Investigation #11 Discourse and Power

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) emphasizes the role of language in society. It suggests that all linguistic characters are inherently part of and influenced by social structure, and are produced in social interaction. Therefore, it chiefly concerns the social problems and political issues, rather purely an individual action.

Written text predominantly available in library discourse, deploy significant social reproduction in an institutional extent. In this investigation, I will apply the knowledge of CDA to analyze the relationship among discourse, cognition and society reflected upon a leaflet about “How to reserve library materials through the Internet”.

First, I would discuss the concepts of macro and micro theoretical framework of the social order found in this leaflet. Second, I would focus on the social power induced in the institutional setting. And third, I would draw the conclusion of how social order is reflected in and constituted by the text.

Macro vs. Micro framework of Discursive Practice

In a micro level of social order, the discursive practice of guiding readers to follow the instruction denotes how library administrative party produces and how library users follow the steps listed on the written guidelines. This analysis must also be complemented with macro level in order to know the power and dominance posed by an institutional body. The library written guideline is a discourse at the micro level of social interaction between library officers and public library readers. At the same time, it may be a constituent part of institutional regulation or the reproduction of official hegemony, under Leisure and Cultural Service Department, at the macro level.

Power as Control

Dominant group owning more social power means they are more able to control the acts and minds of members of other groups. Take the library as an example, as it contains the authoritative power, in which represents a subsidiary from government, its perceived power is built upon its authority, rather than money, information, or knowledge, in this public discourse. In this practice, the guideline, or to say it as a general consensus, is believed to be the influential power from the library as a dominant group.

We have recognized that the institutional power largely lie upon the library administrative party as the dominant group. Now, let us closely examine how this group controls the public discourse, and what the social consequences are from such control.

Here we regard the library instruction discourse as active control over public library users. Ordinary public users are passive targets of the guidelines. They are shaped to interact within the controlling discourse. To spell the production explicitly, it is the way when they want to reserve library materials through the internet, they follow the topics, lexical items and specific words described from the guidelines. For example, the direct order verb of “Select, Choose, Enter, Note”. Then they perceive the text by applying their mental knowledge of accessing the home page of public library at http://www.hkpl.gov.hk.

The library instruction reproduces dominance and a certain degree of hegetomy, meanwhile, its mind control towards public users can be divided in three aspects. First, readers see the rules as authoritative. Second, the instruction discourse is also interpreted as institutional authors. Third, users seldom challenge the discourse information.

In conclusion, power and dominance are associated with this institutional domain. The guideline, rule and regulation form the background of the everyday discursive reproduction of power in such library domain. Therefore, the readers are highly dependent on institutional power.