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A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Power Relationships in Institutional Talks

As a special form of conversation, the institutional talk has been described as characteristically asymmetrical in contrast to the ordinary conversational interaction between participants of equal status. On the basis of Fairclough’s three-dimensional CDA analytical model, the present study concentrates on the complex and invisible power relationships between the participants by probing into the grammatical features and the interactional conventions in institutional talks. Findings show that there are unequal power relationships between the participants in the talks. This study concludes by discussing the implications of the findings and proposing the suggestions for future research. Keywords—institutional talk; power relationship; critical discourse analysis


INTRODUCTION
Conversation is playing an increasingly important role in human's daily communication and it "is all-pervasive and is by far the commonest use of language" [1]. Conversation analysis (hereafter CA), which originated from sociology in 1960s, has developed into an independent field of study through the joint efforts of Harvey Sacks as well as Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. At the very beginning, CA focuses on the study of social interaction in ordinary conversations, but gradually it has been applied to the study of various forms of institutional talks, ranging from courtroom interaction [2] [3], news interviews [4], business meetings [5], doctor-patient communications [6] [7] to workplace interaction [8]. Therefore, institutional talks may occur in such physical settings as hospitals, courtrooms, companies or schools, but they are not restricted to these contexts. Actually, the institutionality of an interaction is determined by participants' institutional or professional identities instead of its setting. The institutional talk has been described as "characteristically asymmetrical" [9] in contrast to the ordinary conversational interaction between participants of equal status. Although the distinction between these two forms of talk (either institutional or noninstitutional) may be oversimplified, the nature of institutionality can serve as a basis for the present study, which will critically analyse the power relationships between the participants in three institutional talks.

II. ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
Drawing from linguistic and social theories, critical discourse analysis (here after CDA), which emerged from critical linguistics developed by Fowler et al. [10], is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse that views language as a form of "social practice" [11] and considers the context of language use to be significant. Founded on the idea that there is unequal access to linguistic and social resources which are controlled institutionally, CDA aims to examine ideologies and power relations involved in the discourse with its ultimate goal to change or stop the social or political problem of inequality.
The CDA approach to discourse analysis is best illustrated by Fairclough's three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis: "Description is the stage which is concerned with formal properties of the text. Interpretation is concerned with the relationship between text and interaction-with seeing the text as the product of a process of production, and as a resource in the process of interpretation. Explanation is concerned with the relationship between interaction and social context-with the social determination of the processes of production and interpretation, and their social effects." [12] This model emphasizes "the relationship between texts, interactions, and contexts" [12]. At the stage of description, Fairclough lists ten questions concerning vocabulary, grammar and textual structures and distinguishes three kinds of value (experiential, relational, and expressive) that formal features may have. The analysis at the stage of interpretation focuses on the cognitive processes of participants while it is relationships between transitory social events at the stage of explanation.

III. ANALYZING THE POWER RELATIONSHIPS IN INSTITUTIONAL TALKS
As mentioned in Section 2, this part will focus on the power relationships in three examples of institutional talks by analyzing the modes of sentences and turn-taking systems on the basis of Fairclough's three-dimensional CDA analytical model.

A. Analysis of Text One
Text Among the listeners, FO answers the question immediately as soon as he realizes that he takes charge of this, which suggests that the speaker (GM) exerts his control over the next turn in the way of leaving the listener (FO) to self-select. Other talks except GM-CC talk have similar turn-taking Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 378 systems as the GM-FO talk. In the GM-CC talk, CC first expresses his opinion on lines 9-10, which caught the GM's attention and then GM asks him a question on line 11 (who went with him then). Next, GM starts another topic on line 13 pointing to CC. Another interesting thing is that GM gives feedback about the listener's responses (e.g. line 6 okay good, line 13 right thanks, line 16 good, etc.) and then starts a new topic, which indicates GM has the power to comment and control the topic. Besides, the opening and closing are initiated by the dominant speaker (GM).
When it comes to the modes of sentence, declaratives, grammatical questions and imperatives are all employed by the chair GM in this text. Grammatical questions are most frequently used to indicate that the speaker is asking for information and the addressee must provide information (e.g. line 3 any news on his condition from the hospital, line 11 who went with him then, etc.). Declaratives are used to give information but here indicate the speaker's requirements (e.g. line 6 I need to be kept informed, line 24 let's plan for it happening, etc.). Imperatives are used to indicate the speaker's demand for action (e.g. lines 6-7 make sure that you keep me up to date on this one). The asymmetrical power relations between the participants are clearly presented in the analysis.

B. Analysis of Text Two
Text Text two is about a Hong Kong TV panel discussion between three participants, TV host and two guests. In the opening turn of the discussion, the TV host presents the background and then exerts the control over the next turn in the form of constraining the next speaker by addressing his name (e.g. ). That's to say, two guests don't have the right to selfselect and they can speak only when they are asked to. As for the topic of the discussion, it's determined by the TV host, which suggests that he has more power. Besides, two guests are both interrupted by the host during their talk (e.g. line 10 alright but is it possible to avoid this question, line 23 right/mm, etc.). As a matter of fact, there are two different reasons of the interruption: on the one hand, the host wants to show solidarity with the guest by using the markers (right, mm, yeah, uhuh, etc.) to suggest that "I am listening"; on the other hand, he wants to control the guests' contribution and forces them to make their meaning clear and unambiguous by asking line-10 question (is it possible to avoid this question). And the host repeats the same or similar questions in different turns (e.g. lines 4-5 who's the senior partner who's the junior partner, line 33 take the lead, line 44 take the lead), which indicates his control over the topic and tries to lead the guests to his focus. When it comes to opening and closing, it's the host who opens and closes the discussion.
In this text, the host asks many grammatical questions (e.g. lines 4-5 who's the senior partner who's the junior partner, line 10 is it possible to avoid this question, line 35 can you give an example, etc.), which requests the addressee to provide the information. Declaratives are mainly used by the guests to give the information that the host requests. It can be found that guest B provides more information (more turns) than guest C, which seems to indicate that guest B may be more authoritative and hence more powerful than guest C. No imperatives can be found in this discussion.

C. Analysis of Text Three
Text  Text three is about a job interview in the local government department in UK with three participants, Interviewers S & K and Interviewee C. In the opening turn, Interviewer S initiates the conversation by directly asking the interviewee a question (line 1 have you got a copy of the job description with you), which indicates his control over the next turn in the form of selecting or constraining the next speaker in that Interviewee C is the only addressee in this situation. Interruption happens many times by both the interviewer and interviewee. On line 3 (do you want to have another look), the interviewer interrupts in order to control the interviewee's contributions, but the interviewee has no choice but to accept (line 5 thank you very much). On line 17 (yes when you say a small group excuse me interrupting you), the interviewee interrupts the interviewer in order to clarify something, but he apologises immediately when he realises his inappropriate interruption. There are some other interruptions by the interviewee (e.g. line 30 yes, etc.) which indicates he wants to show his understanding of what the interviewer is talking about. Moreover, the interviewers talk the most and have most turns, controlling the topic development, whereas the interviewee has less and short turns (e.g. line 8 yes, line 11 mhm, line 13 yeah, etc.), simply following the interviewer's topics. The interview ends up with another interviewer's turn (line 48 fine).
In this job interview, most grammatical questions are asked directly by the interviewers (e.g. line 1 have you got a copy of the job description with you, line 3 do you want to have another look) and few are initiated by the interviewee (e.g. line 19 how many are you talking about) to ask for clarification in a very polite way. Declaratives are frequently used in this text by the interviewers to show their request for information and demand an action of the interviewee through employing such sentence patterns as emphatic construction and conditionals (e.g. line 6 what I wanted to do was..., line 9 if you want me to...). And there is no imperative employed in this text.

IV. CONCLUSION
Drawing on Fairclough's CDA analytical model, the present study has critically analyzed the modes of sentences and turn-taking systems in the data and concludes that there are unequal power relationships between the participants in institutional talks. In light of the above-analyzed three texts, major findings are summarized as follows.
Firstly, all three texts can be classified as institutional talks, for the institutional interaction involves "an orientation by at least one of the participants to some core goal, task or identity (or set of them) conventionally associated with the institution in question" [9]. General Manager in text one, TV host in text two and interviewers in text three are all representatives of certain institutions (hotel, TV station, and local government department), and these identities contribute to their dominant roles in these talks.
Secondly, the dominant speakers in institutional talks all attempt to exert their control over the next turn in the forms of selecting or constraining the next speaker or simply leaving the listener to self-select [13], which indicates that turn-taking rights are not equal in the communication between unequal participants. In other words, the turn-taking systems in the institutional interaction are quite different from that in casual conversation.
Finally, different modes of sentences can help illustrate unequal power relationships between participants in that "systematic asymmetries in the distribution of modes between participants are important in terms of participant relations" [11]. Specifically, declaratives, imperatives and grammatical questions perform different functions of positioning the participants by presenting their different values (asking for information, demanding an action, and the like) in different contexts.
To sum up, CDA is an effective approach to disclose the relationship between language and power in the institutional talk, but the analysis here is by no means the end. As is mentioned above, the present study just focuses on the modes of sentences and turn-taking systems. Therefore, future studies could be devoted to other aspects, such as inference, presupposition, speech acts, to further investigate the power relationships between participants in institutional talks.