Language and power: instrumental and influential power, occupational and institutional discourse, synthetic personalisation (Fairclough), face and politeness, and analysing how power is constructed in interaction (AO2 and AO3 in H470/02).

What this dot point is asking

Power runs through all the social-group strands of Component 02: who controls a conversation, who is positioned by a text, how institutions speak to individuals. The marks come from analysing how power is constructed in language, using concepts such as instrumental and influential power, synthetic personalisation and politeness, deployed critically. This dot point covers the types of power, occupational and institutional discourse, and how to analyse power in interaction and texts (AO2 and AO3, on a foundation of AO1).

The answer

A language-and-power answer succeeds when it analyses how power is constructed in the data (AO1), explains it with concepts deployed critically (AO2), and reads the context and relationship (AO3). The unifying idea is that power is made in language, not merely reflected: a teacher's authority, an advert's pull, a form's officialdom are built through specific choices, and the task is to read the construction, including any resistance to it.

Types of power

Two distinctions frame the analysis, and naming them is the AO2 foundation.

• Instrumental power. Power held by virtue of role or institution: a teacher over pupils, a judge in court, a manager over staff. It is enacted through control of the discourse.
• Influential power. Power exercised through persuasion and influence rather than authority: advertising, political rhetoric, the media. It works by positioning and convincing rather than commanding.
• Power in discourse versus power behind discourse. The immediate control of an interaction versus the broader social power that shapes who gets to control it.

How power is constructed in interaction

In spoken data, power shows in the structure of the conversation:

• Control of the discourse. Who initiates topics, who interrupts, who allocates turns, who asks and who answers questions.
• Face and politeness. Face-threatening acts (commands, criticisms) and the politeness strategies that mitigate them; the more powerful participant can threaten face more freely.
• Mood and modality. Imperatives and high-certainty modality assert authority; interrogatives can control or invite.

Power in texts: synthetic personalisation

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.

Read resistance, not just dominance

A common weakness is to analyse only the powerful participant. Power is negotiated: the less powerful may resist through non-compliance, humour, silence or challenge. Reading the resistance as well as the dominance shows that power in discourse is contested, not simply imposed.

Examples in context

The data in the exam is unseen, so the moves below are illustrative.

A model interaction paragraph. "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.

A model text paragraph. "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.

Try this

Q1. What is the difference between instrumental and influential power? [2 marks]

• Cue. Instrumental power is held by role or authority (teacher, judge); influential power is exercised through persuasion and influence (advertising, media).

Q2. What is synthetic personalisation? [2 marks]

• Cue. Fairclough's concept for the way institutions and media simulate a personal, one-to-one relationship with a mass audience through inclusive address and a conversational register, exercising influential power.

Q3. Analyse and evaluate how power is created and maintained through language in the data. [16 marks]

• What the marker wants. Analysis of how power is constructed (control of discourse, face, modality, synthetic personalisation) using the concepts critically (AO2), read in context (AO3) and grounded in features (AO1), including resistance, not just dominance.

A note on the concepts

This guide is AI-written and not individually human-reviewed. The power concepts and theorists named here are standard for H470; confirm the expected coverage against the current specification and your centre's materials. Always analyse how language constructs power, and read it as negotiated rather than simply imposed.