Discourse and Power

Peter V. Zima was Professor of General and Comparative Literature at the Alpen-Adria University of Klagenfurt (Austria) until 2012. He became corr. member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Vienna) in 1998 and member of the European Academy of Sciences (London) in 2010. In 2014 he was appointed honorary professor of the East China Normal University in Shanghai.

Introduction: Language and Power

PART ONE: THEORY

I. How We Think and are Being Thought: From Michel Foucault to Louis Althusser and Michel Pêcheux

II. Power and Authority in Language: Pierre Bourdieu’s Authorised Language and Jan Blomaert’s Voice

III. “Critical Discourse Analysis”: Norman Fairclough’s Linguistic Perspective

IV. From Structural Semiotics to the Sociology of Texts: Discourse and Power

PART TWO: PRACTICE

V. Who Narrates Whom? Ideology, Stigma and Narrative Control of the Subject in Luigi Pirandello and Erving Goffman

VI. The Submission of the Subject to the Discourses of the Law: From Albert Camus’s The Outsider to Artur London’s On Trial

VII. The Discourses of the Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden: Modalities, Helpers and Actants

VIII. The Power Factor in Sociological Discussions: Who Narrates Whom?

Outlook: Power – Discourse – Fear

Bibliography

Index