The dual voice of domination: ritual and power in a British embassy
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Ellen Van Praet
Abstract
This article examines the political and ideological processes that underlie the ritual event of a weekly gathering of Heads of Section at a British embassy. Relying on participant observation, audio recordings, and interviews, it juxtaposes participants' assumptions and projections about the meeting's symbolic role in achieving democratic ideals (community participation, status equality) with evidence of a battle zone, an arena for status contests and participants maneuvering for position. It explores this contrast on multiple levels of discourse and interaction, using transcripts from interviews and interaction during the meetings. It demonstrates not only the ritualistic importance of meetings in consolidating the powers that be but also the duality of the discourse around them, with a proclaimed ideology of shared power, shared knowledge, and equal opportunities masking and covering up an authority-based system promoting status differences and inequality.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction: Emerging linguistic ethnographic perspectives on institutional discourses
- Access all areas: identity issues and researcher responsibilities in workplace settings
- Deaf perspectives on communicative practices in South Africa: institutional language policies in educational settings
- Professional orientation in back region humor
- Framing the news: an ethnographic view of business newswriting
- Linguistic ethnography and the study of welfare institutions as a flow of social practices: the case of residential child care institutions as paradoxical institutions
- The dual voice of domination: ritual and power in a British embassy
- Notes on linguistic ethnography as a liminal activity
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction: Emerging linguistic ethnographic perspectives on institutional discourses
- Access all areas: identity issues and researcher responsibilities in workplace settings
- Deaf perspectives on communicative practices in South Africa: institutional language policies in educational settings
- Professional orientation in back region humor
- Framing the news: an ethnographic view of business newswriting
- Linguistic ethnography and the study of welfare institutions as a flow of social practices: the case of residential child care institutions as paradoxical institutions
- The dual voice of domination: ritual and power in a British embassy
- Notes on linguistic ethnography as a liminal activity
