Language is about much more than the efficient communication of
information, Pierre Bourdieu reminds us. He writes, "[U]tterances are
not only ... signs to be understood and deciphered; they are also signs of wealth, intended to be evaluated and appreciate, and signs of authority,
intended to be believed and obeyed" ("Language and Symbolic Power"
502). In terms of the linguistic market, one important question is which
agents in an exchange have power to impose criteria that value their
linguistic products.
Forms of language/linguistic features take on meaning through
the circulation of language ideologies. Kathryn Woolard and Bambi
Schieffelin provide four different definitions of linguistic/language
ideologies on p. 57, from more neutral ones, such as "shared bodies of
commonsense notions about the nature of language in the world," to ones
that include speakers' political and moral interests, such as "the
cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships,
together with their loading of moral and political interests." Judith
Irvine and Susan Gal focus on how speakers' understandings of linguistic
differences get mapped onto people and activities.
In
preparation for our discussion on Wednesday, I'm asking you to respond
to a few key issues in the texts, to start to work out your thinking
about these theoretical frameworks/concepts and to put questions on the
table for our discussion. Please post these by 8 pm on Tuesday, and
please feel free to incorporate a response to others' posts into yours
if relevant.
Katie, Christine, and Josh:
I'm asking you to take one quote from the Bourdieu readings that you
found especially provocative or challenging (in any and all senses of
those words) and respond to it here. Please supply the quote and then
develop your meditation on it in a detailed paragraph.
Ryan, Allie, Elizabeth, and Aubrey: Please
choose one of the following topics from the Bourdieu readings and
provide a paragraph-long meditation on it, which either begins or ends
with a question you think would generate productive discussion in class
(I'm hoping among the four of you, we can cover at least three): the standard
language market vs. alternative language markets; the anticipation of
sanction and self-censorship (or the relationship of production and
reception); the relationship of "symbolic capital" to the three forms of
capital described in "The Forms of Capital" (economic, cultural,
social).
Steve, Inez, Kelly, and Kathryn:
I'm asking you (a) to pull out two features of linguistic/language
ideologies mentioned in Woolard & Schieffelin or in Irvine & Gal
that you found especially helpful for thinking about the definition of
linguistic/language ideologies and their effects and explain why in a
detailed paragraph.
Gail, jd, and Ben:
I'm asking you to reflect on this question in a detailed paragraph:
Where do language ideologies reside? (Some questions that could help
with this one: Are they explicit or implicit? How are they acquired?) As
you can imagine, this is a very important question to think through in
order to study language ideologies.
ReplyDeleteHow Is Language Used to Hold Onto Power?
“When the subversive critique which aims to weaken the dominant class through the principle of its perpetuation by bringing to light the arbitrariness of the entitlements transmitted and of their transmissions…is incorporated in institutionalized mechanisms…aimed at controlling the official, direct transmission of power and privileges, the holders of capital have an ever greater interest in resorting to reproduction strategies capable of ensuring better-disguised transmission… “ (“The Forms of Capital,” Bourdieu, 254)
The example of this “better-disguised transmission” given by Bourdieu is by way of history: when the dominant class was threatened with the argument that power shouldn’t be passed on through the chance of birth, they could still count on the laws of inheritance. His use of social and cultural capital as evidence against the view of economics that he describes like Roulette--where it is all a game of chance with “perfect equality of opportunity” for all--is fascinating. It is also evidence of just how hard it is to make real progress against the dominant class. Bourdieu finds this social structure active with each interaction between two people in speech (for example boss and employee) in “Language and Symbolic Power” (503). Relative to the History of the English Language, I wonder what examples of the dominant class’s holding onto use of language to reproduce power in “better-disguised” ways looks like. A rather obvious example would be the language wars over ‘climate change,’ replacing ‘global warming’ when big business was threatened with laws that effected their bottom line. Here’s a link to an article about this example of politics in language, http://www.newsmax.com/FastFeatures/climate-change-vs-global-warming-politics/2014/11/14/id/607457/
The Forms of Capital- Bordieu
ReplyDeleteBordieu emphasizes the concept of social reproduction within society and how the forms of capital reinforce its legitimization. He defines the major types of capital (social, economic, and cultural) and highlights on their interrelatedness in advancing or displacing one’s status within society. Essentially, the interrelatedness of these forms of capital allow for the elite to stay elite and the poor to remain poor. He depicts an image of this in the following quote, “…if the best measure of cultural capital is undoubtedly the amount of time devoted to acquiring it, this is because the transformation of economic capital presupposes an expenditure of time that is made possible by possession of economic power” (p. 253). This transmission of capital has always been attention grabbing to me, in terms of its effects on the advancement of students within the school system. That being said, I am always interested in reading specifically about Bordieu’s cultural capital as it relates to education. The agency of school has this connotation of being an equalizer, where the capital does not matter because achievement is based on natural ability. Bordieu touches upon that in the following quote, “…the educational system tends increasingly to dispossess the domestic group of the monopoly of the transmission of power and privileges—and, among other things, of the choice of its legitmate heirs form among children of different sex and birth rank” (p.254).
However, in my opinion, that is not necessarily the case. As Bordieu describes, there are forms of capital that one is given by birth (social and economic), and society deems whether it is good or bad. Certain people are born into wealthy families, which provide economic capital (advantages). This economic capital is easily transmits into social capital, as the neighborhood, community, and networking opportunities all promote privilege. I think about how the forms of capital affect students’ achievement prior to even walking into the classroom on the first day of school. I even worry about the societal perceptions of students (and people in general) and how teachers and parents respond to them in the context of education.
I believe that this same concept can be applied to language. We are born with this equalizer, in which our language is the same or undeveloped. However, the community we live in, the education we are exposed to, the education of our parents, the friends we associate with, and the activities engaged in are all forms of capital that will influence language development. The manifestation of our language development will indicate a product (our language) that will be perceived by society, again, as good or bad. This perception will favor the cultural norm, where those reflecting the cultural norm will advance in society and those who don’t will suffer. Again, reinforcing social reproduction.
Where do language ideologies reside? By land or by sea…
ReplyDeleteThe literacy scholar Brian Street visited the School of Education on Monday and, in an effort to illustrate the powerful hold of ideologies, he told the story of a turtle trying to explain the concept of dry land to his fish friends back in the sea. It is not simply that the fish don’t want to believe the turtle when he seeks to explain this other place, it is that they are virtually incapable of believing the turtle because all they have known, all of their lives, is the water around them. So it is for each of us in our own views and beliefs about language and, as Pierre Bourdieu argues, about the power (implicit and explicit) language conveys. I’m part of the group asked to comment here about where language ideologies reside, and I think the tale of the fish also offers a useful way to think about the ways that beliefs about language are simultaneously rooted within the individual (All I’ve ever known is this water around me – how can I imagine something different?) and imposed or reinforced by outside forces (What could that turtle possibly know?). To this second point, the definition of ideologies offered by Judith Irvine and Susan Gal draws useful attention to the ways external pressures influence language beliefs and their symbolic influence. Irvine and Gal define ideologies as beliefs “suffused with the political and moral issues… and subject to the bearers’ social position” (35). If we think, for instance, just of the kind of written rules of conventional English that are taught in schools, each of those external forces – the political, the moral, matters of social position – can be seen shaping and enforcing powerful ideologies about what counts as correct and accepted in language and what does not. Yet, over time, these kinds of outside forces and influences (here, school-based) become, in turn, the water we swim in, the air we breathe—shaping and influencing our own beliefs about language and speakers and the beliefs they hold.
Only an objective average?
ReplyDeleteBourdieu has always seemed so useful but troubling to me and this selection’s approach to sanction and self-censorship is a great example of the reason. I always start out with general acceptance – even excitement – while reading. When he says early on that “[u]tterances receive their value (and their sense) only in their relation to a market, characterized by a particular law of price formation,” I hear such an echo of Marx’s discussion of the commodity fetish, in which something that had a use value of its own is immediately mystified, reduced to its considerations on the market (503). He goes on to provide a brilliant moment of what could be self-reflective critique for all emancipatory language workers (along with politicians attempting “common touch” pandering) in his note on condescension; it’s a particularly French philosophical kind of double-bind, but it seems to be discussing the role of power in language production nonetheless, so it can be forgiven. Even his note on the possibilities of negotiation and manipulation walk up to the exciting discussions of counterpublic discourses and all the rest of it. But then the notion of anticipation of reception comes, and I start to doubt that I can do as much as I thought I could with this guy. The anticipation of marketability is repeatedly – almost insistently – referred to as unconscious. While he is probably right to suggest that people engage in speech acts that “are marked by their conditions of reception and owe some of their properties (even at a grammatical level) to the fact that, on the basis of a practical anticipation of the laws of the market concerned, their authors, most often unwittingly, and without expressly seeking to do so, try to maximize the symbolic profit they can obtain,” I don’t see a reason to extend the conclusion to most production as Bourdieu seems to (506). Perhaps he is only shifting his focus toward larger social concerns though – the macro that cannot abide the “subjective anticipation since it is the product of the encounter between an objective circumstance, that is, the average probability of success, and an incorporated objectivity” (507). But how does this mesh with his later points about petit-bourgeois hyper-correction? Is this then an objective tendency, particular to a social class, instead of a case of conscious self-censoring common among individuals of a class? Further, is this incorporated objectivity also taking the form of the lower-class violence of voice, even as it “rules out censorships – prudence and deviousness as well as ‘airs and graces’” (511)?
Sorry so late -- I'm terrible with theory (as my queer theory recollections might also betray)!
DeleteI’m struggling with this question a bit because of the word “reside.” Woodward and Schieffelin use a quote in their work which refers to social scientists resisting the examination of language ideology “because it represents an indeterminate area of investigation with no apparent bounds,” which to me implies movement—a sense that language ideology is kinetic, something hard to pin down, to cage. To ask where language ideologies reside seems to assume that it is stationary, that is remains in one place, like a tome in a room that can be come back to and referenced. I was also resisting this secondary question of how language ideologies are acquired, which again seems to have an assumption attached to it—that language ideologies are something received and carried. All this resistance had me thinking a lot about what I could remember of my readings on queer theory, particularly on gender and power. In order to exist, gender must be done repeatedly—it doesn’t exist outside of its constant enactment. It doesn’t reside inside anyone, there is no exact way to do it correctly (though there are many ways to do it incorrectly), no rosetta stone or a map key to refer to to learn how to do it; it must be done over and over again, and it is transmitted imperfectly, changing constantly. It exists in action—this is how I’m thinking of language ideology, too. It must exist in action, in exchanges—it takes at least two people for a language ideology’s effects to manifest—right?
I particularly like how Woolard and Schieffelin describe “ideology as a social process, not a possession” and as being “rooted in or responsive to the experience of a particular social position”. These notions support the complexity and mutability of language ideology, and the article pushes beyond the ideological perspectives of class, education, and language stereotypes. Having said that, Woolard and Schieffelin touch on how language varieties take on larger roles of identity that are often mistaken for “emblems of political allegiance or of social, intellectual or moral worth”. I was struck by the truth behind this idea, that projecting prejudice onto someone’s identity based on their language as being a socially acceptable form of discrimination. I think it’s one we often subscribe to--consciously or not, for better or worse--whether we are judging someone for they way they speak, changing our own language to identify with a particular group, or just categorizing people based on their speech.
ReplyDeleteThe other section that really changed my understanding of language ideology was that there are language ideologies associated with literacy. The value of written words versus oral traditions varies greatly across the globe. This made me think of people who are bound to religious texts and for whom the words on the page carry so much weight, or the value Western culture places on documentation as a means of proof of history and culture and its general dismissiveness of those cultures that don’t have that same view. Overall, the multifaceted nature of language ideology that this article covered was not something I had previously considered.
Bordieu argues that anticipated self-censorship comes from that expectation which functions "as a practical sense of the acceptability and the probable value of one's own linguistic productions and those of others on different markets" (506). He goes on to argue that it is this sense and not a "rational calculation" that determines every correction or form of self-censorship: "the concessions one makes to a social world by accepting to make oneself acceptable in it" (506).
ReplyDeleteTo further Ryan’s questions about the connection between the petits borgeois and hypercorrection, I am curious to think more closely about the implications of Bordieu’s claim when he argues that the lower class lacks access to “plain speaking” when he says, “the petits borgeois are distinct from members of the lower class who, lacking the means to exercise the liberties of plain speaking, which they reserve for private usage, have no choice but to opt for the broken forms of a borrowed and clumsy language or to escape into abstention and silence” (509-510). In the economic metaphor he has implemented, Bordieu seems to be suggesting that not only does the “lower class” lack any sort of access to linguistic (cultural) capital, but also they are not even aware of the “realization of the norm” with which the dominant class so easily associates (510). While I do agree that the “lower class” (and many different intersectionalities that go beyond this economic/class distinction) have little access, is he suggesting that the“lower class” is denied access to social mobility? —the very social mobility that the petits borgeois seek when they slip into “artificial confidence” or hypercorrection? He then goes on to discuss those forms of censorship that are more frequent and “best concealed;” censorship that is, it seems, not really censorship because those agents who have the right to speak are already “censored” because they “coincide with the exigencies inscribed in those positions” (510). His discussion of these hidden, or invisible, privileges are interesting, but I’m wondering to what extent he seems to be implying that they are also “invisible” to those with no cultural capital. If he is suggesting that the “lower class” does not have that “realization of the norm,” it may make more sense that he is suggesting a denial of social mobility (at least to some degree), but I would think that those who lack cultural capital are very aware of what they do not have.
On another note, and perhaps I am reaching here, how does this also connect to what he argues about our sociolinguistic “sense of place”? Bordieu states, “This linguistic ‘sense of place’ governs the degree of constraint which a given field will bring to bear on the production of discourse, imposing silence or hyper-controlled language on some people while allowing others the liberties of a language that is securely established” (508). This may help clarify his intention above. In what ways are these constraints imposed upon those who may not have knowledge/awareness of the norm versus those who participate in more of a self-constraint when they do become hyperaware of that norm? Perhaps I was also having a hard time thinking of this class-based understanding of linguistic capital too—how are we also expected to define his class terms: lower class, petits borgeois, and the dominant class?
In an attempt to clarify that which is still slightly unclear to me: In what ways does Bordieu's "realization of the norm" imply linguistic/social awareness? Or does his understanding of the term "realization" imply more of an awareness coupled with an ability to recognize and perform those norms? I suppose in order for something to be the norm, there is also that which is deviant from the norm; is this "realization" the ability to differentiate between the norm and that which deviates from it?
DeleteThis different understanding would clarify questions that I was asking above.
"but I would think that those who lack cultural capital are very aware of what they do not have"
DeleteThat's what I was beating around but not getting to - the whole last part of this paragraph of yours was dead-on. The fact that he's using such deterministic language w/ a market metaphor (?) seems to make him a bit Adam Smithian, rather than Marxian, which is where he sometimes gets lumped, just because of the critical nature of the 3 capitals discussion.
I found Irvine & Gal helpful in that they set out not only to define language ideology but to describe what language ideology *does*; i.e. what are the actions that stem from language ideologies? The specific ideological moves identified by Irvine & Gal center around the process of essentializing "the other". Iconization, for example, is the process of reducing dialectical communities to totalizing characteristics. They provide an example of Greeks believing Macedonians to be "uncultivated country bumpkins" due to their "simple nominal morphology" (67). This stereotyping oversimplifies a community of speakers and identifies linguistic difference as "deriving from those persons' essences rather than from historical accident". Such stereotyping also involves another identified process--Erasure--in that to think of the Macedonians as simple (based on their nominal structures) would require ignoring the linguistic complexity of their verbal system. Erasure, therefore, ignores complexity or variation that doesn't "fit" within prescribed boundaries of a language. This process can also involve seeing variation as chaotic or disorganized when it can in fact be systematized, or in Irvine & Gal's words, contain a "local logic." I also appreciated how Irvine & Gal emphasized how these processes affect the very dialects they attempt to categorize: perceptions of "lower" forms of dialect might lead, over time, to the erasure of those dialects from within. Reading this article pushed me to reflect on my own "language ideology"--which can be somewhat hard to define--until I consider ways my ideology acts in terms of iconization and erasure: Where do I apply essentializing definitions to certain linguistic features? Why do I do that? When do I disregard variation that troubles my perceptions? Where do I place boundaries and why have I placed them? Where do I see linguistic chaos or ruin instead of pattern or meaning? The why underlining these questions helps me understand and define my own ideologies. Irvine & Gal point out that linguistic research, in its effort to identify and codify language choices, inescapably participates in these processes as well. Their recommendation is to focus on differentiation instead of community identification--to examine the borderlines or boundaries we place around dialectical communities rather than to describe the communities themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe most essential – and most intuitive – of the semiotic processes outlined by Irvine and Gal is that of iconization, the process by which a linguistic feature becomes legible as a sign of some other social reality. Both despite and because of the intuitiveness of this aspect of language ideology, I found myself more interested in the second process, that of fractal recursivity. By this principle, inter- and intra-group oppositions, mirror each other (Irvine and Gal 38). The processes by which languages are differentiated on an international level* are the same as those by which dialects are constituted on an interregional level, and those by which lesser language distinctions appear in even smaller communities. The pervasiveness of this difference-seeking brings to mind a passage in Proust:
ReplyDelete“[I]t seems that there is no province that has not its own South-country; do we not indeed constantly meet Savoyards and Bretons in whose speech we find all those pleasing transpositions o longs and shorts that are characteristic of the Southerner?” (Proust, III, 13)
“Southern” modes of speech are everywhere, for just about any community can be divided into north and south regions – for instance, I could pick out characteristic aspects of South Jersey speech, despite the entirety of the state of New Jersey being in the north of the United States. The division of speech communities into the geographic north and south is not universal, but the ideological need to divide and sub-divide speech communities based on even the minutest shibboleths is.
I found Woolard and Schieffelin particularly useful in illustrating the difficulties of what they call the “siting of ideology” (57). Bourdieu portrays language ideology as a primarily unconscious or naturalized influence; W&S show that this model often runs up against definitions of language ideology as a product of “metalinguistic discourse,” not everyday language use but What We Talk About When We Talk About Language (ibid.). Briggs, cited by W&S, seems to usefully problematize this distinction by showing that a living language is more than a “cultural background,” and that the use and analysis of language can both be manipulated to similar ideological ends (60).
* Though I treat the nation as if it were the largest “natural” speech community, I should acknowledge that this equation of national and linguistic identity is a product of the 18th century (Woolard and Schieffelin 60).
(I don't have a background in theory, so I feel as if I'm wading into the deep end! )
ReplyDeleteBordieu: Standard vs. Alternative Markets
Bordieu asserts that language use has value in relation to a market, or the circumstances in which the utterance is spoken. We can judge someone's utterances as valuable in a certain market based on the other linguistic capital available in that market. "The whole social structure is present in each interaction," says Bordieu, and he goes on to give an example of a way someone can derive social "profit" by symbolically negating the disparity between ways of speaking — for example, the use of "the common touch" to symbolically condescend to an audience who possess less language capital. An example of this could be political candidates who use a slight Southern accent to seem more relatable. The markets based on obvious social hierarchies are standard markets. Within these markets, the effect of the imposition of linguistic hierarchies is greater when the situation is more formal. Again, this makes me think of politics. While possess enormous language capital during interactions in their official capacity as public figures — think of the disparity of capital between a politician and average citizens during a publicity tour — their linguistic capital loses value outside of that arena. There are other, less formal linguistic markets where, as Bordieu says, the 'illegitimate linguistic products are judged according to criteria which…free them from the necessarily comparative logic of distinction and value."
This seems unapologetically elitist and classist — Bordieu speaks with clear distaste of alternative markets, and his inclusion of them at all feels like an afterthought. It cannot be true that there are no systems of capital assessment within the informal spheres of interaction — he seems to think that alternative markets aren't noteworthy. Perhaps the "strategies of condescension" — which just feel like rhetorical one-upmanship — don't exist as fully in most casual interactions with family and friends, but surely there are other ways of analyzing the relative value of language capital in these spheres.
I’ll propose, based on today’s readings, that language ideologies reside --most identifiably-- in an ongoing power struggle between dominant groups (or the mainstream) and non-dominant (or marginalized) groups. (I think language ideologies can be enacted between and within non-dominant groups, too). I think Bourdieu, along with Woolard and Schieflin, would also push against the notion that language ideologies are fixed and static, and can therefore “reside” anywhere. To differing degrees, I think they would propose that language ideologies are based in shifting and contestable processes of domination. Bourdieu uses the term “durable” to describe the relative value of dominant vs non-dominant “linguistic products,” which then allows a “relation of power that is concretely established between speakers’ linguistic competencies,” so that some speakers can “impose the criteria of appreciation most favourable to their own products.” The criteria, along with the positions of the speakers, are thus relatively durable. Dominant groups create a language ideology, based in their own habitus (i) (and Gail’s story about turtles and fish) that valorizes their own ways of speaking. Citing Therborn, Woolard and Schieflin propose that (language) ideology is a “social process not a possession.” This makes more space for agency and locality than Bourdieu does, so that individuals and groups can have multiple conceptions of language ideology (this turns away from the market-based, Marxist reading of culture). Here’s a one-sentence answer to the original question: LI resides in judgments that connect identity to language.
ReplyDelete