Coercive Power Enactment: The Case of Multimodal Interruptions

Building upon Faircloughʹs (1989) stages of critical discourse analysis, i.e. the micro level text (discourse) analysis, and the macro level processing (ideology) and social (power) analyses, the present paper foregrounds some ideological facilitators of institutional power enactment, which are multimodal interruptions of professors in the last parts of M.A viva sessions. These verbal and nonverbal interruptions or discourse types are taken-for-granted by all the academic people, and these beliefs are ideologically held and transferred to others, since they are legitimately and naturally re-produced, though having the form of a coercive power. This paper presents a new understanding of power, by urging that power in the present study is both non-modern and coercive, as opposed to Van Dijk (1996), discussing the features of a modern power as being ʹpersuasive and manipulativeʹ rather than ʹcoercive or incentive.ʹ The data consisted of four main themes: (1) Verbal & nonverbal commands; (2) Interruptive comments and explanations; (3) Gatekeeping power including (a) Time management, and (b) knowledge management; and (4) Interruptive activities. This paper has implications for applying CDA in higher education and especially in face-to-face oral exams as opposed to blind peer reviews, where the coercive power takes the place of collaboration.