uses first names, titles or honorifics?
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Phatic Talk (small talk)
Core Talk• Relates to
intended purpose of the conversation
• Focused• Context-bound• On-task• High
information content
Phatic Talk• Not relevant
to core purpose of the conversation
• Atopical discussion
• Important for affective (social) content
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Opening Conversations
with Phatic Talk• we don’t just go straight into a topic• start with a bit of friendly, sociable
stuff just to get warmed up• begin with some social chat to break
the icethe weatherthe journey to arriveunnecessary expressions of gratitudeenquiries about health
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Closing Conversations
with Phatic Talk• Start gathering belongings together• Shift forward onto the edge of seat• Start looking around you• Pay a compliment
These are not necessarily the truth, but not outrageously or obviously lies
• May need to hang around for 6 or more turns after you have said “good-bye”
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Phatic Talk & Power
• More powerful speakers tend to intiate and restrict phatic talk (as well as define what are acceptable
subjects for conversation)
• How might phatic talk makes it easier for a less powerful participant to soften a potential challenge by a more powerful participant in a conversation?