Power And Discourse

Institutional talk has been defined as a kind of specific talk different from ordinary communicative conversation. Unlike that in communicative conversation, in institutional encounters what people say and how they say it is influenced by the interplay between their interactional and discursive role and their institutional identity and status.Among the many approaches to institutional talk, the critical discourse analysis opens scope for a contextual and comprehensive study of institutional interaction. The concept of power and the relationship between discourse and power is the focus of the present study. Based on Norman Fairclough's (1989, 1992, 1995) finding, which argues that all forms of discourse are determined by sets of institutional conventions, which are in turn shaped by wider social relations of power, I further illustrate in this thesis that language-use plays a critical role in the attainment or the exercise of power. The notion of power in this thesis is seen as the measure of one's ability or inability to obtain or maintain objectives through discourse. This is identified through my analysis of courtroom interaction between attorneys and witnesses. In courtroom cross-examination, the adversary attorney takes the most advantage of his institutional power to manipulate the witnesses' testimony through linguistic devices. These three primary methods of attorneys for achieving witness control are: insistence on role integrity; control of the agenda; and most importantly, selection of question type both to narrow the choice of answers, and to allow the examiner, not respondent, to phrase the evidence.The findings achieved in this study have both theoretical and practical implication for understanding institutional talks and the case study of courtroom questioning will also offer some insight into the strategies of courtroom questioning.