Language and power

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  • Language in Power
    • Types of power
      • Influential - power used by those who are trying to influence you. e.g. adverts, films, product-based adverts.
      • Instrumental - power expressed by those who already have power through a social hierarchy and where they are within it. e.g. teachers with students, MP's in parliament.
      • Norman Fairclough (2001)
        • Discourse
          • Power behind -involve the hierarchical social structures and power relationships that inform the way that the text has been structured.
          • Power in -refers to contexts where power relationships are presented through the language that is used.
        • Synthetic Personalisation - builds a relationship between text producer and text reciever through personal pronouns e.g. you, we. Used by advertisers, politicians and charity campaigners.
      • Asymmetrical Power -an imbalance of power between people.
        • Gender - Lakoff claims that female talk has power constructs through hedging, empty adj, tag questions, etc.
        • Profession - social roles in terms of assertion, e.g. doctors use specific jargon.
        • Age - older would use more obscure complex words, younger would use more slang or colloquial words and phrases.
        • Status - assert power dependent on the prestige within a social group.
    • KEY TERMS
      • Deontic and epistemic modal - necessity/ obligation: 'need' - obligated. 'will' necessary
      • Colloquial idiom - informal to conform to who they are appealing to. Idioms are common phrases that can't be understood without prior knowledge
      • Exophoric reference - a reference to something, often cultural, beyond the text. A wider understanding
      • High/low register - complicated words would be high register, vice versa.
      • High/low frequency -  high- commonly used words, low- obscure

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