Discourse and Power: How Language Shapes Authority, Legitimacy, and Social Control
In 2003, the United States government did not invade Iraq. It launched Operation Iraqi Freedom. The military did not kill civilians; there was collateral damage. Prisoners were not tortured; they underwent enhanced interrogation techniques. The war was not fought for oil or geopolitical dominance; it was part of a global war on terror aimed at eliminating weapons of mass destruction and bringing democracy to the Middle East.
Every one of these linguistic choices was deliberate. Every one shaped how the public understood what was happening. The language did not merely describe reality--it constructed the reality that people perceived. By controlling the words used to describe the invasion, its methods, and its purposes, the government controlled what questions could be asked, what criticisms could be made, and what alternatives could be imagined. This is discourse and power in action.
Discourse--systems of language, knowledge, and practice that shape understanding and action--is one of the most powerful mechanisms through which authority is established, legitimacy is constructed, and social control is exercised. It operates not through force but through meaning--through determining how issues are understood, what counts as knowledge, who has the right to speak, and what can and cannot be said. Understanding the relationship between discourse and power is essential for anyone who wants to think critically about the world they live in, because the most effective power is the power that does not need to be exercised through coercion. It is the power that shapes what people think and want before any conflict arises.
What Is Discourse?
In everyday usage, "discourse" simply means conversation or written communication. In the academic tradition that examines the relationship between language and power--drawing primarily on the work of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and critical discourse analysts like Norman Fairclough and Teun van Dijk--"discourse" means something far more specific and consequential.
Discourse, in this sense, refers to systems of meaning-making that determine what can be said, thought, and done within a particular domain of social life. It encompasses:
- Language: The words, phrases, metaphors, and narrative structures used to discuss a topic
- Knowledge: The frameworks, theories, and categories through which a topic is understood
- Practices: The institutions, procedures, and behaviors that are legitimized by the discourse
- Subject positions: The roles that individuals can occupy within the discourse (expert, patient, criminal, citizen)
A discourse is not just a collection of statements about a topic. It is the entire system of rules that determines which statements are possible, which are taken seriously, and which are excluded from consideration.
Examples of Discourse Systems
Medical discourse determines:
- What counts as illness vs. health
- Who has authority to diagnose and treat (credentialed professionals)
- What treatments are legitimate (evidence-based medicine) vs. illegitimate (folk remedies, alternative medicine)
- How patients should relate to doctors (deference to expertise, compliance with instructions)
Economic discourse determines:
- What counts as economic health (GDP growth, low unemployment, rising stock markets)
- Which economic frameworks are taken seriously (mainstream economics) vs. dismissed (heterodox approaches)
- What solutions are considered possible (market-based solutions, fiscal and monetary policy) vs. unthinkable (radical redistribution, degrowth)
Legal discourse determines:
- What counts as a crime vs. acceptable behavior
- Who has authority to judge (judges, juries, credentialed lawyers)
- What evidence is admissible and how it should be interpreted
- How justice is conceptualized (punishment vs. rehabilitation, individual rights vs. social order)
Each of these discourse systems exercises enormous power--not through coercion but through defining the boundaries of the thinkable. When medical discourse defines obesity as a disease, it transforms a bodily characteristic into a medical condition requiring treatment. When economic discourse treats GDP growth as the primary measure of national success, it marginalizes alternative measures of wellbeing. When legal discourse criminalizes drug use, it transforms a health issue into a criminal justice issue.
How Does Discourse Relate to Power?
The core insight of discourse theory is that language does not merely reflect power relations--it constitutes them. Power is not something that exists independently of language and then uses language as a tool. Power is partly created, sustained, challenged, and transformed through language.
Foucault's Power/Knowledge
Michel Foucault, the philosopher most closely associated with the analysis of discourse and power, argued that power and knowledge are inseparable (he often wrote "power/knowledge" as a single concept). Those who control the production of knowledge control what counts as truth, and what counts as truth determines who has authority.
Foucault's key insights include:
Power produces, not just represses: Traditional views see power as primarily repressive--it says "no," it prohibits, it constrains. Foucault argued that power is primarily productive--it creates categories, identities, truths, and behaviors. The power of medical discourse does not merely prohibit certain behaviors; it creates the entire framework through which bodily experience is understood.
Power is everywhere, not just at the top: Power does not flow only from rulers to ruled. It operates in every interaction, every institution, every classification system. A teacher exercising authority over students, a psychiatrist diagnosing a patient, a social media algorithm determining what content is visible--all are exercises of discursive power.
Truth is produced, not discovered: What counts as "true" in any era is determined by the discursive systems that produce and validate knowledge. This is not a claim that reality does not exist but that our access to reality is always mediated by discursive frameworks that shape what we can perceive, articulate, and accept as true.
Subjects are constituted by discourse: People do not have fixed identities that exist prior to discourse. The categories through which we understand ourselves (our gender, our sanity, our sexuality, our health, our normality) are produced by discursive systems that define and classify human beings.
Bourdieu's Symbolic Power
Pierre Bourdieu complemented Foucault's analysis with the concept of symbolic power--the power to impose categories of perception and appreciation on others, to define what is legitimate, valuable, and worthy of recognition.
Bourdieu argued that:
Linguistic capital: Mastery of the dominant language variety (standard English, received pronunciation, formal register) functions as a form of capital that grants social advantages. People who speak "correctly" (by the standards of the dominant class) are perceived as more intelligent, more competent, and more trustworthy.
Symbolic violence: The imposition of dominant categories and standards on subordinate groups, experienced not as violence but as natural, inevitable, or deserved. When working-class children are taught in school that their home dialect is "incorrect," they internalize a devaluation of their own linguistic heritage that serves the interests of the dominant class.
The illusion of naturalness: The most effective symbolic power is that which is perceived not as power but as the natural order of things. When people accept that certain ways of speaking, certain types of knowledge, and certain social arrangements are simply "how things are," they accept the power relations embedded in those arrangements without resistance.
Mechanisms of Discursive Power
Discourse exercises power through several identifiable mechanisms.
1. Agenda Setting
The power to determine what is discussed is more fundamental than the power to win arguments about those topics. If an issue is never placed on the agenda--if it is never framed as a problem requiring attention--then no amount of argumentation can change the outcome, because there is no debate to win.
Media organizations, political leaders, and institutional actors exercise agenda-setting power by:
- Choosing which stories to cover and which to ignore
- Framing some issues as urgent and others as unimportant
- Defining what counts as newsworthy
- Determining which experts are invited to comment
2. Naming and Classification
The power to name things is the power to define how they are understood:
- Calling armed groups "freedom fighters" vs. "terrorists" determines whether they are heroic or criminal
- Calling immigrants "expats" vs. "migrants" vs. "aliens" determines whether they are welcomed or feared
- Calling a military action "peacekeeping" vs. "occupation" vs. "intervention" determines whether it is legitimate
- Calling economic inequality a "natural outcome of the market" vs. "structural injustice" determines whether it requires action
Naming is not neutral description. It is an act of power that establishes the framework within which subsequent discussion occurs. Once a name is established, it becomes the default lens through which an issue is perceived, and changing the name requires overcoming the inertia of established understanding.
3. Defining the Terms of Debate
Related to naming, the power to define the terms in which a debate occurs often determines its outcome:
| How the Issue Is Framed | What Follows |
|---|---|
| Healthcare is a market | Solutions involve market mechanisms: competition, consumer choice, deregulation |
| Healthcare is a right | Solutions involve government provision: universal coverage, public funding, regulation |
| Crime is a moral failure | Solutions involve punishment: longer sentences, more prisons, stricter law enforcement |
| Crime is a social problem | Solutions involve prevention: education, poverty reduction, mental health services |
| Immigration is a security threat | Solutions involve enforcement: walls, deportation, border patrol |
| Immigration is an economic necessity | Solutions involve management: legal pathways, work permits, integration programs |
In each case, the framing determines not just the preferred solution but which solutions are even imaginable. If healthcare is a market, single-payer healthcare is not just wrong--it is conceptually incoherent within the framework. If crime is a moral failure, poverty reduction is not just inefficient--it is irrelevant.
4. Controlling Access to Discourse
Not everyone has equal access to public discourse. The ability to speak and be heard in public forums, media, and institutions is unequally distributed:
- Media ownership determines whose voices are amplified and whose are marginalized
- Credentialing systems determine who is recognized as an expert with authority to speak on a topic
- Platform algorithms determine whose content is visible and whose is suppressed
- Institutional gatekeeping determines who is invited to speak, publish, testify, and advise
- Language barriers exclude people who do not speak the dominant language from participation
This unequal access means that the discourse that shapes public understanding is produced disproportionately by those who already hold power--educated, wealthy, socially connected individuals and institutions that have the resources, credentials, and access to shape public conversation.
5. Normalization
Perhaps the most powerful function of discourse is normalization--the process by which certain arrangements, behaviors, and beliefs are made to appear natural, inevitable, and unquestionable.
When a particular state of affairs is successfully normalized, it ceases to be perceived as a choice or a power arrangement and becomes simply "the way things are." Examples include:
- The normalization of market-based solutions to social problems ("there is no alternative")
- The normalization of certain body types as healthy and others as pathological
- The normalization of certain family structures as standard and others as deviant
- The normalization of endless economic growth as both possible and necessary
Normalization is the most effective form of power because it eliminates resistance by eliminating the perception that there is anything to resist. You cannot fight what you cannot see, and normalized power is invisible.
Can Changing Language Change Power Relations?
This question is central to contemporary debates about political correctness, inclusive language, and linguistic activism. The answer is: partially, and with significant limitations.
What Language Change Can Do
- Shift perceptions: When "handicapped" becomes "disabled" becomes "person with a disability," the evolving language reflects and reinforces a shift in how disability is understood--from a deficiency in the person to a condition of the environment
- Open discursive space: New terms can create space for ideas that were previously inexpressible. The concept of "microaggressions" gave a name to experiences that were previously difficult to articulate, making them discussable and therefore addressable
- Challenge normalization: Language change can denaturalize arrangements that were previously taken for granted. Using "enslaved people" instead of "slaves" emphasizes that slavery was something done to people, not an inherent characteristic
- Signal social change: Language change both reflects and accelerates social change. As terminology evolves, it signals to both speakers and listeners that norms are shifting
What Language Change Cannot Do
- Replace structural change: Renaming a problem does not solve it. Using inclusive language in a workplace that still discriminates in hiring and promotion changes the surface while leaving the structure intact
- Overcome material power: Discursive power is real, but it operates alongside and intertwined with material power (money, weapons, institutional control). Language change without corresponding changes in material conditions produces what critics call "symbolic politics"--the appearance of change without its substance
- Force adoption: Language change that is perceived as imposed from above rather than emerging organically often generates backlash. When terminology changes are experienced as mandates rather than as reflections of genuine cultural evolution, they can provoke resistance that hardens the very attitudes they intend to change
The Dialectical Relationship
The most accurate view is that language and material power exist in a dialectical relationship--each shapes the other, and lasting change typically requires movement in both domains. The civil rights movement changed both the language used to discuss race (discursive change) and the laws and institutions that enforced racial hierarchy (structural change). Neither change alone would have been sufficient; together, they transformed American society.
How Do Dominant Groups Control Discourse?
Dominant groups maintain discursive control through several reinforcing mechanisms:
Media Ownership and Control
Those who own and control media outlets--news organizations, publishing houses, social media platforms, entertainment studios--have disproportionate influence over public discourse. Concentration of media ownership means that a relatively small number of individuals and corporations determine what information reaches the public and how it is framed.
Institutional Authority
Universities, think tanks, government agencies, professional associations, and other institutions produce the "official" knowledge that shapes public discourse. These institutions are not neutral knowledge factories--they are embedded in power structures that influence what research is funded, what expertise is valued, and what conclusions are considered legitimate.
Expert Discourse
The authority of expertise--the ability of credentialed professionals to define reality within their domains--is a powerful form of discursive control. When a doctor defines a condition as a disease, when an economist declares a recession, when a psychologist diagnoses a disorder, they exercise the power to classify reality in ways that have material consequences for people's lives.
Repetition and Saturation
The sheer repetition of dominant framings through media, education, and everyday conversation normalizes them until they become invisible. When every news outlet uses the term "national security" rather than "state power," when every economics textbook treats GDP growth as the goal of economic policy, when every courtroom follows the same procedural norms, the discursive frameworks become the unquestioned backdrop of social life.
Can Individuals Resist Dominant Discourse?
Despite the power of dominant discourse, resistance is both possible and continuously occurring.
Counter-Narratives
Marginalized groups create counter-narratives that challenge dominant framings:
- The labor movement's counter-narrative to the discourse of "free markets" and "job creators"
- Feminist counter-narratives to patriarchal discourse about gender roles
- Anticolonial counter-narratives to imperial discourse about "civilization" and "development"
- Environmental counter-narratives to the discourse of unlimited economic growth
Counter-narratives do not merely disagree with dominant discourse; they offer alternative frameworks for understanding reality. They redefine terms, challenge classifications, name experiences that were previously invisible, and propose different criteria for evaluating truth and value.
Critical Discourse Analysis
Developed by Norman Fairclough, Teun van Dijk, and others, critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a methodology for systematically examining how language serves power. CDA asks:
- Whose perspective is centered in this text?
- What assumptions are taken for granted?
- What alternatives are excluded or marginalized?
- Who benefits from this framing?
- What power relations are naturalized?
By making the power dynamics of discourse visible, CDA enables individuals to recognize and resist discursive manipulation that would otherwise operate below conscious awareness.
Digital Counter-Discourse
The internet has created unprecedented opportunities for counter-discourse:
- Social media enables marginalized voices to reach audiences without passing through institutional gatekeepers
- Hashtag activism (#MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter) creates new discursive frameworks that challenge dominant narratives
- Alternative media outlets provide platforms for perspectives excluded from mainstream discourse
- Citizen journalism challenges the monopoly of professional media on news production
However, the internet also creates new forms of discursive power--algorithmic control of visibility, platform censorship, information overload that drowns out counter-narratives--meaning that digital discourse is a contested terrain rather than a simple liberation from traditional power structures.
Discourse and Power in Everyday Life
The relationship between discourse and power is not confined to politics and institutions. It operates in everyday interactions:
- Workplace discourse: The language of "team players," "going above and beyond," and "corporate culture" naturalizes employer expectations that serve organizational interests over worker wellbeing
- Educational discourse: The language of "achievement," "potential," and "intelligence" creates categories that sort students into tracks with vastly different life outcomes
- Family discourse: The language of "good" children, "normal" families, and "proper" behavior enforces conformity to norms that reflect particular cultural values rather than universal truths
- Self-discourse: The language people use to describe themselves ("I'm just not a math person," "I'm not creative," "I'm too emotional") can constrain their own possibilities by internalizing limiting categories
Recognizing discourse and power in everyday life is not about becoming paralyzed by the realization that language is never neutral. It is about developing the critical awareness to notice when language is doing more than it appears--when it is not just describing reality but constructing it, not just communicating ideas but establishing authority, not just expressing views but constraining what views are expressible. This awareness is the foundation of critical thinking and the prerequisite for meaningful participation in the democratic governance of shared social life.
References and Further Reading
Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge. Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. Pantheon Books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Archaeology_of_Knowledge
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon. Pantheon Books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and Power. 2nd ed. Longman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Fairclough
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Ed. John B. Thompson. Trans. Gino Raymond & Matthew Adamson. Harvard University Press. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu
van Dijk, T.A. (2008). Discourse and Power. Palgrave Macmillan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teun_A._van_Dijk
Lakoff, G. (2004). Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. Chelsea Green Publishing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Think_of_an_Elephant!
Chomsky, N. & Herman, E.S. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Ed. & trans. Quintin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith. International Publishers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci
Wodak, R. & Meyer, M. (2016). Methods of Critical Discourse Studies. 3rd ed. SAGE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Wodak
Said, E.W. (1978). Orientalism. Vintage Books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism_(book)
Butler, J. (1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. Routledge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler
Lukes, S. (2005). Power: A Radical View. 2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power:_A_Radical_View
Orwell, G. (1946). "Politics and the English Language." Horizon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language