Are the Linguists to Blame?

Bourdieu is an influential practice theorist who is known for his ideas of fields and symbolic domination. In the article we read for class, “The Production and Reproduction of Legitimate Language,” Bourdieu deals with the idea of symbolic domination through legitimate language. Bourdieu generally explains that Saussure’s idea of Langue is adopted by a particular few within a language community, which ends up producing the dominant language and dictating social values. Patios, or other vernaculars which are not the standard form, are then considered lesser. Not only are the languages themselves considered lesser but also those who speak these patios and they therefore are given less social power in society.

When reading for my Sociolinguistics and Dialectology class, I found an extension of Bourdieu’s ideas in an article titled “On the Construction of Vernacular Dialect Norms” by Walt Wolfram. In this article, Wolfram discusses the particulars of two vernaculars: African American Vernacular English and Lumbee Vernacular English. Wolfram uses these case studies to demonstrate how vernaculars are complex and made up of various dimensions and components, for example sociohistorical or ideological. Within this article, Wolfram argues that sociolinguistics should consider vernaculars in their entirety when conducting studies on these varieties of language, and that the study of vernaculars should be a valid area of study within the field of linguistics. Wolfram states that vernaculars are typically just compared to the standard form of a language, and that is all that the study does with the vernacular. But after reading Bourdieu, I realized that Wolfram’s argue overlaps with Bourdieu’s article substantially.

Bourdieu argues that power is related to a population’s ability to control and dictate the “correct” form of language, and then these types of language are assigned a social value. Those who speak a variation of the standard form are put at a disadvantage as the standard form is institutionalized within the culture. Bourdieu brings up the idea that all types of language are measured against legitimate practices, which is exactly what Wolfram attempts to fight against within the research methods of linguistics itself. I see Wolfram’s argument as an extension of Bourdieu’s ideas of power through language. Wolfram argues that linguistics should pay attention to vernaculars as their own entity, and not only compare them to the standard form; by only comparing vernaculars to the standard language we are acknowledging the variety as lesser. When using Bourdieu to interpret Wolfram’s article, Wolfram seems to suggest that through linguistic research, the linguists themselves are perpetuating Bourdieu’s idea of the production of power by ONLY understanding them relative to the legitimate language.

Bourdieu’s article has given me a new framework through which I can understand and interpret Wolfram’s suggestions for conducting research concerning vernaculars. I would not have originally considered Wolfram’s suggestions as a way to fight the hegemonic demonstration of power through the reinforcement of valued language varieties, but now I can see Wolfram as an equalizing force relative to language varieties. Wolfram offers components and stages for linguists to conduct research about vernaculars because he is tired of a simplistic comparative study which does not acknowledge any complexity within these types. Through the practice of giving vernaculars less attention in linguistic research, we are continuing the power struggle and showing others that these vernaculars are of less importance and hold less social value.

 These articles seem very different at first, Bourdieu working with practice theory to interpret power through language variation, while Wolfram is discussing how linguists should conduct research surrounding vernaculars. However, I think that Wolfram is fighting against the power dynamic which Bourdieu presents. By holistically studying vernaculars, we are fighting against the social value which is assigned to a language variety which is not considered the legitimate, institutionalized, standardized, Langue.  Wolfram is, in a way, offering a way for linguists to avoid getting stuck in this whirlpool of social value by changing their practices when conducting research.