The Role of Power in Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis considers how language, both spoken and written, enacts social and cultural perspectives and identities. Actually this research presents both a theory of language-in-use and a method of research by pointing to the role of power in this regard. Clearly discourse analysis incorporates perspectives from a variety of approaches and disciplines, including applied linguistics, education, psychology, anthropology, communication and in the widespread area of research, power. In this research examining some of the relationships between discourse and social power after a brief theoretical analysis of these relationships would be inevitable. Although we draw upon studies of power in several disciplines, our major perspective is found in the ways power is enacted, expressed, described, concealed or legitimated by text and talk in the social context. Having recognized this, progressive scholars and social reformers have begun articulating alternative discourses of power, along with alternative models of social practice. Thus review of other works in this field focuses on the impact of specific power structures on various discourse genres and their characteristic structures. Together, this paper has been tried to interpret as a project of discourse intervention- an effort to change our social reality by altering the discourses that help constitute the power which is dominated on it.