The Notion of Power in Institutional Discourse Imposition or Persuasion

ADRRI JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
ADRRI JOURNALS (www.adrri.org)

pISSN: 2343-6891 ISSN-L: 2343-6891 VOL. 3,No.3(1), June, 2014

The Notion of Power in Institutional Discourse: Imposition or Persuasion?
Ishmael Duah
Department of Liberal Studies, Koforidua Polytechnic, Box KF 981, Koforidua, Ghana.
Email: maja233@yahoo.com
Received: 1st June, 2014 Revised: 23rd June, 2014
Published Online: 30th June, 2014
URL: http://www.journals.adrri.org/
[Cite as: Duah, I. (2014). The Notion of Power in Institutional Discourse: Imposition or
Persuasion?. ADRRI Journal of Arts and Social Sciences. Vol. 3, No.3 (1).]
Abstract
The argument of this paper is that there has been a shift in discourse of higher education in Ghana
towards legal discourse and this has affected power relations in such discourse. Using the Polytechnic
students handbook, this study examined the nature of power and the sources of power used in discourse
of higher education in Ghana. The results point to the fact that though coercive power is the most
prevalent notion of power, in the handbook, there is a mix of two power forms. First is coercive power
which has threats and sanctions are its sources. The other is authoritative power whose sources comprise
role or status of the power wielders, and references to legal documents outside the students handbook
itself. The paper also argues that the apparent shift in the discourse of higher education in Ghana and the
associated shift in power relations in such discourse has been brought on largely by competition for
students and the deepening of the democratic dispensation in Ghana.
Keywords: critical discourse analysis, power relations, institutional power, legal discourse

INTRODUCTION
The way we write or speak, and are written to or spoken to, helps shape us into the people we
become. Through words and other actions, we build ourselves in a world that is building us.
That world encourages us to construct the different identities we carry forward later on in life. If
we go by the fact that we are the sum of our experiences (the knowledge we encounter), then
those in control of our life experiences have enormous power over us as they determine to a
large extend what our identities would be. In this way, language plays an important role in
teaching us the kind of people to become and what kind of society to make. Language is
therefore now more of an instrument of power relations, geared towards achieving goals and
making people do things, than just a means of communication, (Habermas, 1987).
In the management of academic institutions of higher learning, students are exposed to large
volumes of discourse in the form of students constitution, handbooks, examination guide, and
other reading materials related to the maintenance of law and order in these institutions. These
institutions create and impose discourse in a way that they, the institutions, are able to control
and shape students experiences of the world, and the way students classify this world. These
institutions are therefore deemed to have the power to promote particular kinds of identity in
their students to suit their own purposes, (Mayr, 2008). In days gone by, it was not common to
hear of students suing institutions of higher learning at the law courts or challenging the status
quo. This situation led to many demonstrations by students in the 1980s and 90s as avenues for
redress were non existent and so demonstration was the only way through which students
could seek redress.
However, over the last decade, the discourse of most academic institutions of higher learning in
Ghana has undergone a great transformation. This transformation has particularly affected
institutional discourse bordering on documents spelling out the rules of engagement for
students on the various campuses: students handbook, examination guide, prospectuses, etc.
This shift in institutional discourse has occurred mainly in the direction of institutional
discourse moving in the direction of legal discourse. The shift in discourse has resulted from a
number of factors.
First, there is a sharp increase in the number of tertiary institutions in Ghana. Just two decades
ago, there were only three universities and one college of education in Ghana. However, as of
now, there are five public universities, ten public polytechnics, and more than fifty private
universities in Ghana. The implication of the situation is that there is keen competition for
students: for the private institutions, survival depends on fees that students pay; for the public
universities and polytechnics, a cut in government funding means they have to rely heavily on
internally generated funds (IGF), with the main source of IGF being students fees and other
charges on students. Second, the deepening of the democratic dispensation in Ghana has had a
tremendous effect on discourse of higher learning institutions in Ghana to the point where some

academic institutional discourse almost look like legal discourse. These factors have affected
power relations in the discourse of higher education in Ghana, especially in our polytechnics.
Now, the issue is, if academic institutions have wield so much power, what is the nature of this
power and how does this power manifest itself in academic discourse? Using the Koforidua
Polytechnic students handbook I examine the nature of institutional power as it pertains in
institutional discourse. This paper will thus attempt to answer the following questions:
What is the nature of power in institutional discourse?

What are the sources of power in institutional discourse?
It is worthy to note that though a lot of work has been done on institutional power else in the
world, it is felt that there has not been enough research in this area in Africa. This work is
therefore intended to contribute to research in this area in Africa as a way of bridging the
research gap.
Power
Generally, there are three central notions of power. First is the notion of power as the ability to
get others to do what you want or more specifically, the ability to get others to act against their
own interests (Lukes, 1974) or as various forms of constraint on human action, (Lukes:2004). In
the same vein, power is seen as domination or strategies by which individuals try to direct and
control the conduct of others, (Foucault, 1997). This type of power is power over or what
Boulding (1989) refers to as threat power. It is important to note that here; the basis of this type
of power is force or threats and over looks noncoercive forms of power. For example, the power
of armed robbers and sometimes the police is coercive. This notion of power borders on
domination and is inherently characterized by conflict between the different parties.
The second view of power is power as the ability or capacity to act so as to attain some end
(Allen, 1998, p. 36). As explained by Wrong (1995), power means "the capacity of some persons
to produce intended and foreseen effects on others. Capacity here refers to power based on
privileged access to social resources, such as money, status, fame, knowledge, information, etc.
The point here is that the form of power will depend on the resources that are involved in the
exercise of such power. This power is the ability to work with others to get something done by
cooperation. This is the power of compromise, the power of people working together to solve a
common problem. Thus, the power of the police or the armed robber will be based on force,
while the power of academicians, media persons, parents, managers will based on knowledge,
information, and authority.
The third notion of power is is the ability to do something on ones own. This is what Bouldings
(1989) refers to as integrative power, which he explains as the power to create relationships and

bring people together. In this way, relationships of love and respect rest on integrative power,
and social groups use integrative power to gain members and maintain their loyalty.
Institutions
Institutions are defined by McFadden, Priest and Green (2010) as systems of rules, either formal
or informal that rules define the boundaries of any institution. They also explain that an
institution is likely to be an organization, that is, the physical embodiment of an institution,
where people carry out a particular set of activities. These named entities are recognized to have
authority, power and influence. Institutions can also be seen as clusters of rights, rules and
decision-making procedures that give rise to social practices, assign roles to participants in
these practices and govern interactions among players of these roles (IDGEC, 1999; Young,
2002). According to Agar (1985:164), institutions are a socially legitimated expertise together
with those persons authorized to implement it.
The import of all these is that first, institutions are not restricted to physical settings and can
refer to any powerful group, such as the management of polytechnics or universities,
government or the media. Second, there is the conception of institutions as involving
asymmetrical roles between institutional representatives or experts and non-experts or
clients (students or employees), who must comply with institutional norms and objectives.
Last, institutions involve power and by extension, institutions are rule enforcing mechanisms.
As a result, institutions are concerned with power in terms of their existence and their function.
Thus, Luke (2005) explains that almost all institutions involve mechanisms which bring people
to both do what they would not do in the absence of the institution and to do what does not
always serve their interests.
Institutional Power
This brings to the fore the notion of institutional power. Institutional power refers to the power
persons acquire through their position in a stable and integrated system of social rules,
(Hindriks, 2008). As explained by Adu-Buandoh (2010), the discourse of an institution such as a
university is always embedded in the authority and power vested in the institution either by
government or by the social structure of the community. Thus, institutional power can be seen
as the capacity associated with institutional resources such as status, expertise, information, etc.
Capacity here has two issues to it: first, it refers to the exercise of power where a person is able
to bring about certain conditions by influencing the actions of other people by giving these
people a reason to act. Second, it is the exercise of power that is associated with a system of
status functions which gives them the authority to make demands on the actions of other
people. The implication is that if a student, for instance, accepts admission to study in a
university, by implication he has accepted the status quo as far as the status of that institution is
concerned.

As far as institutional power is concerned, there are two schools of thought. The first school of
thought is championed by Weber (1914), Althusser, (1971), and Herbamas (1987), who are of the
view that institutions wield so much power which they impose on people. On the other hand,
Gramci, (1971) and Foucault, (1979) view institutional power as involving more of persuasion
and consent than with coercive power.
METHODOLOGY
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is concerned with studying and analysing written words and
spoken words to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance and inequality, and bias,
and how these sources are initiated, maintained , reproduced and transformed within specific
social, economic, political, and historical contexts, (Van Dijk, 1998). Similarly, Fairclough (1993)
defines CDA as discourse analysis which aims to systematically explore often opaque
relationships of causality and determination between discursive practices, events and texts, and
wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices,
events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles
over power; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and
society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony. That is, CDA tries to make clear the
links between discourse practices, social practices, and social structures, as the link between
these may not be clear to the lay person.
Discourse is used in everyday contexts for building power and knowledge, for regulation and
normalization, for the development of new knowledge and power relations. Therefore, given
the power of the written word, CDA is necessary for describing, interpreting analysing, and
critiquing social life reflected in text, (Luke, 1997).
However, CDA is a multidisciplinary field and different scholars have approached the study in
different ways. In this study, the three-part framework of Fairclough (1989) is used for
analyzing the data. The first part of Faircloughs model is made up of description of text; the
second is made up of interpretation of discourse practice; and last but not least is explanation of
sociocultural practice.
The data for analysis is the students handbook of Koforidua Polytechnic. The choice of
Koforidua Polytechnic was informed by the fact that the researcher is a lecturer at the school
and has served on various committees and the academic board. Thus, having had access to
students complaints and appeals against various sanctions, he has special insights into the
discourse of the institutions.
Secondly, since all the polytechnics in Ghana are under the National Board for Professional and
Technician Examinations (NABPTEX) all students handbooks in the polytechnics are drawn

from the NABPTEX student guide. Therefore, the koforidua students polytechnic handbook
can be said to be representative of the students handbooks of all the polytechnics in Ghana.
DISCUSSION
The common ways to present academic discourse are through textbooks, manuals, conference
presentations, dissertations, lectures, and research articles. As explained by Van Dijk, the
power of dominant groups may be integrated in laws, rules, norms and habits just as we have
in our educational institutions. As mentioned earlier, the analysis will be done according to
Faircloughs three dimensional framework for CDA.
Description of Text
Faircloughs three dimensional framework for CDA analysis entails description as the first stage
of analysis. This comprises the analysis of vocabulary, grammar, and textual structures that are
found in the text.
First, a good part of the vocabulary in the hand book can be said to belong to legal discourse,
though the setting is an educational institution. It is assumed that since most part of the
students handbook deal with instructions and directives, commands, procedures, and
punishments, it is not surprising to find vocabulary common to legal discourse.
The student so indicted shall be notified in writing of the ground on
which disciplinary action is being taken against him and he shall have
the right to defend himself including right to counsel and calling of
witnesses before the Disciplinary Committee, (Article 17).
For example, words like affidavit, prosecution, constitution, breach, rights, privileges,
obligations, responsibilities, governing bodies, authorities, debarred, offence, statutes, article 20,
enforcement, criminal, appeal, are reminiscent of legal discourse. Moreover, phrases like article
20, article 30, shall be liable, etc belong to legal discourse. Furthermore, language in the
handbook is characterized by lengthy noun phrases, heavy use of passive voice, complex
grammatical structures, including multiple embedded clauses and unusually placed
subordinate clauses.
Interpretation of Discourse Practice
The second stage involves interpretation of discourse practices which has to do with bringing to
the fore the meaning of the text as well as the meaning that the interpreter, relying on his or her
member resources brings to bear on the text. In the analytical framework being used, apart from
the linguistic analysis at the text level, there is also linguistic analysis at the discourse practice
level, which Fairclough (1995) calls intertextual analysis. Fairclough defines intertextuality as
the property texts have of being full of bits and pieces of other texts. He therefore sees
intertextual analysis as focusing on the borderline between text and discourse practice.

Therefore while linguistic analysis is descriptive in nature, intertextual analysis is more
interpretative.
One discourse practice found in the Koforidua Polytechnic students handbook is reference to
texts outside the handbook itself as a source of power. These are what Fairclough (1992) calls
manifest intertextuality and extracts from the handbook include the examination guide of the
polytechnic, the Statutory Declaration Act, 1971 (Act 389), the Polytechnic Act, 2007 (Act 745),
the Polytechnic Statutes, the Financial Administration Act 2003, Internal Audit Agency Act
2003, and the Public Order Act. These references to the various acts are an attempt to legitimize
the discourse, because for exercise of power of the institution to be effective, it must be accepted
by the students. According to Mayr (2008), in democratic institutions, power needs to be
legitimate to be accepted by people. Therefore, in a way, this kind of power is co-exercised by
the students and therefore compliance level will be high. Such power is persuasive or social
power and this also points to the fact that the institution does not wield absolute power.
Allied to manifest intertextuality, is constitutive intertextuality which occasions the
incorporation of structures of specific discourse conventions into the production of new texts.
According to Mayr (2008), this type of intertextuality is of particular concern to CDA because of
its capacity to transform discourse practices of institutions. In the handbook, there is extensive
use of vocabulary from legal discourse. For instance, the use of affidavit, prosecution, breach,
rights, obligations, offence, statutes, enforcement, criminal, appeal amounts to the colonization
of legal discourse by educational discourse. Probably this kind of borrowing from legal
discourse signals recognition of students rights in matters affecting them. This is Boulding
refers to as the power of compromise.
Moreover, the discourse of the handbook is such that the rules, directives, commands, are spelt
out with painstaking attention to minute detail, a characteristic of legal discourse. As explained
by Van Dijk (1989), crucial in the exercise or the maintenance of power is the fact that for A to
exert mental control over B, B must know about A's wishes, wants, preferences, or intentions.
This situation might explain the detailed explanation of the rules, commands, procedures, etc,
in the students handbook. Extract from the handbook include
To be qualified to write an examination, a student shall register for the
appropriate courses at the due time. Failure to register shall disqualify a
student from writing the examination. No student shall be allowed to
take an examination in a course for which he/she has not registered.
Where a student registers for a course and fails to write the examination,
the said student shall be deemed to have failed the course unless good
reasons, acceptable to the schools examination board, can be advanced
for failure to write the examination, (p.27).

A close study of the above extract shows that great effort has been made to address any
problem that might arise from the interpretation of the rule. This is characteristic of legal
discourse as it takes nothing for granted and spells out every significant detail explicitly. As a
result, it is often felt that legal discourse is unnecessarily wordy, and even redundant. However,
this style of writing is necessary to ensure that the students do not miss anything.
Furthermore, detailed explanation of procedures by which cases of non-compliance could be
investigated, and procedures through which culprits could appeal against sanctions, are given.
The argument here is that all these borrowings amounts to recontextualization (Bernstein, 1990)
of legal discourse into educational discourse. The adoption of elements of legal discourse, and
making room for processes of appeal against sanctions for non-compliance, suggest that the
exercise of power of the authorities of the institution is not absolute. For instance, there have
been cases where students of the institution have legally and successfully appealed against
sanctions against them for breaching one rule or the other. These legal challenges by the
students were successful not because the students did not commit the said offence, but because
either due process was not followed in punishing the students, or the law that was evoked in
punishing the students was vague and so the students took advantage of it.
Another common feature of the grammar of the discourse of the hand book is the use of the
modals shall and may. In law, to show the difference between situations where one is under
obligation and those where one has some room to choose, the law makes use of modal verbs
such as shall and may, respectively.
Shall is used in the second and third persons to imply that the will of the subject is not being
taken into account, such as to command or threaten and this points to the use of coercive power
by the institution. The use of shall is normally associated with laws, directives and regulations
to express what is mandatory.
Examples from the text include,
Students pursuing professional programmes shall regard themselves first and foremost
as students of Koforidua Polytechnic and shall in that respect abide by all the
regulations of the Polytechnic, (Article 8.3).
Each student shall be provided with a Koforidua Polytechnic identity card and shall be
required to carry it on him/her at all times, (Article 8.4).
Thus, when shall is used, there is no room for choice and the institution is seen to be exercising
power coercively. In the first extract, the student is obliged to see himself/herself as a student of
the institution and obey regulations of the institution. In the second instance, the student is
mandated to carry his identity card at all times. For instance, a student must show his identity
card to an invigilator before he is allowed into an examination hall to write his examination. In
both instances, the use of the modal shall eliminate all possibilities of choice on the part of the

student. Shall, thus, serves as a booster emphasizing the force of the proposition, thus making
more pronounced the point that the nature of institutional power is sometimes coercive.
On the other hand, when the modal may is used, there is room to make a choice. The use of the
modal may, confirms the role that concessive acts play in this text type whose pragmatic
purpose is to grant students the possibility to choose from a range of possible actions leading to
the final fulfillment of a mandatory target, in this case, compliance to institutional rules. May
can therefore be said to mitigate the rigidity of commands in the exercise of institutional power,
and this is an example of persuasive power of the institution.
Examples include the following:
Any student aggrieved by any disciplinary action against him may appeal to the Rector
within twenty-one days upon receipt of the notice of the punishment, (Article 18.1).
Any student found to have gained admission into the Polytechnic through fraud or
misrepresentation may be liable to prosecution, (Article 20.1b)
In the first instance, the student can choose to appeal or not to appeal. In the second, the
Polytechnic can choose to prosecute or not to prosecute. Thus, the institutions power over
students is not absolute and this points to cooperation between the players. This can be said to
bring to the fore the deepening of the democratic dispensation at the national level which has
inevitably rubbed on educational institutions in the country.
The passive voice also features prominently in the grammar of the hand book. In written
English, writers share authorities through the actions and decisions of anonymous elite, usually
rendered in the passive voice with an institutionalized verb or verb phrases. The following are
examples from the handbook: are advised, are expected, must be submitted, shall be obtained,
shall be warned, shall be informed, etc. Here, the use of the passive voice leaves the identity of
the agent of power secret and this, in a way, naturalizes the directive or command carried by
the passive construction. That is, the conduct being espoused becomes a natural behaviour.
These institutional verbs (advised, expected, submitted, etc) indicate unified group cognition1.
According to Fairclough (1989), the combination of a unified and anonymous authority working
against the audience has obvious implications for the use and abuse of power. This is because in
an institutional context, language that communicates authorized action tends to conceal a
presumption of power.
Another syntactic feature of the grammar of the handbook is nominalization. Nominalization is
the use of a verb, an adjective, or an adverb as the head of a noun phrase, with or without
1
The psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning.

morphological transformation. The term can also refer specifically to the process of producing a
noun from another part of speech via the addition of derivational affixes. Examples from the
handbook include, for the avoidance of doubt, registration of students, changes in registered courses,
etc. As noted by Fairclough (2003), the use of nominalization can remove very important
political and ideological implications, and conceal the active role of agents of power.
Nominalizations may also make sentences more difficult to follow and to promote wordiness, a
characteristic of legal discourse which the students handbook resembles.
Furthermore, throughout the handbook, hedge words and expressions (inclusive of some
grammatical structures already mentioned) are generally used to reduce the illocutionary force
of directives and commands. According to Hyland (2004), hedges mark the writers reluctance
to present propositional information categorically and, within the systemic framework, can thus
be categorized as modalized expressions mitigating the force of a proposition. Hedges can also
be considered as politeness markers meant as strategies to show consideration for the
addressees freedom of action and freedom of imposition. Examples of hedge expressions in the
handbook include
Any student enrolled at the polytechnic shall be required to pay his/her
fees in full within the first week of the first semester. Students are
advised to endeavour to register and pay their fees as early as possible to
avoid being withdrawn from the polytechnic, (Article 8:5).
Here, the institution is exercising power by imposing certain conditions on the students and
also spelling out punishment to be meted out to those who fail to comply. In this way, the
institution is deemed to have immense power over its students (Weber, 1914, Althusser, 1971),
because the students are here compelled to pay the fees in full as they would not want to be
withdrawn. However, as Adu-Buandoh (2010) explains, in recent times there has been the
tendency to run institutions of higher learning like commercial businesses, with students being
their customers. There is also keen competition for students. As a result, the management of
institutions of higher learning are particular about the kind of interpretation their customers
put on their discourse. As a result, these hedge expressions are used so that the institution is not
seen as being too high handed in its demands.
Explanation of Sociocultural Practice
Explanation of sociocultural practice is the last stage of Faircloughs three-sided model for CDA.
It shows how the discourse fits into the social practice of the institution or the society, and how
the processes contribute to change the structures of the institutions or to sustain the structures.
It is important to recognize the fact that institutional power depends primarily on recognition
and collective acceptance of authority in terms of status and expertise. Though it is true that
institutions involve power in terms of domination, much of their power derives from assigning
10

status functions to certain persons in such institutions. This explains why in the discourse of the
students handbook, the whole of article four is devoted to assigning roles to various officers of
the institution. The argument is that every power needs a basis, and resources such as status or
position socially enables an agent like the Rector of the polytechnic, to exercise power or the
application of sanctions in the case of noncompliance, (Van Dijk, 1989). For instance:
The Rector, appointed by Council, is the academic and administrative
head of the Polytechnic. He/she is responsible to the Polytechnic Council
and has oversight responsibility for the various Sections/Divisions of the
Polytechnic including disciplinary matters of the institutions, (Article
4).
Members of the academic staff, the Academic Board, Residence
Committee, the Senior Administrative Staff, hostel Officers and all other
persons, so authorized for that purpose, shall maintain order and proper
conduct and take appropriate disciplinary actions against any student for
breach of regulation, (Article, 14).
In the first extract, by virtue of his position, the Rector has the power to command and to
sanction. Therefore, when the Rector asserts his institutional status, the primary claim is not that
he is able to get students to do certain things, but that he has a legitimate claim or standing to
demand obedience. If tomorrow he or she is not more the Rector, he cannot make any legitimate
claim to demand obedience from students. Even in this case, the Rector has to ensure that in
exercising this power, due process is followed. In the second extract, through delegated power,
the Academic Board has legitimate claim to maintaining order and proper conduct.
Moreover, institutional power does not reside with people, but in social relationship and
therefore is inherently persuasive. One piece of evidence suggesting that power does not reside
with people, but in social relationships, is the fact that even the most powerful in our
institutions are themselves subject to power. For example, making references to the polytechnic
Act, explaining procedures by which students can challenge the status quo, points to the fact
that power circulates among social participants, (Foucault, 1979).
Furthermore, the reduction of government subvention to institutions of higher learning in
Ghana and the resultant tendency to run these institutions like businesses has brought about
economic pressures that have largely affected educational discourse, (Adu-Buandoh, 2010), as
can be seen in the extract below.
Any student enrolled at the polytechnic shall be required to pay his/her
fees in full within the first week of the first semester. Students are
advised to endeavour to register and pay their fees as early as possible to
avoid being withdrawn from the polytechnic.
11

This way, the institution is exercising coercive power by imposing certain conditions on the
students and also spelling out punishment to be meted out to those who fail to comply. Here,
the institution is deemed to have immense power over its students (Weber, 1914, Althusser,
1971), because they are here compelled to pay the fees in full as they would not want to be
withdrawn. Even though, the institution is seen here as imposing certain conditions on the
students, the threat to withdraw students is hedged by the advice to students. The force of the
threat to withdraw students is thus reduced.
Other analysts like Gramci (1971) and Foucault (1979) are of the views that in settings like that
of education, power is not merely imposed from above on others, but that in many situations,
power is jointly produced or co-exercised. This is what Gramci (1971) refers to in his ideological
concept of hegemony as domination by consent. This notion is exemplified by the fact that
before the institution comes out with the fee schedule for instance, they seek the consent of the
Student Representative Council (SRC) (through persuasion-trying to justify an increase in
students fee or persuade them to accept a new component of fees). If the institution does not
do this, it risks demonstrations against the fee schedule from the students as is experienced in
some university campuses in the country. So through the persuasion of the students to accept
the fee schedule, they are led to believe that the imposition of the fee is legitimate.
It is important to note that legitimization through this process is in itself ideological. As
explained by Mayr (2008), it is often the case that institutions reflect, reinforce and reconstruct
hidden ideologies in their discourses. What is ideological about the extract is that the real
motive for asking the students to pay the fee in full and within the first week is that the
institution needs the money to spend, or they have already spent the fees that have not been
collected, thus the urgency.
CONCLUSION
This study examined the nature and sources of power in institutional discourse and argued that
the apparent shift in the discourse of institutions of higher education in Ghana towards legal
discourse has affected power relations in the discourse of higher institutions of learning in
Ghana. The data points to the use of two forms of power: first, coercive power is exercised in
the Polytechnic handbook. Threats and sanctions are the main sources of this kind of power.
Second, there is the use of authoritative power whose sources are references to legal documents
outside the handbook itself, and role or the statues of the power wielders as prescribed in the
Polytechnic handbook.
Therefore, the notion of power in the Polytechnic handbook is neither imposition nor
persuasion: it is a mixture of two forms of power. The position of higher institutions of
education in Ghana, as all powerful, has been weakened by the apparent competition on the
education market, and the deepening of the democracy in the country. In this situation, a
12

combined power strategy mix is the best. Therefore the optimal mix of threat, exchange, and
integrative approaches as prescribed by Sharp (1973) was adopted. Even though, power as
dominance is the most known notion of power, it is innately conflictual and as such appears to a
poor model for studies of institutional power.
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The Notion of Power in Institutional Discourse Imposition or Persuasion

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Received: 1st June, 2014 Revised: 23rd June, 2014

Published Online: 30th June, 2014

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What is the nature of power in institutional discourse?

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The psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning.

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