Discourse and power

Abstract

Research on discourse and power focuses on the ways in which language is central in constituting and reproducing relations of power that result in forms of inequality. This chapter begins by summarizing some of the key studies in this emergent research tradition, focusing on the development of critical discourse analysis (CDA). I also review critical perspectives on research on discourse and power. The chapter goes on to propose that recent studies have paid detailed attention to interactional patterns of language use, as researchers take ethnographic approaches to analysis of discourse and power. The chapter further considers perspectives that engage with the notion of ‘voice’. Data from current research offer exemplification of the concept of ‘voice’ in a brief episode of interactional speech. Here I finally argue that the analysis of voice offers critical insight into processes of discourse and power in contemporary societies, and that such an analysis has great potential to illuminate objects of investigation across subject territories and disciplines.A relatively recent progression in research on discourse and power has been the development of CDA. As CDA is discussed elsewhere in this volume, I will only briefly summarize these developments. There is no single theory or method that is uniform and consistent throughout CDA (Meyer, 2001; Fairclough, 2003a, b; Weiss and Wodak, 2003). Martin and Wodak (2003) point out that CDA has never been one single specific theory or methodology. Titscher, Meyer, Wodak and Vetter suggest that this plurality is born out of the concern of CDA with the social rather than the purely linguistic: