ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the power relations between speakers in such contexts can be analysed through the language they use. It shows how speakers draw on linguistic resources in different ways, depending on their different and unequal institutional status. Every time people interact they enact, reproduce and sometimes resist (institutional) power relationships through language. Studying these power relationships has been central to the analysis of institutional discourse, and particularly to the analysis of the asymmetrical distribution of speaker rights and obligations. Power in spoken discourse according to Critical Discourse Analysis is therefore expressed by the more powerful person in an institutional setting constraining the contributions of the less powerful participant(s). In institutional interactions, a less powerful speaker may use ambiguous or vague utterances to deal with the more powerful person, but the latter may demand ‘discoursal disambiguation’ by asking the speaker to make their statements less ambivalent.
