Assignments in Postgraduate Studies: An Ethnographic Analysis of Power

Abstract

This study was originated as part of an assignment for the ‘Language and Power’ module in the MA in Language & Cultural Diversity programme conducted at King’s College London. It presents an ethnographic analysis of power and struggle in students’ assignments in higher education or postgraduate studies. The steps towards the analysis were provided as a guideline toward an ethnographic case study of power (Rampton 2011). Using the notion of activity type purposed by Levinson (1979) is central to the analysis of power. Since power is relatively abstract, the notion of the activity type provides a number of dimensions that can be examined and thereby probe and illuminate the activity in a way that allows a number of considerations to be taken with respect to various aspects linked up with each dimension or component of the activity.