Status And Power In Verbal Interaction: A Study Of Discourse In A Close-knit Social Network (pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

Status and Power in Verbal Interaction is a sociolinguistic study of conversation in a social context. Using an ethnographic methodology and a network analysis of the social roles and relationships in a particular language community, the book explores how speakers negotiate status, relationship, and ultimately contest power through discourse. Of chief concern to the study is how speakers manage to negotiate relationship roles — which here consists of institutional status as well as the more variable social standing — using conversation. Discourse is seen to be not only what people say, but how they say it — how speakers take the floor, bring new topic to the floor, interrupt each other, and become a resource person in a conversation. The study revolves around the idea that power, while intricately tied to social standing and institutional status, is more than the sum of one’s institutional standing, age, education, race and gender. Though these factors convey rank, conversants nonetheless use discourse to jockey for position and contest their relational role vis-a-vis their discourse partners. While institutional standing may be more or less fixed, power of relational roles fluctuates greatly because, as the study shows, power is accorded through a process of ratifying the positive self-image of a speaker. Thus, one’s standing in a group is a community negotiation. By investigating power in community at a micro-level of analysis, this study adds a new dimension to existing understandings of power. P&BNS 40 STATUS AND POWER IN VERBAL INTERACTION 1 Editorial page 2 Title page 3 Copyright page 4 Table of contents 5 Acknowledgments 8 Chapter One: Introduction 9 1. Goals and overview 9 1.1. The analysis and interpretation of culture 11 1.2. Discourse structure and strategies 13 1.3. Power and status 17 1.3.1. Status and Rank 17 1.3.2. Power and Rank 19 1.4. Conversation and interpersonal meaning 23 2. The dynamics of social activity 24 2.1. Politeness and social relationships 28 3. Data collection and methodology 29 3.1.The community under observation 29 3.2. Suitability for the study 29 3.3. The recordings of the speech situations 30 4. Conclusion 33 Chapter Two: Language in a Social Context 35 1. Language in use 35 1.1. Sociolinguistics: from field linguistics to social class 35 1.2. The ethnography of speaking 38 2. Social networks 40 2.1. Network density 41 2.2. Network multiplexity 42 2.3. Clusters 43 2.4. Network features and linguistic analysis 44 2.5. Networks and codes 45 2.6. Networks and social variables 46 2.7. Networks and methodology 47 3. Network structure of the community 48 3.1. Overview of the community network 48 3.2. Network density and multiplexity 49 3.3. Ranking and status of members 51 3.4. Social variables 52 Chapter Three: Verbal Interaction: Balancing Individual and Group Wants 55 1. Introduction 55 2. Self presentation and group preservation 56 2.1. Face and repair 58 2.2. Lexical and syntactic choices 60 2.3. Pauses and self correction 62 2.4. Defending one's topic 63 3. Politic verbal behavior 65 3.1. Going off-record 67 4. Speech situations and severity of FTAs 71 4.1. Network variables and interaction 72 4.2. Inter cluster interaction 74 4.3. Intracluster interaction 77 4.4. Interaction in formal settings 79 5. Manipulating deference and solidarity strategies 80 5.1. Rhetorical strategies 82 5.2. Solidarity and deference strategies 87 6. Conclusion 89 Chapter Four: The Consensual View of Power inDiscourse 93 1. Turn-taking 93 1.1. Overlapping speech 96 2. Topics 100 3. Topic ratification and refusal 103 3.1. Raising a new topic as an FTA 105 3.2. Bidding for power and speaker insecurity 106 3.3. Rejecting a discourse topic 111 3.4. Withdrawing a discourse topic 114 4. Conclusion 120 4.1. Topic analysis and power 120 4.2. Power as consensual 122 Chapter Five: Conflict and Competition in Discourse 125 1. The nature of conflict 125 1.1. Constraints against conflict 126 1.2. Forms of conflict 127 2. Conflict of relationship roles 129 2.1. Social identities and social organization 129 2.2. Vying for rank and leadership 129 2.3. Metaphorical switching 132 3. Overt conflict 134 3.1. Managing face threats 134 3.2. Speech act as face threat 138 4. Rivalry 141 4.1. Rivalry versus conflict 141 4.2. Rivalry and performance 142 4.3. Competition and cooperation 143 5. Summary 148 Chapter Six: Power and Status in the Community 151 1. Introduction 151 2. Interaction and social identity 153 2.1. Politic behavior 153 2.2. Rhetorical strategies 154 2.3. Topic analysis and power 155 2.4. Conflict and competition 156 3. Implications for power 157 3.1. Power as consensual 159 4. Methodological considerations 161 4.1. Implications for further study 163 Appendix 167 Bibliography 169 Subject Index 181 Author Index 187 Part of the "Pragmatics and Beyond" series, this text covers such topics as language in a social context, the consensual view of power in discourse, and power and status in the community. __Status and Power in Verbal Interaction__