A Study of the Production Mechanism of Discourse Power from the Perspective of Communication

The first step to enhance Chinese discourse power is to analyze the production mechanism of discourse power.Previous literature on this subject mainly comes from three areas,including international politics,linguistics and sociology.In the field of international politics,literature relevant to the power theory explains how discourse power is employed to control others;from a micro perspective,literature of linguistics explores how subtle discourse signifies flowing meanings.Sociological studies look at discourse power in the relationship between language and society,and employ linguistic materials to describe and interpret social behavior.However,literature in these fields hasn't clarified how discourse power flows or how it is delivered.From the information communication perspective,this paper puts forward a production mechanism of discourse power,that is,information needs to be delivered from the subject of discourse to the object of discourse via a power transmission chain,and discourse power would be produced only when this information flow has generated an impact on the object of discourse.In this mechanism the two key points are agenda-setting and framing.