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?