Pragmatics and power

Abstract

This paper sets out to ascertain on the basis of actual language behaviour whether ‘universal pragmatics’, especially Grice's maxims and Habermas's validity claims, can provide a sustainable conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between pragmatics and power. On the basis of a data base of magistrate/defendant and police/suspect discourse, it examines the nature of strategic discourse in settings where participants have conflicting goals. Three specific propositions are put forward: (1) that the asymmetrical distribution of speech acts as a mode of strategic communication prevents validity claims being raised or challenged except by institutional representatives; (2) that ‘truth’ comes to be defined pragmatically as what is accepted explicitly as ‘shared knowledge’. Powerful institutional members move from the ‘given’ to the ‘new’, which is often ‘disputable’, by a variety of communicative strategies which the less powerful ‘clients’ find difficult to challenge; (3) that there is a need to re-define the widely used concept of communicative competence so that any challenge to authority or the right to speak is not merely labelled as ‘inappropriate’ and/or ‘incompetent’ language behaviour. The paper concludes with an assessment of the usefulness of the work of Grice and Habermas in relationship to strategic discourse and proposes a possible model for future work.