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Language and PowerLesson 3

Recap

• Influential power

• Instrumental power

• Norman Fairclough:

• Power in the discourse

• Power behind the discourse

Linguistic Determinism – recap

• Linguistic determinism is the idea that language and its structures limit and determine human knowledge or thought, as well as thought processes such as categorization, memory, and perception. The term implies that people of different languages have different thought processes.

Michel Foucault

We often talk about people as if they have particular attributes as 'things' inside themselves -- they have an identity, for example, and we believe that at the heart of a person there is a fixed and true identity or character (even if we're not sure that we know quite what that is, for a particular person). We assume that people have an inner essence -- qualities beneath the surface which determine who that person really 'is'. We also say that some people have (different levels of) power which means that they are more (or less) able to achieve what they want in their relationships with others, and society as a whole.

Foucault rejected this view. For Foucault, people do not have a 'real' identity within themselves; that's just a way of talking about the self -- a discourse. An 'identity' is communicated to others in your interactions with them, but this is not a fixed thing within a person. It is a shifting, temporary construction.

People do not 'have' power implicitly; rather, power is a technique or action which individuals can engage in. Power is not possessed; it is exercised. And where there is power, there is always also resistance.

So Where Does He Go Now?

•How is power / powerlessness presented in this article?

Green Party election leaflet

Lib Dem Party election leaflet

Scottish Nationalists election leaflet

Homework

• Find a text that expresses power

• Bring to next session (you will need 19 copies of it!!!)