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 less-valuable 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 non-linguistic)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

• 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:

• 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?