Abstract

This article explicates the specific manners in which professorial power is indexed and implemented in the first personal pronoun `I' in academic discourse. The matter of analytic interest is to find out how the semiotic sign `I' acquires its semantic property of power in the pragmatic context of doctoral supervision. The data under consideration consist of two dyadic interactions conducted respectively by a PhD candidate with her two supervisors in an American university. The data analyses reveal that professorial power may be performed in two different ways in three types of communicative acts — directive, evaluative, and explanative. The findings here may have some important implications for academic supervision in terms of the relationship between language and power.