LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL THEORY or Ce que parler veut dire
Claire Kramsch
How do we "language" social reality ?
A. L. BeckerÕs experiment (Becker, A.L. 1985. ÒLanguage in particular: A lectureÓ in Tannen, D.(ed.) Linguistics in Context: Connecting observation and understanding. Vol.XXIV in the series Advances in Discourse Processes, Roy O.Freedle (ed.) Norwood, NJ: Ablex)
Six dimensions of particularity along which we ÔlanguageÕ reality:
- medial: by shaping the medium
- structural: by making grammatical sentences
- referential: by looking through language to a believed world
- interpersonal: by negotiating interpersonal relationships
- generic: by evoking prior language
- silential: by leaving many things unsaid, some of them unsayable
M.A.K Halliday (Language and social man. In Language as Social Semiotic 1978):
Language reflects/ refers to / expresses social reality
(ideational function)
it shapes / produces / reproduces social reality
(interpersonal function)
it is a metaphor for / is iconic of social reality
(textual function)
M.A.K Halliday (Language and social man. In Language as Social Semiotic 1978):
"There can be no social man without language, and no language without social man. To recognize this is no mere academic exercise; the whole theory and practice of education depends on it" (p.12)
"It is by means of language that the 'human being' becomes one of a group of "people". But "people", in turn, consist of "persons"; by virtue of his participation in a group the individual is no longer simply a biological specimen of humanity - he is a person. Language is the essential element in the process, since it is largely the linguistic interchange with the group that determines the status of the individuals and shapes them as persons" (p.14)
"A group is a simple structure, ie., coexistence of members.
A society does not consist of participants but of relations, and these relations define social roles" (ibidem)
"Biologically, we are all alike, insofar as the language-learning capacity is concerned. . . Ecologically, each one of us is unique, since the environmental patterns is never exactly repeated, and one individual's experience is never the same as another's". (p.22)
Language and social control
Bernstein, Basil (ed.). 1971 Class, codes and control. Vol.1 & 2. London: Routledge
Bernstein, Basil.1996. Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity. London: Taylor & Francis
Forms of social relations (family, work, school) act selectively upon what is said, when it is said and how it is said. Thus speech systems are generated, or controlled, by forms of social relations. Attention to speech and perception of norms go hand in hand.
Social power comes from classification. Social control comes from framing.
Classification cuts up the social world into non-continuous categories: language vs. literature, humanities vs. social sciences, French department vs. German department, Berkeley vs. non-Berkeley students, A vs. D, good vs. outstanding vs. truly exceptional, teacher vs. student.
Framing establishes relations among categories, i.e.,
who controls what and to what degree within the
dyads teacher/student, parents/children, peer
group/individual, doctor/patient, language
teacher/literature professor.
Example: Models of pedagogic practice
-Competence model, inherited from the 60's (universal democracy of acquisition, no deficits, self-regulating subjects, emancipatory flavor, focus on the present), is based on assumption of equality among students: weak classification, weak framing, personal control.
-Performance model (explicit transmission, hierarchy/stratification, external regulation, focus on the future) is based on the assumption of differences among students: strong classification, strong or weak framing, positional control.
Speech systems are activated through communication codes, i.e. regulative principles which control the selection and organization of speech events. Codes = sociosemantic "fashions of speaking" or registers; patterns of social and cultural meaning that emerge in particular contexts.
- Restricted codes (airspeak, in-group talk, informal talk) rely heavily on context (gestures, intonation, tacit knowledge). The use of a restricted code creates social solidarity at the cost of the verbal elaboration of individual experience.
- Elaborated codes (formal speech, explicit grammatical structures) are less dependent on context. Generally taught in school.
It is not the words and the sentence structures - still less the pronunciation or 'accent' - which make the difference between one type of code and another; it is the relative emphasis placed on the different functions of language and the different meanings typically associated with them.
Elaborated and restricted codes intersect with two kinds of role systems and modes of family control:
- Closed role systems reduce the range of alternatives or the realization of verbal meanings "that's how you're supposed to say it/do it"; "little boys don't cry" ; "what do you say? - thank you"). They enact positional modes of control.
- Open role systems permit a range of alternatives. ("do you prefer the blue one or the purple one?"). They enact personal modes of control.
1) Example of closed vs. open role system, positional vs. personal mode of control
Child: I don't want to kiss Grandpa
Mother 1: I don't want none of your nonsense. Go and give him a kiss
Mother 2: I know you don't like kissing Grandpa, but
he is unwell and he is very fond of you.
2) Example of closed role, elaborated code and strong framing .
From Michaels, Sarah. 1986. Narrative presentations: An oral preparation for literacy with first graders. In J.Cook-Gumperz (ed.) Social construction of literacy. Cambridge U. Press.
Mindy: When I was in da::y camp / we made these / um candles /
T: You made them?
Mindy: And uh / I-I tried it with different colors / with
both of them but / one just came out / this
one just came out blue / and I don't know /
what this color is //
T: That's neat-o // Tell the kids how you do it
from very start // Pretend we don't know a
thing about candles // . . . Ok// what did you
do first? // What did you use? // Flour? //
Mindy: Um. . . here's some / hot wax / some real hot
wax / that you / just take a string / and tie a
knot in it // and dip the string in the um wax
T: What makes it uh have a shape? //
Mindy: Um / you just shape it //
T: Oh you shaped it with your hand // mmm //
Mindy: But you have / first you have to stick it into
the wax / and then water / and then keep
doing that until it gets to the size you want it
T: OK // Who knows what the string is for? //
Deena: Um...I went to the beach / .. Sunday / and /
to MacDonalds / and to the park / . . . and
/ . . I got this for my / . . birthday // . . . My
other bought it for me / . . and um / . . . I had
/ . . um / . . two dollars for my birthday and
I put it in here / . . and I went to where my
friend / . . named Gi Gi / . . . I went over to
my grandmother's house with her / . . . and
um . . . . she was on my back / and I / . . and
we was walkin' around / . . . by my house . . . and um / . . . she was hea-vy / She
[was in the sixth or seventh grade //
T: [OK IÕm going to stop you. I want to talk
about things that are really really very
important. That's important to you but tell
us things that are sort of different. Can you
do that? And tell us what beach you went to.
It is impossible to draw a line between "what the child said" and "how she said it". Both have to do with social code, i.e., ways of languaging and organizing experience. Deena's ways of organizing experience through language and of participating and interacting with people and things are different in her home and at school. There is "a mismatch between [the child's] own symbolic orders of meaning and those of the school, a mismatch that results from the different patterns of socialization that characterize different sections of society, or subcultures, and which are in turn a function of the underlying social relations in the family and elsewhere" (division of labor) (Halliday, M.A.K 1978 Language as social semiotic p.26)
Critiques of Bernstein:
Schools assume that the only way to clarify meanings is to use ever more precise vocabulary and grammar (elaborate code). Bernstein seemed to accept this fact. Some educators nowadays would claim that the ability to draw on the non-verbal, multimodal, multimedia context is equally, if not more effective (see Heath, Hull).
Bernstein linked the use of codes and roles to social class, and thus was accused of feeding into the verbal deficit and cultural deprivation theory that was raging in the 60's in U.S education (Operation Headstart as remedy). See in particular, Labov, William 1972a "The study of language in its social context". In Giglioli, P (ed.)Language and Social Context. 1972b "The logic of non-standard English." Ibidem.
"Is it true that all of the middle-class verbal habits are functional and desirable in the school situation?. . . In high school and college middle-class children spontaneously complicate their syntax to the point that instructors despair of getting them to make their language simpler and clearer..Is the 'elaborated code' of Bernstein really so "flexible", detailed and subtle as some psychologists believe? Isn't it also turgid, redundant, and empty? Is it not simply an elaborated style, rather than a superior code or system?. . In many ways working-class speakers are more effective narrators, reasoners and debaters than many middle-class speakers who temporize, qualify, and lose their argument in a mass of irrelevant detail" (Labov 1972b:192-193).
Language and symbolic power
Bourdieu, Pierre.
1972 Outline of a theory of practice
1977 Le pouvoir symbolique ] in Language and
1980 Ce que parler veut dire ] Symbolic Power (1991)
Langue (homogeneous) + Parole (heterogeneous) > economy of symbolic exchanges
Parole consists of stylistically marked discourses.
"The all-purpose word in the dictionary, a product of the neutralization of the practical relations within which it functions, has no social existence" (1991:39)
The insistence on the autonomy of language is itself ideological. Ex. struggles over naming:
The war in Iraq: a liberation? An invasion? An occupation?
Are the enemies: resistants? guerillas? insurgents? thugs?
Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction or weapons programs or weapons of mass destruction-related program activities?
Are the detainees: prisoners of war? enemy combatants? terrorists?
Neither Bernstein nor Labov, says Bourdieu, relate language as social practice to the social conditions of its production and reproduction, or even, as one might expect from the sociology of education, to its academic conditions.
Symbolic power (or symbolic violence) is the power to construct reality through symbols and to impose that reality onto others.
"The dominant discourse is a structured and structuring medium tending to impose an apprehension of the established order as natural (orthodoxy) through the disguised (and thus misrecognized) imposition of systems of classification and of mental structures that are objectively adjusted to social structures." (1991:169)
"Symbolic power - as a power of constituting the given through utterances, of making people see and believe, of confirming or transforming the vision of the world and, thereby, action on the world and thus the world itself, an almost magical power which enables one to obtain the equivalent of what is obtained through force (whether physical or economic), by virtue of the specific effect of mobilization - is a power that can be exercised only if it is recognized (=accepted), that is, misrecognized as arbitrary. . . What creates the power of words and slogans, a power capable of maintaining or subverting the social order, is the belief in the legitimacy of words and of those who utter them. And words alone cannot create this belief. (1991:170)
Speaking imposes an existence / relevance / symbolic value on things. It creates social realities.
"The power of suggestion which is exerted through things and persons and which, instead of telling the child what he must do, tells him what he is, and thus leads him to become durably what he has to be, is the condition for the effectiveness of all kinds of symbolic power that will subsequently be able to operate on a habitus predisposed to respond to them" (1991:52)
To be successful, symbolic power requires that those subjected to it believe in its legitimacy and the legitimacy of those who wield it (e.g., SATs, hierarchical structures, institutional power).
"All symbolic domination presupposes, on the part of those who submit to it, a form of complicity which is neither passive submission to external constraint nor a free adherence to values.æ (1991:51) "It is all the more absolute and undisputed for not having to be stated" (ibidem:52)
See for example, the recognition of the legitimacy of the official language, of the degrees conferred by universities, job contracts etc. What happens when this legitimacy disappears (e.g., Soviet Union).
Habitus (inculcated, durable, structuring and structured, transposable dispositions) interacts with field (or market) for the acquisition of cultural capital in the pursuit of distinction. The ability and the right to speak do not come from the habitus alone but from the adaptation of the linguistic habitus to the demands of the linguistic market (=tact or euphemism).
"The competency adequate to produce sentences that are likely to be understood may be quite inadequate to produce sentences that are likely to be listened to, likely to be recognized as acceptable in all the situations in which there is occasion to speak. Here again, social acceptability is not reducible to mere grammaticality." (1991:55)
Social magic is the institutional, artificial creation of divisions among people based on symbolic markers of distinction .
"The act of institution is an act of social magic that can create difference ex nihilo, or else. . .by exploiting as it were pre-existing differences, like the biological differences between the sexes orÉ the difference in age. .. Social magic always manages to produce discontinuity out of continuity. [For example] between the last person to pass and the first person to fail, the competitive examination creates differences of all or nothing that can last a lifetime." (1991:120)
Ce que parler veut dire:
To use language is to construct a symbolic reality that reproduces, contests or subverts the social power structure into which we have been born and socialized.