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“Power” is a word with myriad definitions and has been studied by linguists and other scholars in as many contexts. Kiesling (1998) identifies seven varieties of power from which roles may be built, Fairclough (1992) indicates that power can be both overt and covert, and Foucault (1972, 1973) indicates that power comes from below as well as above. Jones, Gallois, Callan, and Barker (1994, 1995) examine accommodation not in opposition to power but as a differently-derived variety of power, more closely resembling Fairclough’s covert power. This project is an examination of the displays of power and accommodation in the discourse of university ESL writing instructors and their students through the framework of critical classroom discourse analysis, as proposed by Kumaravadivelu (1999). The perceptions of the participating instructors are contrasted with the perceptions of their students and with the transcribed discourse from their classrooms. In addition, the data are compared in search of differences based upon the instructor’s rank (Ph.D. or graduate student), whether or not the instructor is a Native English Speaker or a speaker of English as a Second Language, the instructor’s sex, and whether the class is held in a computer-mediated or traditional classroom environment. The instructors were interviewed verbally, and the students were given a questionnaire inquiring about the classroom environment, the relationship between the students and instructors, teaching style, and other aspects of the classroom where power manifests itself. The instructor interview questions match the questions on the student questionnaire, altered for perspective. The four participating instructors are two Ph.D.s and two graduate students, two native English speakers and two non-native speakers, two males and two females, and two instructors teaching in a computer-mediated classroom and two teaching in a traditional classroom environment. The 60 student participants speak 19 native languages, with the most frequent being Arabic, Chinese, and English. Of the student participants, 45 are male and 15 are female. The data are analyzed for characteristics of power and accommodation, with specific 17 specific areas of focus, including the use of titles and honorifics, wait time, the use of humor, pronoun use, and the instructors’ role as a leader or as a facilitator. Results suggest differences in demonstrations of power and accommodation based upon the instructors’ sex, first language, and rank, but are inconclusive with regards to differences based upon the presence or absence of computer mediation.
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