Power In Discourse: An Approach Through Public Speech

Discourse is an interaction between social beings, which reveals their unequal relationship, i.e. power relationship. And discourse is intertwined with power. This thesis looks at the discourse of a public speech from seven perspectives, personal pronouns, presupposition, vocabulary, metaphor, idealization, modality and structure. Power is found to be exercised by these linguistic devices. It is sneaky and pervasive and awareness of it needs to enhanced for the eventual liberation of the oppressed.