ANTONIO-The Power of Discourse and The Discourse of Power

The SAGE Handbook
of Sociolinguistics
The Power of Discourse
and the Discourse of Power
Contributors: José Antonio & Flores Berard & Anna Holzscheiter

Editors: Ruth Wodak & Barbara Johnstone & Paul Kerswill
Book Title: The SAGE Handbook of Sociolinguistics
Chapter Title: "The Power of Discourse and the Discourse of Power"
Pub. Date: 2011
Access Date: August 07, 2014
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd
City: London
Print ISBN: 9781847870957
Online ISBN: 9781446200957
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446200957.n11
Print pages: 139-153
©2011 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE knowledge. Please note that the pagination
of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
University of Ottawa
©2011 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. SAGE knowledge
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446200957.n11
[p. 139 ↓ ]
Chapter 10: The Power of Discourse and

the Discourse of Power
10.1 Introduction
Power is an omnipresent facet of discourse and beyond. That is to say that in all
semiotic processes such as (less studied) non-verbal communication there are power
expressions. Yet most works that have discussed the relationship of discourse and
power vary not only in their (usually implicit) definitions of what these phenomena are
but also seldom explicate their particular perspective on power and its relationship
to discourse. Regarding the type of relationship each establishes with the other, the
intimate link between power and discourse invites a number of reflections, installing
a series of open questions in the social sciences (e.g. Wodak, 1989), stemming
from different research traditions, including discourse analysis and critical linguistics
(Fairclough, 1989), linguistic anthropology (Duranti, 2001), or sociolinguistics (Labov,
1972a). For instance, in the latter tradition, also commonly known as quantitative
sociolinguistics, power and discourse are treated as contiguous and interdependent
phenomena. Yet more recently their interfaces are stressed as relational, dynamic and
complex interactive phenomena (e.g. van Dijk, 1993; Locher, 2004). Most scholars that
have faced the question seriously would agree that power constitutes and reproduces
discourse, while at the same being shaped and reshaped by discourse itself (e.g.
Foucault, 1981; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). In other words, power constitutes and
is reproduced via discourse, and vice versa. Therefore one interesting development
regarding the theoretical question of the relationship of power and discourse is the
discursive shaping and reshaping of power in discourse production. As we will see,
power and discourse cannot be conceived as static phenomena, but as (hopefully!) ever
changing constituents of social life in interactive, relational, contextual and constructivist
ways (Gumperz, 1982; Fairclough, 1989; Wodak, 1989).
Page 3 of 34 The SAGE Handbook of Sociolinguistics: The Power

of Discourse and the Discourse of Power
All this suggests that the ecology of power and discourse encompasses a number of
complex relationships that analytically and empirically still require finer distinctions and
clarifications. The core questions guiding this chapter revolve around this complex
interrelation between power and discourse, the way it manifests itself, and the
approaches and methods by which it can be studied empirically. We will argue that
there are different conceptualizations of the interplay between power and discourse
that relate to different levels of discourse and its analysis. On the one hand, discursive
power is often understood as the power of discourses, i.e. large, historical meaning-
structures that shape and ‘govern’ human interaction. On the other hand, many authors,
e.g. those in the tradition of conversation analysis (Drew and Heritage, 1992; Linell,
1998) or discursive psychology (Potter and Wetherell, 1987; Edwards and Potter,
1992; Potter, 2003) study discursive power by looking at concrete and very limited
social settings in which a small number of individuals [p. 140 ↓ ] seek to influence each
other through communicative interaction (power in discourse). Considering these two
perspectives, we will therefore ask:
• How does the naturalization and institutionalization of power occur through

discourse?
• How are power and those who exert it legitimized in discourse?
• How does the play of power in discourse produce relationships of
domination, coercion and exclusion?
• How do sociolinguistic approaches and models expose the display and
workings of power of/in discourse and how do they analyse it?
• How can an analytical model of power and discourse productively incorporate
other interacting phenomena such as agency, gender, identity and the like?
After a general discussion of these questions, and after an outline of some of the most
influential sociolinguistic approaches to power, we will then go on to illustrate how the
discipline of sociolinguistics has worked its way around a number of prominent empirical
research areas in which the critical exploration of power relations has helped to uncover
the exclusionary force of discourse and its, often, stigmatizing effects on human beings.
Finally, we will argue that revisiting the issue of power and discourse also offers the
possibility of advancing the sociolinguistic agenda in a number of ways. Academic
research represents probably one of the most important forms of institutionalized power
through discourse in which specific ways of perceiving, analysing and theorizing about

the world and human action dominate and ‘govern’ disciplines. Elaborating on the
critical linguistics approach by Fowler, Fairclough and van Dijk — among others —
(Fowler et al., 1979; Fairclough, 1989; van Dijk, 1993) we will show how the discipline
of sociolinguistics itself potentially acts as an authoritative, exclusionary ensemble of
discourses and social practices that contributes to the ‘silencing’ of specific research
objects, subjects or perspectives.
Illustrations will be presented of brief but crucial discursive instances of power

disclosure in the production of research, especially in the area of field linguistics. These
illustrations suggest ways to go beyond disciplinary boundaries and develop a holistic
approach to the interface of power and discourse. For these purposes, we will primarily
call attention to what we find most interesting in the contemporary debate about power
and discourse in the social sciences: namely, the role and place of sociolinguistic
research in society as a whole. We will take the example of endangered languages as
being emblematic of several power differentials which have come to reconfigure the
discipline in the face of the notion of language revitalization (e.g. Tsunoda, 2002) and,
more recently, developmental sociolinguistics (Djitév, 2008).
Theories on the Relationship between

Power and Discourse
Power is, perhaps, one of the most outstanding, fascinating and complex phenomena
studied in the social sciences. The ways in which individual human beings aim to
influence and control each other (either in subtle or more direct, offensive ways) or the
ways in which social institutions, societal discourses and political authority constrain the
behaviour of human beings have always attracted the attention of disciplines such as
sociology, political science, psychology, linguistics, media studies or economics. Thus,
it is not surprising that in sociolinguistics too, the study of power occupies a central
place. Building heavily on the sociological theories of Bourdieu (1977), Habermas
(1981), Foucault (1981) or Lukes (1974), this discipline has, over time, developed
a whole range of different approaches that aim to translate abstract theory on the
interplay between language and power into analytical frameworks for the study of the
empirical manifestation of power in social life. Above all, it is the more critical branches

of sociolinguistics that have emphasized the role of power in communication and

discourse, and their potential exclusionary effects.
Readers of this chapter might be pleased if we formulated a concise definition of

power. Alas, power qualifies like few other concepts as an essentially contested
concept. There are probably as many power concepts as there are authors writing
about power. In general, however, it seems at least possible to distinguish between
different understandings of power that relate to differing levels of analysis chosen
for the study of social life. On the one hand, power is often seen — in its simplest
form — as the capacity of an individual to pursue his or her interest even against the
resistance of another person (Dahl, 1957; Weber, 1978). Such a behaviouralist notion
of power assumes that power is at play where one human being's interests or will
prevail over another's. Related to discourse, such a perspective would, for example,
look at the ways in which people seek to dominate others in language exchange and
communication, the ways in which individuals attempt to silence others when talking or
writing, the manifold ways in which human beings seek to gain control over discourses
and to manipulate others using language, or the argumentative moves that people make
to convince others that their opinion is right [p. 141 ↓ ] and the other person's wrong.
On the other hand, power is also seen as a much more diffuse phenomenon that is
embodied in the social structures in which human interaction is integrated. These social
structures, for example, in the form of institutions, ‘govern’ and discipline the interaction
of human beings to a certain extent and, as such, act as powerful constraining forces
in social life. Put in very simplistic terms, there is a fundamental difference between
concepts of power that are located at the level of subjects or agents and those that are
located at the level of social structures.
In sociolinguistics, however, discourse has offered itself as an interface that allows us

to understand the emergence and effects of power relations through a complex co-
constitutive relationship between agents and structures. Discourse is, on the one hand,
seen as the most important location for the production of asymmetric relationships of
power and, on the other hand, seen as the place where individuals are in a position
to renegotiate or even level out relationships of power. Discourses in themselves
act as powerful structures of social conventions (meaning-conventions) by limiting
the potentially indefinite ways of talking about and perceiving social and material
reality. Yet, it is also linguistic interaction which is seen as constantly transforming and

challenging dominant perceptions of this social and material reality. Every speech-act,
thus, at the same time represents and transforms patterns of meaning.
Among the most influential approaches on the intimate relationship between power
and discourse that have been seized in sociolinguistic works on power are, without
doubt, the writings of Habermas (1981) and Foucault (1981). Their critical thinking
has highlighted the linkage between discourse, power and exclusion, albeit from very
different angles. The writings of these two authors also reflect the different levels of
analysis that an investigation of power in discourse follows: structures of meaning
(Foucault) or communicative interaction (Habermas). Foucault's (1981) perspectives
on power continue to influence discourse analysis to this day — he sees discourse
production as guided by large discursive formations which define what can and what
cannot be uttered in a given society at a given historical point in time. Discursive
formations are determined by historical formations, and such overarching determinism
is of course in principle beyond the individual's conscious will, weakening subjects’
possibilities of transforming society. Over time, certain ways of speaking about reality
and seeing the world materialize, and slowly generate institutionalized practices that
directly affect the lives of individuals in a society. Certain claims and utterances remain
‘said’ and valid much longer than just for the instant in which they were uttered —
their lasting influence on human thought, speech and action becomes manifest in
the constant repetition of similar arguments. For Foucault, discourses understood
as conglomerates of larger systems of meaning are necessarily powerful in that they
‘govern’ the everyday lives of subjects (Foucault, 1970, 1984a, 1984b, 1992, 2003).
Yet the question of power and discourse cannot be limited to discursive formations.
Individuals potentially have the possibility to interrupt such societal arrangements,
basically although not exclusively via discourse (Habermas, 1981). The Habermasian
understanding of discourse emphasizes the emancipatory potential of discursive
interaction as a place where power relations can be challenged and renegotiated.
His theory on communicative action formulates the ideal social setting for such a
renegotiation in a counter-factual thought experiment — the ideal-speech situation.
By measuring any process of social interaction against the democratic or deliberative
1
standards of this ideal speech-situation it is, according to Habermas, possible
to observe and, potentially, rectify or at least contest the power asymmetries that

characterize a specific social situation. While a Foucauldian understanding of discourse

is, hence, associated with the underlying social conventions (the power of discourse)
that give meaning to social interaction, the Habermasian concept of discourse relates
to the quality of linguistic interaction, to the procedures and social settings that lead to
the formulation and re-formulation of these social conventions (the power in discourse).
Foucault's theory of discourse is often misinterpreted with regard to the possibility
of agents (not only ‘subjects') consciously confronting, challenging or transforming
power in specific settings. Even though his thinking focuses on the powerful role of
discourses and narratives in history, he does not deny the potentially transformative
and emancipatory role of human beings. In other words, although the existence of
discursive formations entails specific dynamics and realms of power microphysics, for
Foucault power is constantly (re)defined as resistance to hegemonic forces. However,
it is particularly the Habermasian notion of discourse that has become associated with
the potential to confront the crude exercise of power in (quasi) argumentative terms (cf.
Habermas, 1981).
In Habermas’ (1981) theory of communicative action, discourse is understood as an

instance that, by its very nature, installs the possibility of communicative universals,
to which we all should have access. Yet there are always many ethical dilemmas
posed by the exercise of power in discourse in specific fields which tend to block
such open possibility. Similar a priori universals stem [p. 142 ↓ ] from the Gricean
categorical a priori postulate of the cooperative principle in conversation, which
encompasses maxims such as quality and quantity (Grice, 1975). These idealizations
are supposed to operate independently of the power contexts in which conversation
always takes place. Such speakers’ idealizations are consonant with Habermas’
theory of communicative action, in which the individual's intentionality and his or her
right to argumentative justification plays an outstanding role in defining what can
or cannot be uttered (Ducrot, 1984). In contrast, for Foucault, power depends on
régimes du savoir as related realms of dominance in communication. In this sense,
Foucault understands power as the ways in which human beings are transformed into
subjects, as compartmentalized instantiations of, for example, homo economicus, homo
academicus or homo ludens. Powerful historical narratives draw lines of differentiation
that impose a socially acceptable or inacceptable identity on human beings — dividing
the sane from the insane, the normal from the deviant, etc.

While Habermas (1981) and Foucault (1981) have emphasized — although from
very different perspectives — the exclusionary dimensions of discourses, a range
of sociological theories have highlighted the central effects of (social) institutions
on the relative power of individuals in and over discourse. Most important here are
Bourdieu's ideas on the linguistic market and symbolic violence, referring to the ways
actors internalize and legitimize specific power arrangements (such as boss–secretary,
husband–wife, colonizer–colonized, etc.). Symbolic violence is accepted as part
of certain habitus – a set of socially determined predispositions or preferences for
certain linguistic varieties considered more legitimate than others in a linguistic market.
Thus, any ‘discursive field’ (Bourdieu, 1977, 1985) is characterized by expressions
of asymmetry in which certain actors are more authoritative in the production of
discourses. Of course this approach obliges understanding linguistic competence
not as a limited isolated technical capacity, but rather as a highly uneven, stratified
materialization of discourse practices which, in turn, pertain to, and at the same time are
relatively independent of, specific power arrangements and differentials (Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 1992).
Similar to Bourdieu's thinking on the ways in which power relationships are constituted
through language and institutionalized in discursive fields, sociological theories on the
multi-dimensional character of power have also strongly shaped current sociolinguistic
studies on the interplay between power and discourse. The conceptualizations of power
of Bachrach and Baratz (1970) and Lukes (1974) are most prominent in this regard.
As a consequence of their multi-dimensional nature, these conceptualizations challenge

subject-focused understandings of power as simply the ability to assert one's will
against another person's resistance. Even though they differ with regard to which
dimensions they see as relevant, these authors point to the central role of institutions in
constituting and materializing power relationships between individuals. Bachrach and
Baratz (1970) still adhere to two classical presuppositions of behavioural power theory:
the supremacy of material resources as power assets and the belief in actors’ desire
to have their interests fulfilled. However, they point to the importance of observing and
analysing the role of institutional barriers or filters that make it difficult if not impossible
for minority interests or the interests of the powerless (in the sense that they are ‘poor’,
without material means) to be incorporated into collective decision-making processes.
Thus, their two-dimensional understanding of power emphasizes that power analysis

has to look beyond intra-personal relations of power and coercion and incorporate the
norms and rules that precondition which issues and opinions can be addressed and are
considered legitimate in a given social context.
The play of power thus relates not only to the potential to threaten and coerce
but also to struggles over institutional design and political and social agendas
(Schattschneider 1975: 69; Bachrach and Baratz, 1977: 46). Analytical interest shifts
from an identification of who is powerful to an investigation of why certain actors are
better positioned in an institutional framework than others. Hence, what these authors
make us aware of is the strong exclusionary dimension of social and political processes
and the fact that every decision-making process is based on ‘non-decisions’ and that
no consensus would be possible without shunning those views or voices that greatly
threaten this consensus.
Like Bachrach and Baratz (1970), Lukes departs from a perspective on power that
focuses on how individuals realize their will against the resistance of others. He
stresses the necessity to take into account the influence of ‘collective forces and
social arrangements’ in analysing power relations (Lukes, 1974: 22). Consequently,
Lukes introduces his well-known third dimension of power that stresses the critical
role of institutional frameworks in determining the relative position of individuals in
communicative processes, as well as the selection and exclusion of specific topics,
worldviews or modes of speaking. Lukes has paved the way for a perspective on power
that accommodates the constraining influence of the situational, contextual framework
within which social struggles take place. Despite the fact that [p. 143 ↓ ] Lukes stops
short of addressing the actual communicative processes that take place within powerful
institutional frameworks, he grants a decisive position to communicative interaction,
the force of speech-acts, the legitimacy of speakers and the ‘power of language’ in the
endeavour to develop alternative conceptualizations of power politics. Here, power is an
effect of exclusionary social practices and the limited accessibility of social structures.
Most importantly, what both Bachrach and Baratz (1970) and Lukes (1974) have made
us aware of is that the most effective workings of power do not find their expression in
situations of conflict among individuals, but become particularly obvious in situations
in which no conflict arises (Lukes, 1974: 23). What the authors discussed here have
emphasized in their study of power is the centrality of exclusion as both an effect of
power relationships as well as, at times, a precondition for the unchallenged authority of

individuals. It is this facet of the power–discourse nexus in particular that has become
most prominent in sociolinguistic research on discourse and that constitutes the core of
critical thinking in sociolinguistics.
While the authors mentioned above have inspired sociolinguistic thought on the
relationship between power and discourse from a pronounced sociological standpoint,
influential stimulus has also come from the field of linguistics. Bakhtin's (1981) theory
on heteroglossia has also strongly influenced the conceptions of power and discourse
in the literature beyond critical linguistics, as manifested for example in linguistic
anthropology. This approach allows an understanding of competing voices as part of the
multi-vocality of discourse, manifested for instance in opposing idealized conceptions
of linguistic homogeneity or monoglot perspectives on language (Bauman and Briggs,
2003) that prevail in received (not only orthodox formal) linguistic theories. This model
allows, and at the same time remits to at times, extremely antagonistic social positions,
for instance, exemplified in precisely the existence of received approaches on language,
against its everyday use in social interaction in different (e.g. multilingual) settings.
Bakhtin (1981) understands language as heterogeneously linked to specific ideologies
conceived in a struggle between different power and even individuals’ antagonistic
relationships as expressed in different voices; of course, this requires a constant
reference to utterances, not isolated words. This necessarily makes reference to
different speakers and previous (con)texts in a flow of intertextuality and interdiscourse,
enacting specific social positions with respect to language in society. In this case,
speakers are not porte-paroles but most of all agents of different conflicting voices in a
given text, representing dominant or subordinated voices, linked to power differentials
associated with heteroglot language(s), voices that are constantly competing and
present in each and every genre (Bakhtin 1973), ranging from everyday to political and
of course, as we will suggest, even ‘scientific’, academic discourse.
In this sense, several approaches in linguistics and its idealizations are good examples
of (monolingual) prescriptive ideologies (Silverstein, 1979; Blommaert, 1999),
manifested in the presumed homogeneous status of a language. This is evidenced
in how several grammatical descriptions ironically resemble an ‘idiolectal’ or ‘private’
language, which Jakobson (1976) or Wittgenstein (1988) demonstrated constitute
a fiction. Moreover, ideolects are possible as extreme exercises of power linked to
linguistic theories in which a power relationship between an ‘informant’ and the linguist

operates, and are expressed in imposed categorizations and methods as interviews

(see below) with their communicative hegemonies (Briggs 1983). Categorizations
such as ‘acceptable’ and ‘grammatical’ expressions are absent of clarification in
‘homogeneous’ monolingual ideologies. In field linguistics, ‘acceptable’, ‘grammatical’,
‘correct’ forms of a language are connected to purism, which arises as a hypocritical
contempt towards the researcher from the side of the speaker. Exacerbated in its
written form, the issue of possible degrees of intelligibility also arises here, in which
the operation of writing is a way of erasing the oral indigenous form of the language
in an enigmatic world (Duranti and Goodwin, 1992). In this connection, access is very
limited if at all granted to speakers themselves, a common power operation discursively
materialized in (almost) unintelligible varieties from the actors’ point of view — not to
speak of grammatical terminology.
In practice, similar issues stem from and frequently represent particular and absolutely
decontextualized forms of social uses of a language, and are of course linked to fairly
unequal power interactions. As an overall effect, linguistic descriptions tend to inhibit
and at the same time materialize the variable nature of language in its relation to
power and discourse, as an eloquent expression of the direct link between linguistic
variability and power. As the example of (e.g. formal) linguistics suggests, selecting
one variety against discarding many others constitutes an egregious manifestation of
social differentiation linked to hegemonic linguistic ideologies which frequently assert
the linguistic purity of an imagined ‘standard’ code. As we will see, the use of discourse
marks a series of hierarchical power structures, materialized in such effects as those
produced for instance in elicitation in the linguist ‘informant’ encounter, differentiated
along the [p. 144 ↓ ] lines of several linguistic varieties associated with specific power
differentials.
In contrast to the radical assumption of conversational analysis practitioners that

society is constituted in verbal interaction itself (which obscures power relationships and
treats discourse as independent with regards to more global structures), and although
not necessarily using the specific terms power and discourse, several traditions,
including that of linguistic anthropology (Bauman and Briggs, 2003) touch upon power
and discourse at least indirectly. Linguistic anthropologists analyse cross-discourse
practices, that vary cross-culturally, involving, for instance, the violation of presumed
universal maxims such as those entailed in Grice's principle of cooperation (1975). Such

investigations include among many others Ochs (1988) on Madagascar and Haviland
(1997) on Tzotzil (Maya).
In sum, critical social theories on the link between power and discourse have made
us aware of two core, underlying assumptions in particular. First, discourse and
power are co-constitutive. Discourse is constitutive of power by privileging certain
perceptions of (social) reality and excluding others. Societal discourses shape and
sustain discriminatory and stigmatizing practices and, as such, bring about ‘disorders of
discourses’ (Wodak, 1996) in which some human beings are muted while the speaking
authority of others is naturalized. Power relationships predispose which individuals are
in a position to participate in and shape discourses. Secondly, however, discourse is
also seen as bearing emancipatory potential, being the place where power and authority
might eventually be challenged and resisted. In general, therefore, language and
communication as the primary discursive practices are perceived as playing a critical
role both in the perpetuation as well as the transformation of powerful discourses.
In the following, we will show how empirical sociolinguistic research has sought to
exemplify these core assumptions. We have chosen some of the most prominent fields
of research in contemporary sociolinguistics, i.e. studies on national identity and racism,
social conventions (such as politeness), field linguistics and academic research, in order
to show how the discipline of sociolinguistics has approached the interplay between
power and discourse.
10.2 Power in the Terrain: Some Prominent

Empirical Fields
The exploration of the issue of power and discourse includes a wealth of empirical
studies which touch upon features such as the status, authority and variable nature and
role of discourse in multiple settings where power is disclosed and the ways in which
identities are created through powerful discourses, e.g. gender discourses (see, for
example, Tannen, 1990; for a brief review see Gal, 2001). Much empirical research in
this field can be classified as ‘political’ discourse research inasmuch as it investigates
how power manifests itself in the discourses sustaining particular political institutions
and systems as well as in their formal and informal discursive forums (e.g. Wodak

1989). As it is impossible to fully cover the wealth of empirical investigations that in

one way or another deal with the topic at hand, we will only mention some illustrative
key cases, ranging from investigations on the expression of racism (cf. van Dijk, 1989,
1993, 2005; Hill, 2001) to politeness as examples of the power of social conventions
and, finally, of the power of linguistic research and its methods in shaping identities and
‘truths’.
Racism, Identity and Ideology

The exclusionary, stigmatizing and ‘governing’ force of discourse has perhaps
been most critically and thoroughly studied with regard to racist ideologies and the
construction and manipulation of national identities. For instance, van Dijk (1989), while
studying the expression of racism in the British press, shows that the link between
power and discourse includes a number of different types of interfaces for which
consideration is required; these include representational devices that are presented
as objective ‘facts’, as discursively constructed ‘truths’, which of course stem from
ideological ‘white’ matrices (cf. Hill, 2001) that in turn surface as specific attitudinal
representations of the social world. This and several other works on racism (e.g.
Reisigl and Wodak, 2001) and its multiple linguistic expressions show how, through
ethnic differentiation, elite ideologies pursue transmitting to public opinion, a way
of perpetuating the status quo; this might include, for instance, identifying ‘blacks’
and ‘Latinos’ (e.g. migrants in the USA, especially Mexicans, Hill, 2001) as deviant,
problematic and of course dangerous, violent, lazy, stupid and so on. For these groups,
there are frequently specific derogatory terminologies that exist, such as ‘greaser’ (for
more details on this see below). Other recent studies on the discursive expression of
racism as social differentiation and exclusion encompass macro and micro structures
and their interfaces, exploring the constitution and reproduction of diverse societal
arrangements or power differentials linked to discourse and thus power naturalization
(e.g. Reisigl and Wodak, 2001, and more recently, van Dijk, 2005).
[p. 145 ↓ ] A good example of how power linked to the expression of White racism
against Latinos in the USA, especially Mexicans, as indexicalized in discourse, is
presented in the work of Jane H. Hill (2001) on the semiotics of mock languages.
Several Spanish terms in US English convey highly pejorative racist overtones, which

are expressed in phrases such as hasta la vista baby by Schwarzenegger in Terminator

2, or comprende by Cameron Diaz in What Happens in Vegas? while instructing Ashton
Kutchner to use the toilet cover. These are all forms of racist indexicality (Ochs, 1988)
which encodes covert racist meanings, elevating Whites’ superiority and reproducing
stereotypical representations of Mexicans as lazy, stupid, corrupt, treacherous and
the like. Given their very nature, these indexes are part of the ideologies of power that
manifest themselves in everyday interactions.
Other types of studies investigate bilingual diglossic conflicts — power and discourse
here entail an indigenous tongue shift (Zimmerman, 1992, Hamel, 1988 and Flores
Farfán, 2003 on the asymmetrical relationship between Otomí and Spanish). Conflictive
diglossia is outstandingly manifested in the high rates of penetration of Spanish over
the indigenous tongues, in contrast to the effects of these on Spanish. The colonial
language's strong impact at all levels of linguistic analysis (Dorian, 1992) often produces
obsolescent forms, stylistic reduction and levelling of paradigms, among others. This
is coupled with clear sequels of linguistic insecurity and stereotypes considering
indigenous languages to be ‘inferior’, ‘corrupted’, etc., ideologies at times interiorized
by speakers themselves, reaching the point at which Spanish is becoming the primary
tongue of many of these communities, paradoxically producing pretty much stigmatized
nonstandard versions of the hegemonic language.
In contrast to many of these traditions which focus on the relationship of language

and society, although from different perspectives, such as sociolinguistics, linguistic
anthropology and discourse analysis, linguistic's conception of language as an idealized
uniform system conveys also a political stance which can be systematically criticized as
having a close relationship to the emergence of national states, with their monolingual
ideologies, in which only one official language is coupled with national identity and
state formation. This is of course a power issue that presents a linguistic expression —
namely, a monoglotic (idealized) presumed standard language — whose gatekeepers
are, precisely, academics. Take as an expression of this hegemony, for example, the
fact that this chapter is written in English, and not say in Spanish, not to mention an
indigenous tongue or other marginal varieties.
In other words, discursive social differentiation already implies (other) specific power
differentials that are linguistically materialized such as the exclusion of certain social

groups and their languages in favour of others. Thus, discursive ideological power
stances entail a politics of exclusion as an expression of inequality as presented in
terms of the space allocated and thus the visibility (or not) granted to speakers of non-
standard varieties — not to speak of endangered languages (Bauman and Briggs,
2003).
Examples of how identities are constructed and institutionalized through powerful

discourses abound in the literature, even where, as suggested, they are not at
times explicitly stated as such. Some of the most interesting examples of the power
relationships in and via analysed discourse have been developed in the field of power
and gender in which speakers reach unshared perceptions of confronted identities (e.g.
Tannen, 1990) and the expression of racism in, for example, mock languages (Hill,
2001) or newspaper rhetoric (Van Dijk, 1993). Let us review another aspect which has
permeated the discussion of power and discourse, namely, politeness.
Social Conventions, Discourse and Power:

The Example of Politeness
We pointed to the centrality of institutions in sociolinguistic research on power
and discourse earlier, seeing them both as concrete social venues in which power
asymmetries can be studied (e.g. a school, a hospital, an office) and as social
conventions that govern the everyday actions and interactions of individuals. Important
studies have highlighted how power can be studied with regard to both of these
dimensions of the notion of institution. By using the example of politeness, we will
illustrate here how social conventions can be studied through discourse analysis.
From a number of studies, we know that direct power confrontations are, in principle,
limited by politeness. Although its displays vary across different cultures and, more
importantly, its interpretation is open to a relational approach, politeness can be
understood as a ritual procedure in which, in different ways, specific cultures mitigate
the crude exercise of power, via its dulcification, a sort of masking strategy to keep
positive face and not threaten the identity of participants in given interactions. Thus,
politeness has first been studied as an index to power and solidarity. Brown and Gilman
(1968) studied power differentials expressed in systems of pronouns which imply

different types of treatments; the pronouns ranged from the most ‘neutral’ to honorific
ones in specific languages. Brown and Gilman also open the [p. 146 ↓ ] study of the
interactive linguistic adjustments between speakers of different dialects in what they
conceive as a solidarity strategy, and develop a theory of linguistic accommodation
which, nevertheless, should confront specific power arrangements. Yet the classic
work on politeness is that of Brown and Levinson (1987) who examine the ways
speakers construct positive and avoid negative face, limiting losing ground on imagined
or imputed identities in specific settings. This work can be criticized precisely on
the grounds of not taking power into consideration, and even from stemming from a
Eurocentric viewpoint on discourse, which not only presumes its rational and individual
performance but also tends to overstate it. Yet this is probably also its merit, since it
can be thought of as an appeal to discourse, much in the way of a right that speakers
can exert at any given moment, vindicating the chance of critical thinking. As we have
seen, the right to discourse constitutes a strong premise when considering the nature of
discourse, which it itself allows, against the crude exercise of power (Habermas, 1981).
Moreover, analogous to the discursive definition of power, another criticism of this

work stems from the idea that politeness is framed within specific contexts that are
relationally negotiated, and cannot simply be equated to simplistic taken-for-granted
dichotomist oppositions such as positive versus negative face, directness versus
indirectness, but rather on hic et nunc (here and now) interactive negotiations of
appropriate or marked behaviour, based on the quest for balance between ‘involvement
and independence’ of the speaker with respect to the hearer (Locher, 2004, passim).
Such a recent approach conceives of politeness as part of a process in which
participants in conversation aim at maintaining basic functions of discourse. These
include the referential and the interactional levels, which in practice overlap and are
subject to contextual interpretations and negotiations. Such interpretations take place
within specific cultural and normative frames against which speakers judge different
emergent behaviours as being appropriate or not, positive or negative, marked or
unmarked.
All in all, politeness constitutes an intermediate level between communicative universals

and direct strategic action or the exercise of power via discourse, inasmuch as it points
to specific negotiated identities that should contextually be maintained in order to allow
for the ‘normal’ flow of conversation and interaction.

Sociolinguistic Research Practice as an

Instantiation of Discursive Power
A number of recent works have endeavoured to document the emergence of different
coexistent voices in the making of research. Studies have stressed the active
negotiation of sociolinguistic identities in research making (Garner et al., 2006) as
heteroglossic performances in the realm of social interaction (Hill and Hill, 1986 on
Mexicano translinguistics; Duranti and Ochs, 1986 on literacy; Cameron, 1992 on power
and method; and Flores Farfán (2005, 2006) on co-authoring as empowerment). A most
interesting approach to power and discourse, which is becoming more prominent due to
its ethical relevance, relates to the sociolinguistic models that investigate discourse and
power trying to raise awareness for issues such as unequal social relations, linguistic
discrimination or cultural ‘misunderstandings’ beyond the academic world (Gumperz,
1982; Philips, 1983; Scollon and Scollon, 2000). Collaborative or advocacy research
in sociolinguistics (Cameron, 1992; Milroy and Gordon, 2003) are also present in
public anthropology in the USA (Hill, 2001), responsible (Hale, 1992), committed or
even peace linguistics (Crystal, 2004), all of which aim for the greater visibility of the
agency of actors in the construction of data and their social relevance. Such a stream
of sociolinguistic research was developed as early as in the 1970s in studies on the
expression of power in interethnic encounters in so-called cultural crosstalk. Take for
example South Asian immigrants and British nationals in the workplace or other public
spheres (Jupp et al., 1982), or the vindication of non-standard varieties of Black English
(Labov, 1972b), the visibility of the power-discourse-nexus in fields such as language
and gender (Tannen, 1990), language and education (Crystal, 2004), or language
revitalization (Fishman, 1991; Tsunoda, 2002). In all of these areas of research,
levelling power relationships between actors has been an important methodological
development, summarized here as research co-authoring, conceived as emergent new
(power) epistemologies between actors in the social sciences (e.g. Cameron, 1992;
Flores Farfán, 2005).
In fact, all contrasting antagonistic traditions in the study of language, as is made clear
in, for instance, opposing systems (or structures) of discourse (or use) (e.g. Chomsky,

1957 vs Hymes, 1972), entail a struggle for imposing a (re)configuration of paradigms

in the making of research, which of course depend on specific power arrangements and
the possibility of interrupting received paradigms via discourse:
… language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into
the private property of speakers intentions; it is … overpopulated with
the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to ones own
intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process (Bakhtin,
1981: 299, quoted in Duranti, 2001: 23).
[p. 147 ↓ ] The power of discourse in society is recognized in a number of works.

Consider Goody's discussion of literacy as a step in the development of Western
civilization, shifting from oral mythical narratives to rational historical modalities of
thought (Duranti, 2001: 27). Yet literacy understood as alphabetical (writing) praxis has
been and is still linked to power in society, to perpetuating authority and to access and
control of institutional (linguistic or not) resources.
Yet there has been a thoughtful, albeit still incomplete, revision of the ways in which
power is determined via discourse and vice versa. Recall that a basic premise is the
uneven treatment that different, at times antagonistic, research traditions provide
to the relationship between power and discourse. As we have suggested, it is the
French philosophical tradition that has inspired more theoretical and empirical studies
regarding concepts such as power and discourse, particularly linked to the names of
Foucault (1981) and Bourdieu (1977). This is especially reflected in a series of studies
in the field of discourse analysis which concentrate on the written form of discourse,
evoking the sociocultural membership of analysts to a given cultural matrix, a written
one (e.g. Foucault, 1981). In contrast, the almost total omission of the concept or
even the word power is characteristic of North American sociology, particularly linked
to the ethnomethodological tradition, today represented by conversational analysis
practitioners such as Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974), which has also become
one nurturing contemporary analytical force at work in anthropological linguistics
(Duranti, 2001). The constructive confrontation of these and other traditions seems a
productive endeavour, since one probably underestimates and thus obscures what the
other emphasizes (for an effort in this sense, see Flores Farfán, 2003).

Let us recover what, in 2003, Flores Farfán called the ‘conversational paradox’, which
draws attention to two outstanding instances of contrasting viewpoints to suggest a
discourse analysis model, represented by the names of, for example, Foucault (1981)
on the one hand, and, for example, Habermas (1981), on the other. The study attempts
to analyse prototypical market interactions in which Mestizo (the mainstream population
in Mexico and most Latin America) brokers force their goods, verbally and non-verbally,
from indigenous people, and it shows that even in these types of extreme exploitative
situations, discourse is still an open resource to which, in principle, all human beings
should have the right to access. This implies a communicative ethics of discourse that
is always confronted by more down-to-earth approaches, or Foucault's microphysics,
which is where the deployment of power actually takes place, always confronted by
such presumed ontogenetic and philogenetic principles of communication which, after
all, warrant or at least virtually allow the possibility of emancipation.
The examples alluded to above illustrate how issues relating to historical or cultural
backgrounds, which guide and even to a certain extend determine (or at least influence)
discourse production, establish certain limits on what can and cannot be said within a
specific context and a specific historical discursive formation (Foucault, 1981; Bourdieu,
1977). Saville Troike (1982: 38) provides several examples, such as the fact that rural
Cuban varieties acquired prestige after the revolution, together with a devaluation of
the former educated standard, entailing a decline in use of former common religious
terminologies and forms of address such as Dios or Jesus mio (my God), attributed to
the introduction of Marxist criticism towards religion.
Another illustration of the close relationship of discourse and power is the relatively
recent introduction of gender-neutral language to mark political correctness in the usage
of politicians in public discourse in countries such as Mexico. Thus, expressions such
as los niños y las niñas de Mexico ‘the boys and girls of Mexico’ and los hombres y las
mujeres de nuestro pais ‘the men and women of our country’ have become trendy in the
mouths of Mexican politicians.
However, one cannot deny the possibility that not only contingent circumstances but
also conscious operations interrupt specific discourse and power arrangements, or even
question specific economic, political and ideological formations as a whole. Take as an
example the political action and militancy of Greenpeace against global warming, or the

assertion of indigenous populations’ rights against total assimilation and destruction of

their intangible heritage which has produced recent legislation in favour of indigenous
people. This is precisely linked not only to the universal right to gain access to discourse
but also to the specific possibilities of discourse itself in specific power arrangements,
such as the political scenarios of modern states’ policies in the face of economic
development and indigenous rights. Yet in countries such as Mexico, and even the
United States, Greenpeace is weak in terms of its effective possibilities against, for
example, ongoing deforestation, versus strong economic interests. This is of course
also a power issue that has manifested itself in recent declarations of Greenpeace in
Mexico regarding their inability to impact on environmental protection of the country.
From recent approaches to discourse and power, discourse is, and even should be
thought of within the framework of critical thinking, to enable individuals to develop
critical approaches to different [p. 148 ↓ ] specific contexts, such as academia and
political contestation. It is within the tradition of Norman Fairclough and his associates
that this endeavour has been made possible in the last couple of decades, especially
with regard to the role of academia in society (Fairclough, 1989). As an example, take
Labov's (1982) classic critique of a uniform (idealized) homogeneous linguistic system,
together with its political consequences regarding the vindication of non-standard
varieties, specifically the logic of Black vernacular English conceived of not as an
impoverished, but rather as a separate legitimate variety in its own right. Or consider the
recent efforts to develop the field of language revitalization linked to ideas on committed
or responsible (Hale, 1992) or even preventive linguistics (Crystal, 2004), aimed at
reversing language shift (Fishman, 1991), a process which most languages of the world
are today experiencing (Crystal, 2000) — all this along the lines of what has been called
‘advocacy research’ (Cameron, 1992). Yet this is not, of course, the dominant paradigm
in linguistic research. Let us take a look at the exercise of power while investigating
endangered languages, as the most prominent emergent field in linguistics these days.

The Ideologies of Power in Discourse:

Language and Power in Research Methods
Another eloquent illustration of ideologies and discourses at work is the field of
endangered languages, which turns out to be fairly telling of the politics of power in
academia, especially, although of course not exclusively, in the field of linguistics.
The very existence of the emergent field of language documentation (Gippert et
al., 2006), in and by itself, pinpoints to the reconfiguration of the field of linguistics
in terms of its different interests, represented in its extreme poles by the interests
of descriptive linguistics, on the one hand, and the interests of the members of the
community, on the other. Revisiting the field of language documentation requires a
constructive critique in terms of its programme and the agenda in the field of language
revitalization, an even more recent attempt to cope with the many dilemmas posed
by the question of language endangerment, where other, different voices — apart
from those of ‘experts’ — emerge, especially those of indigenous people. Language
revitalization is precisely about (re)balancing power relationships between researchers
and, more generally, society and speakers of endangered languages. Thus, the field
of language revitalization allows an interruption, of received linguistics approaches.
Raising awareness of the power entailed in the making of research, as manifested in
research protocols, observation, documentation, cataloguing, classifying and the like
as ways of social control, would allow sociolinguistics to start making more sense of
academic work in the face of communities’ interests and expectations. In contrast, the
predominant approach is still pervasive in the social sciences, as manifested in the use
of received methods such as questionnaires and interviews.
The Deployment of Power in Research

Methods: Interviews
Historically, interviews are certainly the best-known example of the exercise of power,
not only in academic praxis. In interviews, the structure of the whole interaction
is defined by a hierarchical stratification in which a dominant voice, such as the

researcher's, actively participates in the definition of, the situation from specific
power arrangements (Kress and Fowler, 1979). In Western societies, interviews are
a constitutive part of everyday discursive practices and a well-established genre.
In these societies and its face-to-face encounters, such as employer–employee in
the job industry or teacher–student in university settings, interviews are marked by
clear asymmetries, guided by the existence of an authoritative voice which imposes a
conversational lead in interaction, defining who speaks first, the interview's thematic
structure, its duration, and the like. Kress and Fowler (1979) even formulate the
hypothesis that all conversations are, in a way, types of interviews, inasmuch as all
conversations present some type of asymmetry. Their examples even examine the
reversing of roles between a young interviewer dealing with an experienced politician.
Likewise, Hill and Hill (1986) show how Mexicano (Nahuatl) speakers question the
dominant voice of the interview, opposing the authoritative role of a respected elder to
an adolescent status: all these are power issues.
In contrast, in the case of cross-cultural research, which often involves cultures that
are relatively or totally unfamiliar with interviews, the literature alerts us that the
asymmetrical structure as materialized in interview practices is evidenced by the
imposition of a communicative hegemony, which obscures and even exerts violence
on the native meta-communicative competence; in contrast, it highlights the observer's
communicative blunders or the ‘incompetence of fieldworkers’ (Briggs, 1983). In this
sense, Briggs (op cit., 24–5) concludes that interviews are of little value in the first
stages of fieldwork, and recommends that the researcher positions and presents him/
herself as an apprentice of the communicative repertoire of the community in order
to, at a later stage, be able to adapt the interview to the native [p. 149 ↓ ] ways of
speaking that are characteristic of diverse speech communities. This is something that
the agency of speakers themselves exerts, often infiltrating the logic of the interview
itself as a counter-power to the imposition of foreign ways of communication, which are
generally eyed with suspicion and distrust, and which can even lead to a total block on
communication. Moreover, from the point of view of linguistic anthropology, interviews
might even be discarded altogether, inasmuch as they distance the researcher from
the ethnographic description of communicative competence or an ‘emic’ point of view.
At best, interviews would constitute a complementary strategy for the observation and

description of the ‘native theory’ of communication and the cosmology associated that is
of such great interest to the linguistic anthropology investigative agenda.
In turn, in the sociolinguistic paradigm as launched by Labov (1972a, 1972b), interviews

have been overwhelmingly used, paradoxically, to obtain samples of ‘spontaneous’
speech. Sociolinguistic interviews endeavour to obtain discourse not too affected by
asymmetrical relationships, a difficulty formulated as the observer's paradox by Labov
himself. To overcome the authoritative voice that the interview conveys, techniques
include questions allowing interviewees to forget symbolic power represented by the
tape recorder: the famous question related to the fear of being dead. Other recent
developments productively integrate features of the ethnography of communication,
conceiving interviews as speech events to recover local forms of conveying information
(the network modules appropriate to speakers themselves and organized as flexible
conversational networks in Labov, 1984; Milroy and Gordon, 2003). A recent critique
of this paradigm attacks the classical idea that actors are monitoring their speech
(represented by a tape recorder) and not so much the (power) identity attached to
participants in the interview situation (the idea of audience design in Bell, 1984, 2001).
If the ethical and political dilemmas posed by interviews are indeed linked to a clear
discursive deployment of power in face-to-face encounters, the need to develop
more culturally-sensitive approaches to the organization of linguistic and cultural
diversity entails levelling power relationships developed in the making of research.
An interesting effort in this sense, which is meant to have an impact on wider society,
has been developed in the work of Jupp, Roberts and Gumperz (1982) with immigrant
South Asian populations in London, specifically with Punjabis. As a most revealing
investigation of the construction of racism and discrimination, which is based on the
interactive unconscious confrontation of different sociolinguistic competences in
encounters such as job interviews, the authors describe how different ways of speaking
‘crosstalk’ each other and how this provides grounds for cultural misunderstanding, the
reproduction of stereotypes and, of course, potential interethnic friction (the Gumperz
video for the BBC, 1979, precisely entitled Crosstalk). For instance, in an interview for a
librarian job where a South Asian applicant faces British interviewers, when asked why
he had an interest in the particular college, the interviewee follows a common pattern
for Punjabis which first offers generalities of his personal desperate situation to find a
job (plus his academic qualifications), a reply which shows that, in his culture, honesty

is highly valued, while the British expect a specific answer related to the prestige and
importance of the institution, even if it is a hypocritical one. Training the actors to
become aware of such cultural diverse ways of speech behaviour, including the ways
that information is presented differentially in terms of specific cultural-relevant matrices,
values and styles, would hopefully allow opening productive power dialogues that could
enable participants to reflect positively on ongoing misunderstandings and even ‘solve’,
or at least mitigate, deep-rooted historical interethnic conflicts.
As a representative of a dominant voice in research and its symbolic rituals, the roles
and status of participants are admittedly one-sided and defined by the researcher
(e.g. Hill and Hill, 1986). Several indexicals materialize authority relations as power
differentials. Consider endangered languages as eloquent indexicals of such power:
purist presentations of the self trigger hypercorrection and neologisms designed to
please the researcher, one of two types of attitudes in interviews identified in the
literature. Another interesting example is the emergence of foreign talk (the case of
aboriginal Australians, Evans, 2001: 263). In contrast, in a non-cooperative attitude,
speakers interrupt asymmetrical relationships imposed by interviews. Such inverse
investigation or even contestation suggests interesting quests for the sociolinguistic
research agenda (Flores Farfán, 2006). All this suggests that, in field linguistics,
received prescriptive ideologies emerge, even creating new varieties of the language
which very few people understand, which at times are even published in the form of
complete grammars!
10.3 Concluding Remarks

As suggested, a number of research traditions have, in one way or another, faced
the question of power and discourse, although not explicitly stated in such terms:
traditions which do not [p. 150 ↓ ] normally communicate with each other, at times even
ignoring parallel developments, as has, until recently, mostly been the case between
sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology (for a discussion see Duranti, 2001). This is
of course an example of how epistemological rearrangements related to social facts can
have an impact on the reconfiguration of the research agenda in linguistic anthropology
and sociolinguistics agenda, favoring cross-fertilization (Duranti, 2001: 19–20). Parallel
to these works, in the tradition of textual linguistics, discourse analysis and of course

critical linguistics (Fairclough 1989; van Dijk, 1993) seek to bring together macro and
micro levels in the investigation of the power-discourse-nexus. Such approaches show
the ways in which power shapes and reshapes the uses of discourse as manifested in
specific discourses and linguistic varieties such as hegemonic political discourse in the
press.
As power is discourse and discourse is the ultimate expression of power, so discourse

analysis is confronted with the multimodalities of its expression in, for example,
grammatical, illocutionary and complex communicative forces and specific encounters.
Yet, from our point of view, discourse analysis should really be about challenging
received models and inviting a reorientation of academic practice to critical thinking,
along the lines of critical linguistics (Fairclough, 1989). This can be done on the basis
of recovering schemes from such scholars as Bourdieu (1977, 1985) who suggest a
critique of the commodification, reification and technologization of discourse in areas
such as linguistics. It can be done, as Fairclough (1989: 6) suggests, by revisiting
schools as spaces for argumentation and critical thinking to invite effective ways
of favouring dialogue, or through what is termed ‘peace linguistics’ (Crystal, 2004).
This approach does not rely on the referential function of language, but rather on its
communicative and affective base, onto-and philogenetically speaking, and instantiates
differences as an expression of linguistic and cultural diversity and heterogeneity.
Of course these cannot be reduced to simple technical skills. Discourse is not an
instantiation of received models and for this reason education cannot be viewed as,
exclusively, a transmission of skills. The question of what counts as knowledge is
contested to produce new knowledge and this is dependent on power instantiations
of science. One brief example is the practice of field linguistics. Some of the most
interesting analyses which revolve around the relationship of power and discourse in
the making of research stem from the development of ‘advocacy’ research in linguistics
and anthropology which interrupts previous conceptualizations and reminds us that the
workings of power in discourse are present in our own work, inviting us to rethink new
power epistemologies such as critical thinking.
As suggested, it seems reasonable to plead for more integrated relational and

contextual approaches to these and other theoretical issues for a better comprehension
of the layers of power involved in discourse production, suggesting a dialectical focus
on the complex relationship of power and discourse. Therefore, at least two levels

are present in the production of discourse: the contexts of power differentials that
historically define specific societal arrangements, versus the presumed ontogenetic,
universal counter-facts of communication, instances which are constantly confronted in
actual discourse praxis. In other words, a more realistic or ecological approach to power
and discourse will not reduce the question to one of these specific aspects, but would
allow a much more complex view on the issue, incorporating both perspectives on the
ecology of power and its co-constitutive relationship with discourse.
Note
1 Bächtiger et al. (2004), for example, have developed what they call the ‘discourse
quality index’ (DQI), which allows for quantitative assessment of the deliberative quality
of political debates.
JoséAntonio, FloresBerard and AnnaHolzscheiter
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ANTONIO-The Power of Discourse and The Discourse of Power

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The SAGE Handbook

Contributors: José Antonio & Flores Berard & Anna Holzscheiter

Chapter 10: The Power of Discourse and

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• How does the naturalization and institutionalization of power occur through

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Illustrations will be presented of brief but crucial discursive instances of power

Theories on the Relationship between

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of sociolinguistics that have emphasized the role of power in communication and

Readers of this chapter might be pleased if we formulated a concise definition of

In sociolinguistics, however, discourse has offered itself as an interface that allows us

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characterize a specific social situation. While a Foucauldian understanding of discourse

In Habermas’ (1981) theory of communicative action, discourse is understood as an

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As a consequence of their multi-dimensional nature, these conceptualizations challenge

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operates, and are expressed in imposed categorizations and methods as interviews

In contrast to the radical assumption of conversational analysis practitioners that

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10.2 Power in the Terrain: Some Prominent

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1989). As it is impossible to fully cover the wealth of empirical investigations that in

Racism, Identity and Ideology

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are expressed in phrases such as hasta la vista baby by Schwarzenegger in Terminator

In contrast to many of these traditions which focus on the relationship of language

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Examples of how identities are constructed and institutionalized through powerful

Social Conventions, Discourse and Power:

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Moreover, analogous to the discursive definition of power, another criticism of this

All in all, politeness constitutes an intermediate level between communicative universals

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Sociolinguistic Research Practice as an

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1957 vs Hymes, 1972), entail a struggle for imposing a (re)configuration of paradigms

[p. 147 ↓ ] The power of discourse in society is recognized in a number of works.

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assertion of indigenous populations’ rights against total assimilation and destruction of

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The Ideologies of Power in Discourse:

The Deployment of Power in Research

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In turn, in the sociolinguistic paradigm as launched by Labov (1972a, 1972b), interviews

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10.3 Concluding Remarks

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As power is discourse and discourse is the ultimate expression of power, so discourse

As suggested, it seems reasonable to plead for more integrated relational and

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JoséAntonio, FloresBerard and AnnaHolzscheiter

Bachrach, P. and Baratz, M. S. (1977) Macht und Armut . Frankfurt am Main:

Bakhtin, M. (1973) Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics . Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis.

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Bauman, R. and Briggs, C. L. (2003) Voices of Modernity . Cambridge: Cambridge

Bell, A. ‘Language style as audience design’ , Language in Society , 13 (2): 145–204.