Powerful and Powerless Speech Styles and Their Relationship to Perceived Dominance and Control

Abstract

This chapter reports the findings of over 30 years of research on powerful and powerless speech styles and their relationship to dominance and control. The chapter begins with an explanation of how power, dominance and control can be a perceptual phenomenon. It then analyses the research from a molar perspective, where powerful and powerless speech styles are investigated as whole units, and from a molecular perspective, where the individual language features that constitute a powerful or powerless speech style are studied. These perspectives are used to illustrate how powerful and powerless speech styles are perceived as dominant and controlling, as well as how these styles are implicated in changing the attitudes of message recipients.

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