Power reduces information-processing demands by making itself visible through perception, not just words.

Evidence

In all media some of the problems of information-processing are taken out of the process of verbal communication and left to perception. Not only love but power too makes itself visible. Symbols of hierarchy, along with symbolically intended acts of violence, and not least the personal appearance, the presence, of the greatest power-holder in the interaction, all help in this. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 684

Categorization

• XREF: The visible presence and symbols of the power-holder connects to Giddens’s sense of how institutional authority is embodied; also echoes Stevens’s physical comportment before Lord Darlington.
• SEED: Could anchor an essay on how institutional power is reified through embodied presence — the butler’s bearing as a visible code-symbol of Darlington Hall’s authority.