ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on approaches in language analysis to devise a means of finding evidence of empowerment in conversational data. Empowerment processes can originate within the internalised sense of 'power' as individuals are no longer inhibited by the belief that they are powerless and begin to actively realise their own power. It considers the internalised component of the empowerment model which is manifest in individuals' perspectives. The process of perspective change can be understood within the theory of transformative learning. 'Perspective' is understood through the linguistic concept of 'stance', or the act of 'stance-taking'.The application of this theory of empowerment to a healthcare intervention maintained that distinction and adopted a discourse analysis approach. Corpus linguistics allows to conduct large-scale analysis which is particularly useful when applied in lexicography and language learning. 'Self-efficacy' was referred to in a number of concept analyses of 'empowerment'.
