This document discusses language and power in verbal and nonverbal communication. It identifies four categories of power: practical, knowledge/ideas, position, and personal. It also discusses how power is encoded in conversations through status markers like agenda-setting, turn-taking, forms of address, phatic talk or small talk, and utterance types. Phatic talk, while not relevant to the core topic, plays an important role in establishing relationships and can be used strategically in conversations to influence the power dynamic.

1. Language & Power
Verbal & Nonverbal
Communication

2. 2
Power & Language
• Identify Categories of Power
• Understand how Power is
encoded in conversation
• Consider Status Markers that
determine power
• Understand the role Phatic Talk
has in determining Power

3. 3
Categories of Power:
• Practical
Physical actions, violence, skill, money,
goods or services
• Knowledge/ideas
Using knowledge to influence others
• Position
Power gained from position in a
hierarchy
• Personal
Personality, nurturing or caring

4. What type of power is this?
4
• The power that parents have
over children
• The power that newspapers
have over readers
• The power that customers have
over shop assistants
• Talking a bully out of thumping
you

5. Conversation is Ideological
• Conversations are human interactions
where power is encoded
• All discourse is ideological
(participants bring their world view and
status to conversation)
5
Norman Fairclough

6. All conversations are potentially
6
“Unequal Encounters”
• Language encodes world views and
status
 develops a power relationship

7. Power is being exerted …
• When one speaker is able to infer or
decode inferences that lead to an
inequality of relationship with the
listener
• When our mind is moved from what
we want it to dwell on to being
engaged by a text (written or spoken)
7

8. 8
Status Markers
that Determine Power
• Agenda-setting and topic
management
• Turn-taking, holding and seizing
the floor
• Forms of address
• Phatic tokens
• Utterance types and language
• Directives

9. 9
Agenda-setting and
Topic Management
• Who sets the agenda for what gets
talked about? Who leads the talk?
• Who chooses or changes the topic?
• Is this agenda allowed to be
ambushed or side-tracked?
• How are side discussions managed?

10. Turn-taking, holding
and seizing the floor
• Who holds the power in terms of
turn-taking?
• How are turns taken?
• How are interruptions dealt with?
• What happens if the turn-taking
“rules” are transgressed?
• Who talks the most?
• Who interrupts or backs down?
10

11. Audience Address
11
• I
suggests intimacy,
straightforwardness or openness
• You
suggests familiarity & friendship
• We
Inclusive
• suggesting membership of a group with
the speaker
Exclusive
• separates the speaker’s group from the
audience

12. Forms of address
• What terms are used when directly
speaking to another person in the
conversation?
• What does this tell you about the
power relationships?
• Who uses first names, titles or
honorifics?
12

13. Phatic Talk (small talk)
13
Core Talk
• Relates to
intended
purpose of the
conversation
• Focused
• Context-bound
• On-task
• High
information
content
Phatic Talk
• Not relevant
to core
purpose of the
conversation
• Atopical
discussion
• Important for
affective
(social)
content

14. Opening Conversations
with Phatic Talk
• we don’t just go straight into a topic
• start with a bit of friendly, sociable
stuff just to get warmed up
• begin with some social chat to break
the ice
14
the weather
the journey to arrive
unnecessary expressions of gratitude
enquiries about health

15. Closing Conversations
with Phatic Talk
• Start gathering belongings together
• Shift forward onto the edge of seat
• Start looking around you
• Pay a compliment
These are not necessarily the truth, but not
outrageously or obviously lies
• May need to hang around for 6 or more
turns after you have said “good-bye”
15

16. Phatic Talk & Power
• More powerful speakers tend to intiate
and restrict phatic talk
(as well as define what are acceptable
subjects for conversation)
• How might phatic talk makes it easier
for a less powerful participant to soften
a potential challenge by a more
powerful participant in a conversation?
16