The Realization Of Institutional Power In MA Student Supervision

Classroom discourse, as an important part of institutional discourses, has draw many linguists’ attention in the past decades. Many researchers do a lot of studies on it from various perspectives, including Critical Discourse Analysis, Conversation Analysis, Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics, etc. However, among these studies, most of them concentrate on the discourse or interaction of primary school, high school and college classroom but seldom on supervisor-student discourse of graduate school. Therefore, this thesis will analyze the supervisor-student discourse to find out some distinctiveness.Foucault (1977,1980) extends the conceptualization of power as practice, as a productive process rather than simply a repressive phenomenon, and thus observable in its manifestations at every level. So if we want to consider how some forms of language use might be "powerful", we can look at how this power is instantiated in talk, because it is formed right at the point where power is exercised. At the same time, CA and its analytical tools developed by Sacks, Schegloff (1974) provide us a scientific way to examine the interactional features.As a result, by using the research method of studying discourse and power proposed by Thornborrow (2002) which draws on the idea of Foucoult, Conversation Analysis and Hugh Mehan’s discursive roles, this thesis intends to do a detailed analysis of the supervisor-student interaction of graduate school in which the author mainly focuses on how the supervisor uses her discursive resources to realize her institutional power by combing the "bottom-up" and "top-down" perspectives together.The data of this thesis comes from the regular discussion between the supervisor and her two students. The supervisor assigned two books every month for the students and each month they came to an office to have a discussion on these two books.In the analysis part, this thesis mainly examines the discursive roles of the supervisor in turn-initiation, turn-termination, turn-sequencing, turn-yielding and turn-claiming to see if they are consistent with the institutional identity that she has. The thesis finally found that the supervisor generally realizes her institutional power by initiating, terminating turns, proposing questions and giving evaluations as a turn-initiator, turn-terminator questioner and evaluator which are consistent with the institutional identity as a supervisor. However, during the process of discussion, the supervisor usually listens to the students’ opinions patiently, seldom nominates or claims a turn initiatively. In this case, she puts herself in a less powerful position as a listener or an equal participant with the students. In a word, the supervisor in this specific case realizes her institutional power in both overt and covert ways which create a relaxed and free environment for the students to produce opinions and communicate with one another.Based on the actual interaction data of an institution, this thesis explores how the supervisor uses her discursive resources to realize her institutional power. It does not only enrich the research method of institutional discourse studies, but also sets out some implications for supervisor-student interaction practice, provide insights into this specific interaction format and thus help the supervisor and students to understand the interaction process more clearly and communicate with each other effectively.