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Language and Power and Technology
Year 1 / ASYear 2 / A-LevelAQA, OCR, WJEC/Eduqas
A* revision for AQA 7702 and OCR H470: Fairclough's power in/behind discourse, Goffman face and Brown & Levinson politeness, Wareing's occupational power, CDA, and electronic language - multimodality and CMC features.
🎯 Learning Objectives
Distinguish power in discourse from power behind discourse (Fairclough 1989) and instrumental from influential power, with textual evidence for each (AO1/AO2).
Apply Goffman's (1967) face and Brown & Levinson's (1987) politeness theory - positive/negative face, FTAs, mitigation strategies - to transcripts and media texts (AO1/AO3).
Analyse occupational power using Wareing (1999): vertical vs horizontal power, jargon as gatekeeping, and workplace discourse features (AO1/AO2).
Use the CDA three-dimensional method (description, interpretation, explanation) to link textual features to ideology and institutional power (AO1/AO3).
Analyse electronic language: multimodality (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006), CMC features (synchronicity, permanence, interactivity) and power online (AO1/AO3).
Deploy politeness and power concepts in directed writing for electronic and specialist audiences (AQA 7702/2 Q4; OCR H470/01 Section B) (AO1/AO2).
📋 Key Definitions and Core Concepts
Power in discourse: Power exercised within the language event itself: who asks the questions, who interrupts, what can be said and by whom - visible in the text (Fairclough, 1989).
Power behind discourse: The social and institutional power that determines the conventions, participants and order of discourse - who may speak, write or set the agenda (Fairclough, 1989).
Instrumental power: Power that enforces authority and compliance - law, court directives, institutional rules; backed by formal sanction.
Influential power: Power that persuades rather than enforces - media, advertising, politics, charity appeals; no formal authority, so it works on attitudes.
Face: Goffman (1967): the positive social value a participant claims in interaction; face-work maintains it against threat.
Positive vs negative face: Brown & Levinson (1987): the desire to be approved and included (positive) vs the desire for autonomy and freedom from imposition (negative).
Face-threatening act (FTA): An act threatening face - requests and orders threaten negative face; criticism and disagreement threaten positive face. Speakers choose a mitigation strategy accordingly.
Politeness strategies: Brown & Levinson's (1987) options for handling FTAs: bald on-record, positive politeness (solidarity), negative politeness (deference, hedging), off-record (indirectness), or no FTA.
Jargon (as gatekeeping): Specialist terminology that compresses meaning for insiders and excludes outsiders - efficiency and exclusion simultaneously; a marker of occupational power.
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA): Fairclough's method: description of the text, interpretation of its production and consumption, explanation of its social practice - linking language to ideology and power.
📌 Key Points
Fairclough (1989): power in discourse (visible in the encounter) vs power behind discourse (institutions setting conventions); instrumental vs influential power.
Brown & Levinson (1987): positive face (approval) vs negative face (autonomy); FTAs mitigated by bald on-record, positive politeness, negative politeness, off-record, or avoidance.
Goffman (1967): face = the positive social value claimed in interaction; face-work maintains it.
Sinclair & Coulthard (1975): IRF/IRE - the teacher controls classroom turns and topics.
Crystal (2001): e-language as a third mode blending speech and writing; synchronous vs asynchronous CMC.
Electronic power: gatekeeping lowered (anyone can publish) but re-concentrated in platforms, algorithms and moderation; synthetic personalisation scales online.
AQA 7702/2 Section A = one 'Evaluate the idea...' essay (30); Q3 analyse discourses (40); Q4 directed writing (30). OCR H470/02 Section B Language in the media (24).
Fairclough: power in and behind discourse
Power appears across both boards: in AQA's diversity essays (occupation as a social group, 7702/2 Section A, 30 marks), its discourses questions (Q3, 40 marks: analyse how texts present views) and directed writing (Q4, 30 marks); in OCR through Language in the media (H470/02 Section B, 24 marks). Fairclough's (1989) Language and Power is the anchor text.
Power in discourse: power exercised within the encounter and therefore visible in the transcript or text - who asks the questions, who interrupts, whose turns are allocated, what may be said. In a doctor-patient consultation the doctor's questions set the agenda; the patient's answers are structurally compelled. Analyse it through turn-taking, topic control, IRF sequences and constraints on contribution.
Power behind discourse: the institutional machinery that decides the conventions themselves - who may enter the discourse (membership criteria), which register counts as legitimate, who owns the outlet. A courtroom's 'address the bench as your Honour' is power behind discourse: the rule exists before any interaction. In media texts, editorial policy and platform rules are the invisible layer.
Instrumental vs influential power: instrumental enforces (statutes, directives, warnings backed by sanction); influential persuades (advertising, political rhetoric, charity appeals). The distinction is examinable in both directions - a workplace email can be instrumental ('submit by Friday or the audit fails') or influential ('it would be great if...'), and the politeness choice marks which.
Synthetic personalisation (Fairclough 1989): mass-audience texts address each member as an individual ('you'), simulating intimacy at scale - the standard bridge between influential power and audience design.
CDA - the three-dimensional method: (1) description: the text's linguistic features (lexis, grammar, modality, presupposition); (2) interpretation: the discursive practice - how the text was produced, distributed, consumed, and by whom; (3) explanation: the social practice - the ideology and power relations the text serves. The method turns a feature-spotting exercise into an argument about whose interests the language advances - which is precisely what OCR's 'investigate how language features and contextual factors construct meanings' and AQA's discourses questions reward. Presupposition is CDA's sharpest tool: covert assumptions ('yet another pointless delay') smuggle ideology in as common ground, and modality marks authority (deontic 'must' vs epistemic 'perhaps').
A worked contrast, hypothetical but methodologically exact: a court directive ('The defendant shall attend on the 14th') and a charity appeal ('Will you help one child tonight?'). The court text is instrumental power: deontic 'shall', formal register, no negotiation - power backed by sanction. The charity text is influential power: interrogative, direct address, emotional lexis - no formal authority, so the language works on attitude. Two sentences, two power types, the grammatical markers that distinguish them: that density is the standard for any paragraph on power. It also shows why the instrumental/influential split is examinable in unseen texts - the distinction is recoverable from the grammar alone, and the strongest answers recover it without being told the text's function.
Face and politeness: Goffman, Brown & Levinson
Face - Goffman (1967), Interaction Ritual: face is the positive social value a participant claims for themselves in interaction; interaction is face-work - a constant, delicate maintenance of one's own and others' face. Losing face is not metaphorical: threats to face disrupt the encounter itself.
Politeness theory - Brown & Levinson (1987): two faces per participant. Positive face: the desire to be approved, liked, treated as a member of the group. Negative face: the desire for autonomy, to be unimpeded. Every face-threatening act (FTA) hits one or both: requests, orders and reminders threaten negative face; criticism, disagreement and bad news threaten positive face.
The strategy set: (1) bald on-record - no mitigation, justified by urgency or high power ('Sit down'); (2) positive politeness - solidarity: in-group markers, compliments, inclusive 'we' ('Come on, we're all friends here'); (3) negative politeness - deference: hedges, indirectness, deferential modality ('I wondered whether you might possibly...'); (4) off-record - hint or implicature ('It's rather cold in here' meaning 'shut the window'); (5) no FTA - silence or topic shift. Choice is governed by power (P), social distance (D) and the ranking of the imposition (R): high P and D push towards negative politeness; low P and D license baldness or positive politeness.
Critiques: culturally specific - some speech communities prioritise deference or solidarity differently, so the P/D/R calculus is not universal; it idealises the speaker as a rational strategist, underweighting institutional constraint (scripts, protocols) and emotion; and politeness is not only about power - reciprocity and routine matter too.
Exam use: in transcripts (manager-worker, doctor-patient, teacher-pupil), identify the FTAs and the mitigation chosen, then infer the power relations - a bald on-record order from a subordinate is analytically interesting precisely because it breaks the predicted pattern. In media texts, politeness strategies manufacture brand intimacy: positive politeness plus synthetic personalisation is the standard combination in advertising and customer-facing copy.
A worked chain in a media text, using a hypothetical customer email: 'We know you've been busy - whenever you get a chance, your account needs updating.' The FTA is a negative-face threat (the imposition of the update); the mitigation stacks two strategies - positive politeness ('We know you've been busy' - claimed empathy, in-group 'we') and negative politeness ('whenever you get a chance' - hedged imposition); and synthetic personalisation ('your account') scales the intimacy to a mass audience. Three strategies in one sentence - and the analysis says what each does, not just what each is called. That chain, pointed at whichever face is threatened, is the examinable core of politeness theory.
Occupational power: Wareing and workplace talk
Wareing (1999): occupational language divides by vertical power (exercised down a hierarchy - manager to worker, surgeon to nurse) and horizontal power (across peers - colleague to colleague, professional to professional). The same register serves both: jargon signals expertise horizontally and enforces hierarchy vertically.
Jargon as gatekeeping: specialist terminology compresses meaning for insiders ('We'll escalate the SLA breach') and excludes outsiders - efficiency and exclusion simultaneously. In unseen texts, ask what the jargon assumes about the reader: a customer-facing letter that keeps the jargon is asserting institutional authority over the layperson; one that translates it is managing face.
Workplace discourse features: directives (imperatives, obligation modality - 'we need this by Friday'), topic control in meetings, turn allocation, documented procedures; Koester (2004) showed phatic talk - small talk, banter, personal asides - is not off-task noise but builds solidarity and softens hierarchy, doing real relational work in institutional settings.
Doctor-patient and teacher-pupil: the classic unequal encounters. Doctor controls the agenda through questions and topic shifts; patient supplies minimal responses - power in discourse backed by power behind it (institutional legitimacy, gatekept knowledge). Teacher-pupil talk runs on Sinclair & Coulthard's (1975) IRF/IRE structure: teacher initiates, pupil responds, teacher evaluates - the feedback slot is where the control lives. Critiques worth deploying: the 'informed patient' discourse shift has flattened some of the asymmetry; collaborative classroom talk redistributes the IRF slots.
Exam use: AQA's diversity data sets include occupational data, and occupation is one of the social groups the June 2017 essay statement targets. In any workplace transcript, label the power through three moves: IRF or turn allocation (structure), FTA and mitigation choice (politeness), jargon and modality (register) - then explain each through the institutional context (AO3).
A worked chain in a workplace transcript, hypothetical: 'Right, team - we need the figures by Friday. Sarah, can you chase finance?' The topic control ('we need') asserts vertical power through obligation modality; the inclusive 'we' softens it with positive politeness; the direct allocation ('Sarah, can you...') reserves the directive force for a named subordinate while hedging it as a question - power in discourse, strategy choice and hierarchy in one move. Where a text shows the reverse (a subordinate balding on-record, a superior hedging everything), that deviation is the analysis: it breaks the P/D/R prediction and therefore reveals the actual relations rather than the assumed ones.
Electronic language: multimodality, CMC and power online
Electronic language cuts across every question type: AQA pairs electronic texts in Paper 1 Section A, targets electronic audiences in directed writing, and OCR's Language in the media texts are frequently digital. Treat e-language as a mode in its own right with its own affordances - Crystal's (2001) Language and the Internet frames it as a hybrid of speech and writing rather than degraded either.
CMC features: synchronicity (live chat and video calls vs asynchronous email and forums), permanence and searchability, interactivity (comments, reactions, shares), audience reach (one-to-one to mass), and brevity economy (abbreviation, emoji, fragmented syntax). Asynchronous CMC borrows written planning; synchronous CMC borrows spoken turn-taking - the blend is the analysis, and claims like 'email is formal' should be evaluated against the informal workplace email that exists precisely because tenor overrides mode.
Multimodality: Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) - image, colour, layout and typography carry meaning alongside words. In unseen digital texts, analyse composition: salience (what is biggest, boldest, most central), reading paths (headlines, hyperlinks, scroll order), and image anchoring (captions fixing what a photograph means). Typography is lexis by other means: a bolded claim, an ALL-CAPS warning, a lowercase aesthetic each signal attitude before any word is read.
Power online: the gatekeeping power behind discourse has weakened - anyone can publish - but re-concentrated in platforms: algorithms rank, moderation deletes, terms of service constrain. Instrumental power in CMC includes moderation messages and platform rules; influential power scales through influencers and viral copy, with synthetic personalisation industrialised ('your journey', 'we picked this for you'). Anonymity and audience distance shift politeness: trolling is bald on-record FTAs at scale, while moderation notices perform institutional face repair. Hashtags aggregate topics and perform stance - influence in one token.
Exam use - directed writing: AQA Q4 (30 marks) and OCR H470/01 Section B (24 marks) ask you to write for a specified audience - often a blog, script or article. Apply the theory in the writing itself: positive politeness and synthetic personalisation for an electronic audience, hedging for a non-specialist one, jargon only where the brief licenses it - and assess the ideas and issues of the source texts as the AQA command requires.
A worked multimodal chain, using a hypothetical article: headline 'Remote work is killing teamwork' (bold, sans-serif), standfirst in grey, stock image of an empty office, pull-quote mid-article. The headline asserts the thesis with a present-tense declarative and a dysphemistic verb ('killing'); the typography and salience give it authority before any evidence is read; the grey standfirst subordinates the qualification; the empty office anchors the claim visually; the pull-quote re-foregrounds the most emotive source. Composition, typography and lexis carrying one representation claim - Kress & van Leeuwen's (2006) multimodality applied as analysis, not name-dropped. That is the density to reproduce on any electronic text: every layout choice is a linguistic choice by other means.
💡 Worked Example
Exam-style: Evaluate the idea that it is an advantage to be able to switch between different varieties of language. [30 marks] (AQA 7702/2, June 2023, Question 01)
Mark-scheme logic: Mark-scheme logic (AO1 + AO2 + AO3, 30 marks):<br><br><strong>AO1:</strong> fluent, coherent argument with accurate terminology (code-switching, register, instrumental/influential power, positive/negative face, jargon, CMC affordances) sustained from thesis to verdict.<br><br><strong>AO2 - evaluating the idea:</strong> test the claim, don't illustrate it.<br>(1) <strong>Evidence for the advantage:</strong> switching between registers gives access to instrumental and influential power - standard English and jargon unlock institutional gatekeeping (Wareing 1999); switching politeness strategies manages face across power distances (Brown & Levinson 1987); e-language demands a further switch (synchronous chat vs asynchronous email vs formal writing). O'Barr & Atkins (1980): high-status speakers command the powerful varieties - repertoire is a resource.<br>(2) <strong>Complexities and counters:</strong> switching is not equally available to all - repertoire reflects education and class, so the 'advantage' is unevenly distributed (a critical-linguistics point: Fairclough 1989 - unequal access to discourse power); value judgements attach to varieties, so switching can be read as 'selling out' or as insufficiently 'authentic'; Butler's (1990) performativity reframes switching as identity work, not mere advantage.<br>(3) <strong>Refined verdict:</strong> switching is an advantage where power is at stake - occupational, institutional, media - but it is a resource whose distribution is socially patterned, not a free good.<br><br><strong>AO3:</strong> contexts decide - occupational settings (jargon gatekeeping), media and electronic settings (register shifts for platform audiences), public vs private domains, and the ideological context in which some varieties are ranked as standard.<br><br><strong>Top-band marker:</strong> an explicit, defended verdict plus theorists used as evidence and critique, with awareness that the 'advantage' framing itself carries ideological weight.
❓ Practice Questions & Mark Schemes
Evaluate the idea that a person's language use is completely determined by the social groups they belong to. [30 marks] (AQA 7702/2, June 2017, Question 01 - occupation/power focus)
Answer: <strong>Thesis:</strong> groups condition language but do not completely determine it - verdict early, refined at the end.<br><br><strong>For group influence:</strong> occupational power conditions register - Wareing (1999): jargon, vertical and horizontal power, gatekeeping; Fairclough (1989): power behind discourse - institutions fix conventions and membership; regional and social varieties condition access to standard English and to the registers institutions rank as powerful.<br><br><strong>Against complete determination:</strong> (1) Speakers switch - repertoire exceeds any single group; the workplace email can be instrumental or influential by choice. (2) Politeness strategy is chosen, not assigned: Brown & Levinson (1987) - bald on-record from a subordinate breaks the predicted pattern, so strategy is agency within structure. (3) Cameron (2007): within-group variation exceeds between-group; Butler (1990): identity is performed, not just inherited. (4) Electronic contexts re-form groups constantly - online communities of practice outlive the offline ones.<br><br><strong>AO3:</strong> contexts decide - occupational vs domestic vs online domains; institutional vs peer power; the era in which 'standard English' was constructed as the powerful variety.<br><br><strong>Verdict:</strong> groups shape access to powerful registers (that is Fairclough's whole argument about power behind discourse), but 'completely determined' fails against switching, strategy choice and within-group variation - language use is conditioned, not determined.
Analyse how language in this hospital consultation transcript creates meanings and representations. [25 marks] (AQA 7702/1 Section A style - unequal encounter)
Answer: Mark-scheme logic (AO1 + AO3):<br><br><strong>Opening:</strong> thesis - what is represented (the doctor's authority, the patient's position, the illness) and via which genre, audience and purpose (institutional consultation; recording for training/research; professional record).<br><br><strong>Body:</strong> (1) Structure: IRF-style sequences (Sinclair & Coulthard 1975) - doctor initiates, patient responds, doctor evaluates; topic control shifting the agenda back to the medical frame. (2) Politeness: FTAs identified (diagnosis as bad news threatens positive face; instructions threaten negative face) and mitigation mapped - hedged delivery ('I'm afraid it looks like...') softening negative face threats, or bald on-record where urgency licenses it. (3) Lexis/semantics: jargon as gatekeeping (Wareing 1999) - Latin-derived medical terminology vs the patient's everyday terms; euphemism and dysphemism around diagnosis. (4) Grammar: modality (deontic 'you must' vs epistemic 'it may be'), imperatives, interrogatives from one side only. (5) Turn-taking: interruptions and minimal responses - who holds the floor and how.<br><br><strong>AO3:</strong> power in discourse (the encounter itself) plus power behind it (institutional legitimacy, gatekept knowledge, the consultation's recorded purpose) - each explaining a linguistic choice, never listed.<br><br><strong>Top band:</strong> perceptive inference of the power relations from the interactional detail - the mark is for showing <em>how</em> the transcript encodes asymmetry, not for asserting that doctors have power.
Using your understanding of relevant ideas and concepts, investigate how language features and contextual factors construct meanings in this online news article about workplace surveillance. [24 marks] (OCR H470/02, Section B - Language in the media, June 2023 wording)
Answer: <strong>Method:</strong> 3-4 developed analytical strands (about 45 minutes), each linking features to context.<br><br><strong>Model hits:</strong> (1) <strong>Influential power and CDA:</strong> presuppositions smuggled in as common ground ('employees have nothing to fear if...'), modality (deontic 'must', epistemic 'could'), and nominalisation ('monitoring', 'compliance') hiding who acts - description level, then interpretation (production: whose outlet, whose sources), then explanation (whose interests the framing serves). (2) <strong>Multimodality:</strong> salience (headline weight, image selection), reading path (hyperlinks, subheads), caption anchoring - Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) applied to the article's composition. (3) <strong>Occupational power:</strong> jargon of surveillance ('monitoring software', 'productivity metrics') - gatekeeping vs translation for the lay reader; employer vs employee agency in the grammar. (4) <strong>Electronic mode:</strong> affordances (short paragraphs, bolded claims for scrolling readers; searchable permanence) shaping the discourse structure. (5) <strong>Evaluation:</strong> the version of reality constructed (surveillance as safety vs control) and who benefits - Fairclough's explanation level made explicit.<br><br><strong>Top band:</strong> concepts as an explanatory framework with perceptive evaluation - 'the nominalisations systematically delete the employer as agent, so surveillance happens to no one' earns more than naming nominalisation.
Evaluate the claim that politeness strategies always signal social power. [25 marks] (AQA-style AO2/AO3 essay)
Answer: <strong>Thesis:</strong> the claim fails as a law but survives as a tendency - politeness correlates with power, distance and imposition jointly, and sometimes signals none of them.<br><br><strong>For:</strong> Brown & Levinson (1987) - P, D and R jointly govern strategy choice; high power + high distance push towards negative politeness; bald on-record correlates with high power ('Sit down'). Fairclough (1989): deferential register from the less powerful participant encodes power in discourse.<br><br><strong>Against:</strong> (1) Politeness without power: customer-service scripts deploy maximal politeness from the <em>institutionally</em> powerful party - positive politeness and synthetic personalisation manufacture intimacy for commercial ends, so politeness can <em>mask</em> power rather than signal it. (2) Solidarity politeness: phatic talk (Koester 2004) and in-group markers from superiors build rapport - positive politeness can <em>soften</em> rather than reflect hierarchy. (3) Cultural specificity: the P/D/R calculus is not universal - some communities prioritise deference regardless of power. (4) Routine and reciprocity: much politeness is conventionalised ritual (Goffman 1967 - face-work as routine maintenance), not a strategic signal at all.<br><br><strong>AO3:</strong> contexts decide - institutional scripts vs peer talk, online vs face-to-face (anonymity shifts politeness), commercial vs social settings.<br><br><strong>Verdict:</strong> politeness is one signal among several, jointly governed by power, distance and imposition - and in commercial and institutional contexts it often performs the opposite function, managing face where power needs no signal.
Explain how electronic mode shapes politeness in computer-mediated communication. Illustrate with examples. [10 marks] (OCR ExamBuilder-style synthesis question)
Answer: <strong>Model hits:</strong> (1) <strong>Affordances:</strong> asynchronous CMC (email, forum) removes turn pressure, so politeness is planned - hedges and deferential modality can be drafted; synchronous CMC (chat) mimics spoken turns, so face-work is rapid and repair visible. (2) <strong>Anonymity and distance:</strong> invisibility lowers face stakes for some - trolling as bald on-record FTAs - while others over-compensate with intensifiers and emoji. (3) <strong>Positive politeness online:</strong> emoji, in-group hashtags and inclusive 'we' perform solidarity in one token; synthetic personalisation ('we picked this for you') manufactures intimacy at commercial scale. (4) <strong>Negative politeness online:</strong> hedged requests ('when you get a chance...') manage the imposition the medium makes visible. (5) <strong>Institutional face repair:</strong> moderation notices and platform warnings as bald on-record speech performing institutional power behind the discourse. A 10-mark answer needs the affordance framework first, then compact illustrations - politeness theory (Brown & Levinson 1987) applied to the medium, not just restated.
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