Oral Anglais Location Of Power

I'm going to talk about the notion of Locations and Forms of Power. Power is the ability to influence people's behaviour (comportemnt) or official capacity to exercise control or authority such as the government and the State. In order to live together members of a community accept rules, regulations and laws. Power is synonym of might (puissce). Locations could be important building or institutions that represent a form of power, such as the White house. But a location can also be a country or a state. There are democratic and dictatorial countries. In some countries we find oppositions, which created conflicts and tensions.

To illustrate this notion, I have chosen two documents : texts “First Among Equals” and “Solidarity in Chaos”.

First of all, we will see why university is a seat of power. In the document, Simon is determined to go to Oxford Univeristy and so he rejects offers from all other universities, while the university in United Kingdom is very selective. We see that his mother is afraid for his future. But the young man was sure of him. I think that the university gives to young students.They can envisage freely their careers and become what they want to be in their future life.

Then, the second document, “Solidarity in Chaos” is an article that explains the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. After Hurricane, volunteers are active for the reconstruction of the town. The local population has struggled to overcome this, it was isolated and mostly flooded. People volunteered to the homeless. Indeed, they were willing to welcome them in their home. But the government was much criticized as incompetent because the population had no supplies, while these volunteers were very enterprising.

To conclude, these two documents are linked to this notion because first of all university is a seat of power because she gives a power of students who can choose freely their future life. But we see that the government keep the power because universities are selective. And secondly, the gourvenement is seen as a power, but in this document it is much criticized and thus may create tensions.

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