Quick questions on Language, power and occupation: power in discourse - OCR A-Level English Language

In texts addressing an audience, Fairclough's synthetic personalisation is central: institutions and media use the language of personal, one-to-one relationship (inclusive "you" and "we") to address a mass audience, simulating intimacy and trust to exercise influential power. Presupposition embeds the institution's assumptions as given. Reading these strategies is a high-value AO2 move.

"The interviewer's instrumental power is enacted through control of the discourse: they initiate every topic, ask all the questions, and allocate turns, while the candidate is reactive throughout. The interviewer's bare imperatives and unmitigated face-threatening directives ('tell me about a weakness') would be impolite between equals but are licensed by the asymmetrical setting, so the politeness pattern itself encodes the power difference, and the candidate's hedged, deferential replies accept the asymmetry." This reads the construction of instrumental power.

"The energy company's letter exercises influential power through synthetic personalisation: the repeated 'you' and 'we' and the apparent concern ('we know how important this is to you') simulate a personal relationship with a mass customer base, building the trust needed to manage a price rise. The presupposition in 'as you know' embeds the company's framing as shared knowledge, exercising influence by leaving its assumptions unchallenged." This reads synthetic personalisation and presupposition.

What is the difference between instrumental and influential power? [2 marks]

What is synthetic personalisation? [2 marks]

Analyse and evaluate how power is created and maintained through language in the data. [16 marks]