Table Of ContentThe Expression of Inequality in Interaction
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Volume 248
The Expression of Inequality in Interaction. Power, dominance, and status
Edited by Hanna Pishwa and Rainer Schulze
The Expression of Inequality
in Interaction
Power, dominance, and status
Edited by
Hanna Pishwa
Technical University of Berlin
Rainer Schulze
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University of Hanover
John Benjamins Publishing Company
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The Expression of Inequality in Interaction : Power, dominance, and status / Edited by
Hanna Pishwa and Rainer Schulze.
p. cm. (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, issn 0922-842X ; v. 248)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Discourse analysis--Social aspects. 2. Identity (Psychology) 3. Sociolinguistics.
I. Pishwa, Hanna. II. Schulze, Rainer, 1952-.
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Table of contents
The expression of inequality in interaction.
Power, dominance, and status: An introduction 1
Rainer Schulze and Hanna Pishwa
Part I. Focus on third persons
Representing inequality in language:
Words as social categorizers of experience 17
Rainer Schulze
Sexual network partners in Tanzania: Labels, power,
and the systemic muting of women’s health and identity 49
Jennifer J. Harman, Michelle R. Kaufman, Eric Aoki,
and Carlie D. Trott
A “rape victim” by any other name: The effects of labels
on individuals’ rape-related perceptions 81
Jericho M. Hockett, Lora K. McGraw, and Donald A. Saucier
Unveiling the phantom of the “Islamic takeover”:
A critical, cognitive-linguistic analysis of the discursive
perpetuation of an Orientalist schema 105
Andreas Langlotz and Danièle Klapproth Muazzin
Power eliciting elements at the semantic-pragmatic interface:
Data from cyberbullying and virtual character-assassination attempts 143
Konstanze Marx
vi The Expression of Inequality in Interaction
Part II. Focus on speaker/author
Powerless language: Hedges as cues for interpersonal functions 165
Hanna Pishwa
A true authoritarian type: How fonts can facilitate positive opinions
for powerful groups 193
John Donahue
We and I, and you and them: People, power and solidarity 213
Anita Fetzer
Language, normativity and power: The discursive construction
of objectophilia 239
Heiko Motschenbacher
Subject index 265
The expression of inequality in interaction
Power, dominance, and status: An introduction
Rainer Schulze and Hanna Pishwa
With “how can we know so little, given that we have so much information”,
Renkema (2003, quoted in Langlotz and Klapproth Muazzin in this volume) re-
signs himself to the fact that the glaring discrepancy between the individual’s ac-
tual knowledge of inequality, power, dominance, and status (hence “inequality”)
and the commonly accessible information on these constructs has not yet been
satisfactorily portrayed and resolved. In order to address this imbalance, our col-
lection of papers attempts to make this discrepancy less glaring, seeking to pres-
ent and promote research on aspects of these constructs in order to make the less
well-represented facts of asymmetrical encounters in everyday life more visible.
In order to provide those with an interest in the cognitive, social and dis-
cursive dimension of language and behavior with new ideas, material and rec-
ommendations for further studies, we felt that it was pertinent to consider how
the different disciplines and fields dealing with aspects of inequality have devel-
oped, particularly in the last two decades. This general plan opens up possibilities
and limits the endeavor at the same time; taking into account constructs such as
inequality, power, dominance, and status sounds presumptuous. Who on earth
would dream of editing a single volume based on the broad variety of studies that
has left its impact on this collection (e.g. Wilson 2002; Grillo 2005; Turner 2005;
Simpson and Mayr 2010; Mooney et al. 2011a; Mooney et al. 2011b; Cole and
Graham 2012; Bartlett 2014; Thimm and Kruse 1991)? Why do we nevertheless
choose such an endeavor on aspects of inequality, power, dominance, and status?
There are two major reasons for us to undertake the venture despite these
concerns and challenges. First of all, we value the inherent opportunities of our
multidisciplinary approach to inequality and wish to survey the great range of re-
search and cultural practices performed in language. Our project thus is targeted
at scholars working in different disciplines, including anthropology, sociology,
social psychology, queer studies or linguistics as well as at advanced universi-
ty students enrolled in different humanities programs. Moreover, this volume
2 Rainer Schulze and Hanna Pishwa
features articles that are dedicated to different linguistic genres, including spoken
and written language, and foregrounding new and mediated forms of orality. In
order to challenge the standard approaches to inequality as portrayed in most so-
ciological studies (e.g. Turner 2005) and in order to enable a dialogue about these
constructs across different disciplines, we solicited contributions from different
academic domains such as gender studies, anthropology, linguistic pragmatics or
functional linguistics. The articles provide both surveys and in-depth studies of
phenomena that are directly linked to our object of investigation.
Secondly, following all the different contributions will allow the readers to
engage directly with cognitive and discursive conceptions of inequality and to be-
come aware of the implicit and concomitant stereotypes surrounding them. This,
in turn, will help to contend the widespread – and largely negative – assumptions
about pre-established and predetermined notions of inequality that level out con-
ceptual and cultural differences. These notions, as all the contributions show, are
never absolute, but always socially constrained, constructed, conferred, negotiat-
ed and re-negotiated; they and their interpretation must be put into the context of
societal relationships from which they emerge.
In sum, inequality as an umbrella term acts as a conceptual signpost offering
scholars and readers a way to narrow their focus towards salient phenomena in
their representation that they perhaps would not have otherwise considered to be
important.
The nature of inequality interactants encounter in their relations to one an-
other is reflected in the way they use language. Or to put it differently: Speaking
and writing are social acts (Fairclough 2001), generated by general expectations
and by the roles and positions in which interactants find themselves. In contem-
plating various ideas surrounding the construct of inequality, we would like to
take stock of the various approaches in different fields that view inequality as
the construction of a very special relationship between interactants. As will be
demonstrated later on, “inequality”, “power”, “dominance” and “status” as con-
structs relate either to individuals or social groups that engage in unequal en-
counters, i.e. unequal with regard to occupation, social class, race or gender or to
the mass media as they strive to influence attitudes and opinions of the general
audience or readership. This observation can be translated into a number of re-
search questions that will be answered in the volume:
– How can we classify different types of inequality, power, dominance or status
(Thomas and Wareing 1999; Fairclough 2001)?
– How do these different types impact on linguistic choices and behaviors?
– In which way are written or transcribed texts representative of unequal en-
counters?
The expression of inequality in interaction: An introduction 3
– How do powerful speakers exert power and authority over less powerful
ones?
– How are interactants’ assessments of societal, economic or political inequality
encoded in language?
One of the more recent models dealing with aspects of inequality and possibly
the most useful to analyze and describe asymmetrical or unequal relationships in
society, is Turner’s Three-Process Theory (2005). Turner argues that psychologi-
cal group formation produces influence, that influence is assumed to be the basis
of power and that power leads to the control of resources (2005, 9). This “evolu-
tionary” process consists of three developmental phases that try to reverse the
causal sequence of the “standard” theory in which the control of resources leads
to power which in turn leads to power in action (i.e. influence) and consequently
to psychological group formation through cohesive interpersonal relations and
consensual social structure (2005, 2ff.). Although we are not in a position to ei-
ther confirm or disprove the validity of this assumption, we are keen to harness
his postulated triad of “valued resources” – “those in power”/“with the capacity
to influence others”/“the lucky few”/“the haves” – “those feeling deprived of suf-
ficient access to the valued sources”/“those trying to gain access to the valued
resources”/“the have-nots” (Turner 2005). We do not want to explore any possible
cause-effect relationships between these components of the triad as shown in Fig-
ure 1, but we assume these components to be essential for any proper description
of asymmetrical relationships in society, thus functioning as a schematic template
or blueprint for the studies in our collection of articles.
A very similar approach to asymmetry has been suggested by Talmy who
claims that physical force interaction, as described in physics or object me-
chanics, can be related to social interaction, as amply portrayed in psychology
(1988, 75ff.). His model of force-dynamics can be seen as a way of construing the
“valued (non-) material resources”
“those feeling deprived
“those in power” of sufficient access to
“with the capacity the valued sources”
to influence others” “those trying to gain
”the lucky few” access to the valued
“the haves” sources”
“the have-nots”
Figure 1. Components of the inequality triad
