Questions And Power Relations In Workplace Meetings

Questions are an important means to exercise power in all verbal interactions. Based on this argument, this thesis applies theories and methods of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to the analysis of question and power relations in workplace meetings, a specific institutional discourse with an American reality show, The Apprentice, as the data. Firstly, it makes a multi-leveled analysis of the questions in the interaction, revealing the power hierarchy among the discourse participants; secondly, it expands the application of the CDA theory by applying it to analyzing a special institutional discourse; thirdly, it has some practical implications, as the findings can be used as a guide for the managers in workplace to improve their communicating skills to exercise power and control over the employees by using questions more appropriately.In chapter two, the thesis reviews the previous studies on questions and presents their drawbacks that questions as a linguistic form and a social act fail to reflect social role relations and social identities between participants in communication. As power is the central concern of CDA, this thesis applies it to analyzing the questions and power relations based on the data. Chapter three confirms the relation between questions and power with theories of systemic-functional linguistics which is the theoretical foundation and illustrates the four-leveled analytical approach of CDA from the phonological, lexical, syntactical and conversational structure level respectively.After expounding the theoretical framework, this thesis presents the methodology of the study, including the collection, transcription of the data as well as the application of qualitative and quantitative research methods in the data analysis.In chapter five, with the qualitative and quantitative research methods, I analyze the data from the phonological, lexical, syntactical and conversational structure levels, and make some findings, which are as follows:A leader can exercise control or power through asking questions in the workplace meetings, which can be reflected from the micro-level of discourse structure or conversational interaction and macro-level of the organizational structure of the workplace discourse. Besides, the study has some practical implications, which can be enlightening for workplace participants to develop their own communication skills and provide a means for the managers to exercise control and power in a more appropriate and effective way, which will fulfill a successful management.