Use of Lexical Choices and How They Would Affect the Discursive Power Essay

Use of Lexical Choices and How They Would Affect the Discursive Power of Media - Essay Example People seek to reach their aims and goals by using power. In defining power attention must be paid to the fact that it is not something you can simply possess. It is rather a relationship between people. Power is always related to situations. Using power means having the power to persuade and impress through verbal communication. Pekonen (1991, 46) states that modern politics can be explained as a symbolic power struggle: the winner is a party whose language, words, terms and symbolic expressions are dominant once reality and the context have been defined. (Chilton, P. & Ilyin M. p 4) Presidential speeches are very important to society. According to Denton and Hahn (1986), the presidency is a rhetorical institution. Through speeches, a president leads his country and seeks to persuade the nation and society. Presidential power is the power to persuade. The rhetorical style of a presidential speech can directly affect the political speaker's aims and success. Han (1998) believes that the significance of presidential rhetorical skills has increased over the last 50 years and in part because of the media. This conceals some problems: when the style is emphasized, content may have only a secondary role. The images may be stronger than the message, and credibility may be more important than information. In this study, attention is paid to the (d) Meanings Aristoteles le of presidential power and per-suasion especially from the rhetorical point of view. (Aristoteles) Kress (1990) has introduced theoretical criteria characterizing work in the CDA paradigm which distinguishes it from other politically engaged discourse analysis work. (a) Language is first and foremost a type of social practice. (b) Texts are the result of the actions of socially situated speakers and writers. (c) The relations of the participants in the production of texts are generally unequal. (d) Meanings are the result of the (inter)action of readers and hearers with texts and with the speaker/writers of texts. They are always subject to more or less closely enforced normative rules, and to the relations of power obtaining in this interaction. (e) Linguistic features at any level are the result of social processes. Linguistic features are never arbitrary conjuncts of form and meaning. (f) Linguistic features in their occurrence in texts are always characterized by opacity. (g) Users of language have a particular stance towards the set of codes which make up a language. (h) A system of language is highly problematic in CDA. (i) History has to be taken into account. (j) CDA must be based on rather precise analyses and descriptions of the materiality of language on a close linguistic description. (Kress, p 84) CDA begins from the assumption that systematic asymmetries of power and resources between participants - speakers and listeners, readers and writers - can be linked to their unequal access to linguistic and social resources. The important unit of analysis is the text. Texts are taken to be social uses of spoken and written language. Critical discourse analysis focuses on a genre as well as on sentences and word-level analysis. The study of subject positions may clarify traditional values, ideologies and representations. When analyzing the cultural assumptions expressed in a text, one way to do it is to study the lexical choices or grammatical representations of agency and action.