DISCOURSE POWER AND
ANALYSIS
Broadly speaking, inculcation is the
mechanism of power-holders who
wish to preserve their power, while
communication is the mechanism of
emancipation and the struggle against
domination (Fairclough 2003: 63).
Construction of language
• Non-arbitrary
• Determined by social conditions
• particular environments,
• institutions
• and society as a whole
Social conditions determine:
• properties of discourse (the parts that
constitute it)
• and types of discourse (valuable and lessvaluable discourses)
Discourse connected to the whole
of society implies that:
• 1. Language is part of society and not
something external to it
• 2. That language is a social process:
interconnected, regulated
• 3. Language is a socially conditioned
processes: conditioned (by other nonlinguistic)parts of society
Text and discourse
• Text: (a product of the process of text
production) the product of social
interaction, utterance
• Discourse: the whole process of social
interaction including text
The conditioning of discoursive
language
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MR (members’ resources)
Cognitive but dependent on social relations
Internalized and naturalized
MR part of the individual’s psyche
Resources for life
Social conditions and levels of
social organization
• 1. Social situation: the immediate social
environment in which the discourse occurs
• 2. Social institution; wider contexts
• 3. Society as a whole: Structures of
capitalist society
Why is it important to see
language as discourse and
discourse as a social practice?
Because looking at this
relationship:
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Forces as to be critical thinkers
Understand our position in the world
Understand social structures
Understand the non neutrality of discourses
What is cultural capital?
What do we mean by the notion
that discourse is a product of
social structures and the
producer of social structures?
Economic and cultural capital
• Unequally distributed in society (literacy,
professions, some knowledges)
Discourses carry particular
knowledges and power
• Institutional system
• Reproducers of structures of power
• Limited access
Can we regard access to social
and economic capital as purely
an individual achievement?
Do people resist power relation
and discourse?
Constraints on less powerful
participants
• Constraints on contents
• Constraints on relations
• Constraints on subjects
Discussion
• Describe an institutional or social
situation in which you were expected to
speak, and behave in a particular way?
How is this situation a product of social
conditions? How does the situation
facilitate access or non-access to cultural
capital?