The Power of Language

While human service professionals are trained to listen carefully to our clients, we receive little training on how to listen to and analyze the professional discourse that surrounds us. In this article, I introduce critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a set of tools for unpacking how power works in forms of discourse such as policy, legislation, and communication between individuals with unequal amounts of power. To illustrate the process and purpose of CDA, I analyze policy text from the counseling profession. Specifically, I analyze the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) Board of Director’s charge to the 2024 CACREP Standards Revision Committee. I examine active versus passive sentence construction, imperative and declarative sentence mode, and speech act values to explore what the language in the charge reveals about how power works in the CACREP standards revision process. The analysis reveals three differing yet co-existing depictions of power. I claim that the Board of Directors used these varying depictions of power to make a claim about the legitimacy of the standards revision process. I conclude with implications for critical discourse analysis as a method for research and as a tool for training and advocacy.