Language And Power: A Critical Study Of Authoritative Discourse

Where there is more than one creature, there is difference in dominance. And human beings make no exception. With the development of society and economy, the communication between people is becoming more and more frequent, and more and more people are inevitable to be involved in the huge network of power or dominance, which presents hierarchy of social power. What makes difference is that animals claim their positions by fighting, while humans possess the unique feature of speaking, by which social status is clearly exhibited. Thus, power relationship is mainly reflected and adjusted by language.The thesis adopts the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and makes use of the linguistic theories to analyze the implicit relationship of power and dominance. Meanwhile, it regards the relationship between language, power and ideology as the major objects of research.The concern of the thesis is that in discursive activities what represents power and how it influences people's thoughts and behaviors. The thesis contains both macro- and micro-levels of analysis. The macro-level is concerning about the framework of methodology. Based on Fairclough's three-dimensional model and van Dijk's discourse-cognition-society, the thesis presents an integrated framework suitable for the study. And the micro-level concentrates on analyzing the linguistic features of concrete discourses, which takes Halliday's Functional Linguistics as the analytical tool.Any discourse implies the meaning and intention of a speaker. And authoritative discourse, as an important and more powerful type of discourse, comes into our sight of research, which can highlight the effects of power in discursive practice. The data chosen in the thesis cover both written and spoken discourses, and take authority into consideration. Through the analysis of the notices and letters given by the institutional organization and the scripts of American TV series"House M. D.", the thesis reveals that discursive activity is influenced by ideology and power is manifested as giant dominance because of the huge social hierarchy behind it.