AQA A-level English Language: Language and Power Notes.

Language and Power Notes:

THEORIST: Shan Wareing (1999)

Stated 3 types of power:
 Political – held by people with authority
 Personal – based on an individual’s occupation / role in society
 Social Group – held by a group of people due to social factors.
 These are either instrumental or influential.

INFLUENTIAL POWER
 A person / group doesn’t have any authority but tries to gain power and influence
over others.
 Persuade – support them via politics and the media.
 Features = assertions, metaphors, loaded language, embedded assumptions.

INSTRUMENTAL POWER
 Authoritative power because of who the person is.
 People use instrumental power to maintain or enforce their authority.
 Features = formal register, imperatives, modal verbs, mitigation, conditional,
declaratives, Latinate lexis.

FEATURES OF LANGUAGE AND POWER IN WRITTEN AND SPOKEN DISCOURSE
1. Lexical = emotive language, figurative language, forms of address, synthetic
personalisation (Fairclough 1989).
2. Grammar = interrogatives, modal verbs, imperatives.
3. Phonology = alliteration, assonance, rising and falling intonation.

Language and Power in Politics Spoken Conversational Features

Use ‘political rhetoric’, which includes: Dominant Participant
 Repetition  Sets subject and the tone
 Rule of 3  Changes direction of the conversation
 1st person plural pronouns  Talks the most
 Hyperbole  Interrupts and Overlaps
 Rhetorical questions  Unresponsive
 Change in tone and intonation
 Leading questions Submissive Participant
 Use lists  Responds
 Imperatives  Follows directional change
 Humour  Listens the most
 Tautology  Avoids interrupting
 prevarication  Use more formal forms of address




THEORIST: Fairclough
(1984)
 ‘Language and
Power’ = language
is a tool that