Symbolic power in communication refers to the capacity to impose meanings, values and interpretations as legitimate while concealing the relations of domination that sustain them. Florea argues that every communicative act depends upon a shared symbolic code, since messages can only be encoded and decoded when sender and receiver possess common cultural references . This makes communication not merely technical but deeply political, because whoever controls the dominant code can define social reality itself. Drawing on Bourdieu, symbolic power becomes a constructive power of reality, producing order through categories that appear natural rather than imposed. Political discourse, institutional education and mass media therefore operate as privileged spaces where domination may be transformed into consent. For instance, governments may present laws, hierarchies or national myths as common sense, while media institutions decide which voices appear credible, visible or respectable. Florea’s discussion of authority clarifies this process: epistemic authority rests on expertise, whereas deontic authority depends on command and must be legitimised through persuasion rather than mere coercion . Weber’s traditional, charismatic and rational-legal forms of legitimacy further demonstrate how obedience is secured through inherited custom, emotional attachment or acceptance of legal order. Symbolic violence is consequently most effective when it is not recognised as violence, for it is internalised as normality. Yet resistance remains possible through “small culture”, the silent and ordinary practices by which individuals contest the pressure of official culture. Ultimately, symbolic power is legitimate only while society believes in the meanings it produces; when that belief collapses, domination becomes visible as domination.
