The Exercise of Power in Communication Devices, Reception and Reaction

Power Exercise explores the various choices speakers or communicators make when expressing power relations in modern societies. The volume brings together several disciplines, such as linguistics, sociology, communication studies and social psychology, to give insight into how interactants co-construct different aspects of power in their everyday life. The chapters reveal that the power potential of linguistic elements is dependent on context and is by no means fixed or predetermined, which provides implications for research methodology.

Raiiner Schulzes teaches English Linguistics at the Leibniz University of Hanover, Germany. He has published in the areas of cognitive linguistics, frame semantics and neo-Firthian linguistics, including corpus linguistics. He has edited and co-edited Making Meaningful Choices in English: On Dimensions, Perspectives, Methodology and Evidence (1998), Exploring the Lexis-Grammar Interface (2009, with Ute Römer), Patterns, Meaningful Units and Specialized Discourses (2010, with Ute Römer) and The Expression of Inequality in Interaction: Power, Dominance, and Status (2014, with Hanna Pishwa).

Hanna Pishwa has taught English and general linguistics at several universities, most recently in Berlin. She is interested in the interaction between cognition, social aspects and language. Her publications in this area include Language and memory: Aspects of Knowledge Representation and Language and Social Cognition: Expression of the Social Mind.

1. Power Exercise: Devices, Reception, and Reactions; Hanna Pishwa and Rainer Schulze
PART I: SOCIAL ASPECTS OF POWER EXERCISE IN LINGUISTICS
2. The Significance of 'The Social' in Contemporary Linguistics; Rainer Schulze
3. Meaning Ruptures and Meaningful Eruptions in the Service of Rhetoric: Populist Flare-up Hits the Greek Political Pitch; Eliza Kitis and E. Dimitris Kitis
PART II: LINGUISTIC CUES FOR POWER EXERCISE AND PERSUASION
4. Power Under the Veil of Democracy; Anders Hougaard
5. Information Source as Persuasive Power in Political Interviews: The Case of Obama; Hanna Pishwa
6. Using Language as a Weapon: Verbal Manifestations of Contemporary Anti-Semitism; Monika Schwarz-Friesel 
PART III: LINGUISTIC ELEMENTS AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE RECIPIENT
7. Gender, Power, and the Human Voice; Alexandra Suppes
8. Leveraging Processing to Understand Linguistic Cues, Power, and Persuasion; Traci Craig, Kevin L. Blankenship, and Annie Lewis
9. Powerful and Powerless Speech Styles and their Relationship to Perceived Dominance and Control; Lawrence Hosman
10. Language Intensity as an Expression of Power in Political MessageS; Mark A. Hamilton
PART IV: FOCUS ON THE INFLUENCE OF POWERFUL MESSAGES AND REACTIONS
11. Persuasion and Psychological Reactance: The Effects of Explicit, High-controlling Language; Claude H. Miller
12. Antidominance as a Motive of Low-power Groups in Conflict; P. J. Henry
13. Understanding Power in Social Context: How Power Relates to Language and Communication in Line with Responsibilities or Opportunities; Annika Scholl, Naomi Ellemers, Kai Sassenberg, and Daan Scheepers