23.1532, FYI: Expression of Inequality: Power, Dominance, Status

Tue Mar 27 14:12:28 UTC 2012

LINGUIST List: Vol-23-1532. Tue Mar 27 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.1532, FYI: Expression of Inequality: Power, Dominance, Status

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Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:11:37
From: Rainer Schulze [raischulze at gmx.de]
Subject: Expression of Inequality: Power, Dominance, Status

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Call for papers Expression of Inequality in Interaction: Power, 
Dominance, and Status
Eds. H. Pishwa & R. Schulze

Goal: 
The goal of the present volume is to promote our understanding of 
power and dominance in language, its use and effect. Linguistically, 
this yields two questions. One of these is whether there are linguistic 
elements with inherent functions of power, i.e. whether they can be 
considered to intermediate power in all contexts as has been shown in 
some fields of research, e.g. studies on politeness and gender 
language as well as in experiments by social psychologists. The 
second question is which more flexible linguistic structures there are 
that can convey power in certain constellations without an inherent 
notion of power, i.e. the way conceptual and schematic information 
about dominance, power, and status is expressed in authentic 
communication. This means that the reading of power in these 
structures is dependent on the context, an important and complex 
target of investigation with the issue of variable factors. On the one 
hand, our goal is, then, to aspire towards a systematic account of 
linguistic resources carrying power - either inherently or due to context 
- in authentic communication, whereby the urgent question is: What 
are the factors that help to identify dominance, power, and status? On 
the other hand, we aim at revealing more about the relationship 
between language, contextual factors and compliance. 

Power and inequality:

We define the concept of dominance as something being established, 
asserted and maintained by a single interactant or a group of 
interactants vis à vis other individual interactants or a group of 
interactants, with the implicit or explicit aim to make the other individual 
interactants or groups of interactants perform some desired behaviour 
they might otherwise not perform (Wilson 2002: 4) and thus to 
establish, assert and maintain structural and/or cultural inequalities 
(thus constituting a more or less stable rank order or hierarchy) within 
a particular encounter, speech community or between different speech 
communities through particular linguistic displays.

Participants and methodology:

The manifold issues of empirical and non-empirical research work in 
linguistics, social psychology, sociology, communication studies and 
psychology are the target of the proposed volume which, in addition, 
provokes a question central to all the contributions to this enterprise: 
How are aspects of linguistic and/or behavioural inequality conveyed 
by linguistic expressions, or how does English or any other language 
develop specific devices for the expression of conceptual and/or 
schematic aspects of dominance, power and status? Which 
constellations of language and contextual factors make the addressee 
comply?

Methodology and theoretical issues: 

Qualitative and quantitative studies in: 
Cognitive linguistics
Mental spaces & blending
Markedness theory/prototype theory
Critical discourse analysis
Gender linguistics
Politeness vs. assertiveness 
Issues and experiments in social psychology
Communication studies

Material: 

Authentic discourse in different contexts
Media discourse 
Persuasive discourse
Tests and experiments 
Etc. 

Please send your abstract by May 31 to rainer.schulze at engsem.uni-
hannover.de and hanna at pishwa.de. 

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis

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