16.2946, Review: Discourse/Pragmatics: Grillo (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2946. Wed Oct 12 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2946, Review: Discourse/Pragmatics: Grillo (2005)

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1)
Date: 10-Oct-2005
From: Lelija Socanac < lelija at hazu.hr >
Subject: Power Without Domination 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 00:51:25
From: Lelija Socanac < lelija at hazu.hr >
Subject: Power Without Domination 
 

EDITOR: Grillo, Eric
TITLE: Power Without Domination
SUBTITLE: Dialogism and the empowering property of communication
SERIES: Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 12
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-1145.html 

Lelija Socanac, Linguistic Research Institute, Croatian Academy of 
Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, Croatia

INTRODUCTION

The book is a collection of papers that were first presented at the 
Seventh International Pragmatics Conference (Budapest, July 2000) 
as contributions to the panel on "Mental and Social Representations 
of Power as Discursive Constraints" organized by E. Grillo. 

OVERVIEW

During the past few decades, major theorists have shown that 
discourse is closely intertwined with power, a claim that is nowadays 
widely agreed upon in the field of Discourse Analysis. The 
contributions aim at bringing new insights into the discursive 
dimension of power by: 
1) Challenging the reductive conceptions of discourse and power; 
2) Questioning other forms of power relations that may lead to mutual 
empowerment rather than to mere domination; and 
3) Focusing on the dialogical dimension of communication. 

The book is divided into two main parts, each one consisting of three 
chapters. The first part: "Discourse and Power in Dialogical 
Perspective: Theoretical Foundations" brings together the 
contributions which focus on some of the main theoretical aspects, 
while the second: "Dialogical Constraints of Verbal Interactions: In 
Search of Empirical Evidence" assembles the contributions which aim 
to present relevant empirical data. 

In Chapter 1: "Two Dogmas of Discourse Analysis", Eric Grillo 
provides the shared theoretical framework, following Jacques's (1979) 
seminal work in the field of philosophy of language that 
emphasizes "dialogical strategies" as discursive strategies in which 
new shared knowledge is produced as a result of collaboration of 
communicating partners. The chapter discusses the "reductive" 
character of the classical Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) thesis that 
focuses exclusively on discourses taking place in situations in which 
the agents are assigned fixed (asymmetrical) roles, and opens a 
space for reflection about the possible opposition that can be traced 
between domination and empowerment, widening the scope of what is 
usually described as "power relations". Grillo shows how the usual 
conceptions of discourse and power (as domination) often fail to 
account for situations in which a strong dialogical constraint creates a 
communicative context in which new shared knowledge is produced 
as a result of the collaboration of communicative partners. According 
to the author, the relevant model of power in co-operative contexts 
should be a participative one. While the agonistic model reduces 
power to domination, the participative model equates it with 
empowerment.  The main conclusion of the contribution is that the 
agonistic dimension of discourse derives from its being, first and 
foremost, an instrument of communication. In other words, "discourse 
could not be used as a instrument of power if it were not, by its very 
nature, an instrument of communication".

Chapters Two and Three partly undertake to account for the agonistic 
dimension within the conceptual framework of the dialogical 
conception. They show that two important linguistic devices 
(metaphors and euphemisms respectively) that are often described as 
being power-oriented actually play a prominent role in the creation of 
new shared knowledge and mutual understanding. 

In Chapter 2: 'Discussion as a war'? Metaphor and/in discourse -- 
>From semantics to pragmatics, Guy Achard-Bayle analyses different 
uses of metaphor in interpersonal relationships. On the one hand, 
conceptual metaphors can work as powerful means of domination, but 
on the other, they are also efficient means of creating new shared 
knowledge within the community of those who use and understand 
them. In the examples, which are mostly based on 
Diderot's "Entretiens" and "Dialogues", these two kinds of use of 
metaphors often combine in the course of a given interaction. The 
analysis focuses on different but complementary conversational 
strategies leading from contradiction to reconciliation. The conclusion 
is that metaphor works in a highly synthetic way to combine points of 
view, surpass contradictions and to create new representations of 
entities and events. "Metaphor both splits up and reconstitutes the 
meaning of entities which make up the world and fill discourse". The 
contribution thus brings to light the cognitive and discursive 
mechanisms of the interplay of the agonistic and dialogical dimensions 
of verbal interactions.

In Chapter 3: "Euphemism and co-operation in discourse" Ana 
Margarida Abrantes analyses the role of euphemism as a linguistic 
tool to convey indirect "forbidden" meanings. The main result of her 
analysis consists in the distinction she introduces between official and 
conventional euphemism, the latter being based on discourse co-
operation, whereas the former is not. Official euphemism, often seen 
within the framework of 'political correctness', enforces the 
asymmetrical power relations because one discourse partner has 
direct access to information and the other only attains it through the 
first one's version. Semantic co-operation is not ensured in this case 
because the relation between the word or phrase and the referent is 
not clear to one of the discourse partners. On the other hand, 
conventional euphemism allows the partners equal access to 
information as well as their monitoring of the discursive processes.

Part Two: "Dialogical Constraints on Verbal Interaction: In Search of 
Empirical Evidence" moves from theory to contributions based on 
empirical data. 

In Chapter 4: "Pragmatic goals and communicative strategies in 
journalistic discourse under censorship", Lioudmila Savinitch analyses 
the so-called "Aesopian Language," bringing to light how "underlying 
ideas" can be conveyed and grasped through specific discursive 
devices showing that semantic innovation and social empowerment 
may paradoxically result from discursive reactions to dominance. 
Aesopian language properties, such as contextual synonyms, 
conventional words, periphrases, irony, euphemisms, lacunae, 
analogy, metonymy etc. were used strategically to conceal the names, 
notions and facts which were officially undesirable or forbidden. Thus 
the self-control which Russian journalists were forced to exercise led 
them to the invention of new linguistic devices that were shared both 
by journalists themselves and their readers, creating new shared 
knowledge within the social community. In her analysis, the author 
focuses on censorship and various strategies to circumvent it during 
the period of tsarist Russia. It would be interesting, however, to 
compare the results with the analogous discursive practices during the 
Soviet period, i.e. after the power relations described in the article had 
radically changed.

In Chapter 5 "Read me that sentence": From social and 
methodological conceptions to the real exercise of power relations in 
the classroom", Filomena Capucho studies examples of classroom 
verbal interactions in the context of foreign language learning as an 
example of institutional discourse, focusing on the way in which the 
conception of power-as-domination influences the teachers' 
discourse. The institutional conception of power as domination often 
amounts to the creation of contradictions between what is said to be 
done and what is actually done in the classroom context. According to 
the author, given an effective change has occurred, the discourse 
produced both by the teacher and by the learners will demonstrate a 
move from the institutionalized ritual, where the actors are socially 
assigned fixed asymmetrical places and strictly follow coercive rules, 
to a free co-operative process allowing semantic innovation and the 
common production of new shared knowledge according to the free 
will of the participants. New methodologies of language learning 
should be developed based on the recognition of the dialogical 
dimension of meaning-giving activities and of the efficiency of the 
participative model of power in the classroom context. 

Chapter 6: "Power and knowledge: How can rationality emerge from 
children's interactions in a problem-solving situation?" addresses the 
domination vs. empowerment dilemma in the context of cognitive and 
developmental psychology. In this essay, Christine Sorsana and 
Michel Musiol examine the emergence and the role of power relations 
among 6-8 year-old-children in a problem-solving situation, paying 
particular attention to the interplay of the interpersonal relationships 
and the cognitive management of the problem-solving task. As the 
results show, there is a close connection between the cognitive 
management of the logical aspects of the problem, and the nature of 
the relation between children: "affinitive dyads" performances were 
generally better than those of "unaffinitve dyads", which is explained 
by the overcoming or weakening of power relations 
between "affinitive" dyads. 

To conclude: according to the E. Grillo, the results of the contributions 
show that: 1) discourse is accounted for better when conceived of as 
an interpersonal practice, rather than a mere personal activity, 2) 
power cannot be reduced to domination, but often amounts to mutual 
empowerment, and 3) the relationships between partners in 
communication turn out to be of mutual dependence rather than sub-
ordination. The Dialogical Model assumes the primacy of the relational 
over the conflicting aspects of human interactions, grounded in the 
conviction that language is not to be thought of as a power 
technology, but as a medium for communication, that is a co-operative 
process aiming at mutual understanding by means of the expression, 
the critical discussion and the overcoming of the oppositions it allows 
for. The dialogical perspective allows us to focus on the empowering 
property of communication that results from genuine co-operative 
strategies and behaviors that have cognitive, social and practical 
outcomes.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

The contributions in this volume are rather heterogeneous in their 
subject matter, but a common thread -- a cooperative model of 
communication that sees power in terms of empowerment rather than 
domination -- brings them together. Compared to the main tenets of 
the Critical Discourse Analysis, one has the impression that the foci 
of the new approach are aspects of communication which are less 
problematic and need less "decoding" than those explored by CDA 
theorists in their effort to integrate the study of discourse with the 
wider social framework, focusing on the changing nature of power 
relations and ideology as the representation of 'the world' from the 
perspective of a particular interest (Fairclough 1995). The dialogical 
model advocated in this volume, with its emphasis on communicative 
cooperation and empowerment, however, is a welcome theoretical 
contribution to the growing field of discourse analysis.

REFERENCES

Arendt, H. (1972) "Sur la violence", in: Du mensonge à la violence, 
105-187. Paris: Calmann-Levy. 

Dijk, T. A. van (ed.) (1997) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary 
Introduction, 2 vols. London: Sage.

Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power, London: Longman.

Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of 
Language, London: Longman.

Foucault, M. (1994) L'Étique souci de soi comme pratique de la 
liberté, in: Dits et Ecrits, Vol 3, 418-428. Paris: Gallimard. 

Grillo, E. (2000) Intentionnalité et significance: une approche 
dialogique. Bern: Peter Lang.

Jacques, F. (1979) Dialogiques I, recherches logiques sur le dialogue, 
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. 

Lakoff, G.; Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago: 
Chicago University Press. 

Wodak, R. (1989) Language, Power and ideology, Amsterdam: 
Benjamins. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Lelija Socanac is a researcher at the Linguistic Research Institute, 
Zagreb, Croatia. She is currently directing the project 
entitled "Croatian in Contact with European Languages". Her research 
interests include contact linguistics, sociolinguistics and discourse 
analysis.





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