Institutional language as power in contemporary China

Interaction between officials and visitors in government service offices

Yi Li | Nankai University

Against the backdrop of an increasingly divided society and the government’s determined pledge to build social cohesion in China, this paper examines how social institutions, through their discursive practices, participate in the construction of the still evolving social relations in contemporary China, using data collected from interactions between citizens and officials at two governmental agencies. It finds that discourse is an important way of reflecting and realizing the institutional power possessed by institutional officials and that institutional power is exercised and reinforced through a variety of discursive practices ranging from fixed procedures of questioning to speech acts of interrupting and blaming. Based on these findings, this paper argues that for government agencies to act as a force of social cohesion in contemporary China as they have always claimed, their linguistic forms of interaction with society, as well as the ideologies and practices associated with it, all need to be dramatically transformed.

Keywords: officer, institutions, politeness, visitor, power relations, social cohesion, interaction

Published online: 07 January 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.9.4.04li

References

Algeo, John.

1988 The tag question in British English: it’s different, I’n’it? English World-wide 9: 2 171–191.

Brown, Penelope. & Levinson, Stephen C.

1987 Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cameron, Deborah., McAlinder, Fiona., & O’Leary, Kathy

(1988) Lakoff in context: The social and linguistic functions of tag questions. In: Jennifer Coates and Deborah Cameron (ed.). Women in Their Speech Communities. London: Longman 75–93.

Fairclough, Norman.

1992 Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Foucault, Michel.

1990 ‘Method.’ In: Robert Hurley (Translator) The History of Sexuality Vol.11: Introduction. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Pp. 92–102.

Frank, Jane.

1990 You call that a rhetorical question? Forms and functions of rhetorical questions in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 14(5), 723–738.

Harris, Sandra.

2003 Politeness and power: Making and responding to ‘requests’ in institutional settings. Text 23(1), 27–52.

Holmes, Janet.

1995 Women, Men and Politeness. London : Longman Group Limited.

Han, Chung-hye

2002 Interpreting interrogatives as rhetorical question. In: Lingua 112 (3), 201–229.

Blankenship, Kevin L. & Craig, Traci Y.

2006 Rhetorical question use and resistance to persuasion: Attitude strength analysis. Journal of language and social psychology. Vol. 25, No. 2, 111–128

Mills, Sara.

1977 Discourse. London: Routledge.

Sacks, Harvey; Schegloff, Emanuel. A. & Jefferson, Gail

1974 A simplest systematics for the organisation of turning-taking for conversation. Language Vol.50, No. 4. 696–735

Tannen, Deborah.

1990 You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: William Morrow.

Thornborrow, Jaonna.

2002 Power Talk: Language and Interaction in Institutional Discourse. London: Longman.

廖美珍

(Liao, Meizhen) 2005 “懂不懂？”你懂不懂？ — — 析“懂不懂”在算命话语中的语用功能外国语言文学研究(4): 6–11.

陆学艺

(Lu, Xueyi) 2002 当代中国社会阶层研究报告北京：社会科学文献出版社中华人民共和国国务院国务院信访条例 (Regulations on Letters and Visits) http://www.gjxfj.com/2005-01/18/content_3583093.htm

Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Li, Tao & Kaibao Hu

2021. In Reappraising Self and Others [Corpora and Intercultural Studies, 6], ► pp. 13 ff.

Zhang, Wei

2015. The shifting representation of common people in China’s news media. Journal of Language and Politics 14:2 ► pp. 285 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.