Published June 24, 2025 | Version v5
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The Illusion of Objectivity: How Language Constructs Authority

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Universidad de la República

Description

Abstract (EN):
This chapter investigates the grammatical and pragmatic strategies by which institutional discourse creates an illusion of objectivity to legitimize authority. It explores how agentless passives, impersonal constructions, and modal expressions (e.g., “it must be done”) obscure authorship and intention, projecting necessity and neutrality. Far from being ideologically neutral, such linguistic forms restrict interpretive possibilities and reinforce epistemic closure. Drawing on systemic functional linguistics and pragmatic theory, the analysis is supported by examples from legal, academic, and religious discourse. The chapter contributes to a broader understanding of how language functions as a vehicle for institutional power and discursive control.

Keywords (EN):
Institutional discourse, grammatical agency, objectivity, epistemic closure, authority, systemic functional linguistics, deontic modality, legal language

A mirrored version of this article is also available on Figshare for redundancy and citation indexing purposes: [DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.29218724]

 

Notes

This chapter is part of the forthcoming book Grammars of Power: How Syntactic Structures Shape Authority, and is published with the DOI 10.5281/zenodo.15395918 under a CC BY 4.0 license.

Abstract

This chapter investigates the grammatical and pragmatic strategies by which institutional discourse creates an illusion of objectivity to legitimize authority. It explores how agentless passives, impersonal constructions, and modal expressions (e.g., “it must be done”) obscure authorship and intention, projecting necessity and neutrality. Far from being ideologically neutral, such linguistic forms restrict interpretive possibilities and reinforce epistemic closure. Drawing on systemic functional linguistics and pragmatic theory, the analysis is supported by examples from legal, academic, and religious discourse. The chapter contributes to a broader understanding of how language functions as a vehicle for institutional power and discursive control.

 

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References

  • Ducrot, O. (1984). Le dire et le dit. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
  • Halliday, M. A. K. (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3rd ed.). London: Arnold.
  • Hyland, K. (2002). Authority and invisibility: Authorial identity in academic writing. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(8), 1091–1112. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00007-5