Vorlesung: 'On democratization and change'

Full Titel: ‘On democratization and change in institutional power discourse‘ (PD Dr. Elisabeth Reber)
Part of the lecture series "Democratisation and Power Structures".
Democratization has been described as the “reduction of overt markers of power asymmetry” (Fairclough 1992: 98). Reber (2021) has studied how practices of quoting serve to (de)construct power at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), a parliamentary session with the Prime Minister at the British House of Commons, and how these practices have changed between 1978-2013. The aims of this paper are twofold: 1) I show how changing practices of quoting at PMQs can be related to democratization and argue that democratization may be linked to personalization. 2) Looking at another type of institutional discourse, I present first steps into a new project on United States Supreme Court Opinions, which explores how power asymmetries are created from the early 20th century to today through linguistic and discursive practices.