POWER IN CONVERSATIONAL CONTEXT: THE CASE OF INTERLOCUTORS IN NON-STRATIFIED SOCIAL SETTINGS

Abstract

This study is centered on power relations of naturally occurring conversations in non-stratified social settings. Applying Fairclough's CDA framework, the researcher settled the problems of language texts of conversation, conversation as discursive practice, and conversation as an instance of socio-cultural practice. For this qualitative study, the researcher selected the method of participant observation for two sites GOI and CAO. The following are among the findings: 1) The playful frame chiefly characterizes conversations in both sites; 2) There are negative implicits as well as negative explicits; 3) Both sites have demonstrated the power of kuan — a term in a class all its own serving as prominencer, minimizer, and convergent filler — and the power of laughter as a negotiating, mediating, censoring and naturalizing mechanism. Some of the hypotheses generated from data findings are

the following: 1) Among the participating interlocutors, interruptions, volubility and topic-raising are not necessarily power strategies for they also serve as solidarity-enhancing strategies; in non-stratified social settings like the two sites, the binary opposition between power and powerlessness or solidarity has been changed into a continum of power and solidarity. 2) Among them, the power that is exercised is not a repressive domination; instead, power is conducive, expanding, and essential for comradeship.