A1
The Power comes from the privileged access to social resources such as wealth, education and knwoledge.
The access to these resources provides (fornisce) authority, status and influence. There are two types of
power : The dominance and the power trough the consent. The power trough the dominance is studied by
the Mainstream tradition. There are a lot of important actors in this field, such as judicial and penal
institution and power resides in the state and in the other sovereign organizations (businesses , church).
The second-stream studies the persuasive influence of the power. It’s very important the concept of
Hegemony by Gramsci trough which dominant groups succeed in persuading subordinate groups to accept
their values. This power is not exercised coercively, but routinely. Trough the education of the subjects by
the institutions, the dominant groups are able to gain a stable position and the consent.
The dominant groups are able to generate the language which built the consent to legitimate their own
actions. It is also important to built the coercion and the authority trough some institutions such as the
police. Focault does not see the power just like a repressive phenomenon but also like productive, a form
of action or relation between people.
The Ideology refers to the ways in which a person’s beliefs, opinions or values systems intersects with the
broader social and political structures of society in which they live. The ideology shapes the language but
also all the texts and the visual language. We have to consider the texts like anything neutral and
disinterested where the ideology is embedded in the language. Karl Marx used to see the ideology like an
instrument trough the dominant forces were able to exercise the power over the industrial and rural
proletariat. Althusser describes the ideology like a discursive phenomenon. The ideologies are able to
produce or change the political relations trough the ISA (ideological state apparatuses) such as the church.
There’s a distinction between the Language and Discourse. Discourse is what happens when language gets
done. The Language follows the set of patterns which operate simultaneously at the different level of the
system (grammatical, semantic and phonological). The Discourse works on the level of the grammar, and
trough the discourse is possible to capture what happens when the language forms are used in different
social and political arenas. Trough a discourse is possible to find the connection between the ideology and
the language given by different positions.
