A Study On Adaptation Of Authoritative Discourse In Intercultural Communication

Hofstede develops cultural value dimensions, one of which is power distance. Power distance classifies cultures on a continuum of high-to low-power distance. The premise of the dimension deals with the extent to which a society accepts that power in relationships, institutions, and organizations is distributed unequally. Members of high power distance regard power as the fundamental factor of society in which coercion and coercive power should be highlighted. However, members of low power distance believe that power should be legitimately exerted, expert power and legitimate power should be recognized. Thus it is no doubt that power is ubiquitous though the degree of acceptance may be different. Then when members of the high-to low-power distance interact, conflicts in language would be distinct.The current study is a qualitative pragmatic analysis based on Jef Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory and Hofstede's Power Distance. The author analyzes the English data collected from intercultural communication (IC) to explain how language choices and strategies are adopted to adapt power. The present study aims to testify that power does exist in the process of IC and is consciously used by communicators to achieve communicative goals.The present study collects data from English movies, TV series, internet and other books. With the language property of variability, adaptability and negotiability, linguistic choices are made consciously to adapt institutional and contextual power in IC.The present study discovers how communicators use power sources to communicate and how power relation influences language choices. The present study provides a new factor and view to the research of IC.