Power Key Terms

Question	Answer
Litotes	An understatement (the opposite of hyperbole). Sometimes used to hedge around negative statements e.g: "She's no beauty queen".
Adjacency pair	2 people talking.
Influential power	Power used to persuade/influence.
Instrumental power	Power used by authority.
Wareing	Proposed social groups, personal and political power.
Fairclough	Proposed a theory behind advertising, power in discourse structure, unequal encounters and power behind discourse structure.
Goffman	Proposed the idea of face.
Brown and Levinson	Proposed the idea of face-threatening acts and different types of politeness strategies. E.g: bald-on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness and off-record (indirect politeness).
Power in discourse	The linguistic techniques used to portray power.
Power behind discourse	The ideology in the text used to portray power.
Positive face	The need to be accepted, liked, the need to be connected to other members of the group.
Negative face	The need to be independent, have freedom of action and not be imposed on by others.
Face	Worth and dignity in the face of others.
Face-saving act	A form of politeness strategy used to prevent embarrassing yourself or your speaking partner by losing face.
Face-threatening act	This damages the speaker, or their partner's face by acting in opposition to their wants.
Bald-on-record	This politeness strategy doesn't attempt to minimise threats to face. They are used to shock or embarrass.
Positive politeness	These minimise threats to face and are often used in close relationships to show respect and friendship.
Negative politeness	These have an apologetic tone and the speaker assumes that they are imposing on the other person.
Off-record (indirect)	Using vague, indirect language to imply something. This removes the imposing element. E.g: "I could really use a pencil."
Formulation	Rewording of another's contribution by a powerful participant to impose a certain meaning.
Constraints	Ways that powerful participants may block/control contributions of less powerful. E.g: interrupting, controlling content.
Powerful participant	Speaker with a higher status in a given context.
Less powerful participant	Speaker with a lower status in a given context.
Power asymmetry AKA unequal encounter	A marked difference of the power status of individuals talking. This was also proposed by Fairclough and is often a feature of institutional talk.
Passive voice	Omits an actor or agent or includes the agent as part of a prepositional phrase after the verb.
Active voice	Includes actor (individual/entity responsible for action) or agent, verb phrase includes a finite present or past tense verb.
Prosodic features	Intonation. E.g: volume, tempo, fillers.
Paralinguistic features	Non-spoken communication e.g: body language, tone.
Latinate words	Words that are constructed based on Latin. Tend to be long and abstract. Have connotations of being elegant and educated.
Social group power	Power held as a result of social factors e.g: age, gender class.
Personal power	Power held as a result of their role/occupation.
Political power	Power held by those with the law backing them up.
Howard Giles	He found that students who heard a presentation in RP rated the intelligence and authoritativeness considerably higher than those addressed in a regional accent. He proposed the Communication Accommodation Theory - adjusting speech to accommodate others.
Institutional Talk	In 1992 Drew and Heritage proposed that institutional talk differs from ordinary talk in 6 different ways (GAPSTA). 1. Goal orientation - workplace conversation usually has a goal 2. Assymetry 3. Professional lexis 4. Structure - workplace interactions might be structured in specific ways. E.g: agenda in a meeting. 5. Turn-taking rules/restrictions - In some contexts, e.g: courtroom, there are special rules. Sometimes there are unwritten rules. E.g: doctor tends to ask patient questions. 6. Allowable contributions - may be restrictions on what contributors are allowed to say in institutional talk.
Germanic words	Majority of most common English words. They are short, more direct and tend to be concrete. E.g: sway, take, link.
Trudgill	Proposed overt prestige (when you put on an accent widely recognised as used by the culturally dominant group) and covert prestige (when you put on an accent to fit into an exclusive community). Changes alter speech to gain prestige so the individual will appear to be successful/have a high rep.
Members Resources	Stage 2 of Fairclough's theory - evoking knowledge, behaviour and lifestyle in conjuction with the reader's ideological background.
Synthetic personalisation	The 1st stage of Fairclough's model - the advertiser builds a friendly relationship with the reader through imperatives and personal pronouns.
Building the consumer	Stage 3 of Fairclough's theory - positions receiver into ideal consumer position in relation to the advertiser and product.
Allusion	Using quotes/references to other powerful things.
Repressive discourse structure	An indirect way of exercising power and control through constraints.
Oppressive discourse structure	Linguistic behaviour that's open in exercising power and control.

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	Created by Hazel Meades about 10 years ago