A Study On Power Relations In Community Correction Discourse

Community correction,as an alternative to conventional imprisonment,plays a vital role in the construction and realization of restorative justice.However,due to the incomplete community correction system and limited methodology,the work of the social worker is still immature.Therefore,to carry out the research of power relations in community correction discourse that can provide a theoretical foundation for the reform and development of China's community correction system is urgent and meaningful.Preliminary assessment is the first step of community correction where social workers obtain information from the corrected.In this phase,the power relations established by language will greatly affect the achievement of institutional purpose.Taking transcriptions of the recordings of 12 cases of this phase as the research object,this thesis devotes to analyzing the power relations in community correction discourse from lexico-grammatical level,discursive level and textual level based on the systemic functional linguistics.Specifically,it mainly focuses on transitivity,mood,modality and theme structures to examine the dynamically changing power relations in the community correction discourse,working on answering three questions:(1)What are the linguistic manifestations of power relations between the social workers and the corrected in community correction discourse?(2)How do power relations change in community correction discourse?(3)What effect do these changes of the power relations have on the social worker's inquiry?This thesis firstly analyzes the power relations hidden in community correction discourse from the lexico-grammatical level.The result shows that in the preliminary assessment stage the social worker uses more interrogatives,more imperatives and more modality of median and low value,while the corrected uses more declaratives and more modality of high value.The extensive employment of interrogatives and imperatives makes the social worker stand at a higher position in the inquiry;on the contrary,the massive declaratives make the corrected quite compliant.The largeamount of modality of low value used by the social worker and the abundant modality of high value employed by the corrected together shorten the power distance between the two parties.And the result of discursive level analysis shows that the social worker can strengthen his dominant position through verbal process and material process,and can avoid enforcing power over the corrected by using existential process instead of material process.The result of textual level analysis shows that the marked theme,the textual theme and the topical theme can help the social worker to lead the inquiry.The interpersonal theme can express the attitude and emotion of the social worker so that it contributes to setting up an affinity relationship between the two parties,and under this situation,the social distance between them is shortened.Finally,this study stresses that asymmetry power relations in community correction discourse will affect the realization of the institutional goal.Therefore,the author points out some irregularities in language used by social workers at work,and proposes a “conversational inquiry” model to give some implications on the practice of the preliminary assessment for the social worker in China.Finally,the author presents the characteristics,limitations of this thesis and suggestions for future study as well.