Interrogating Bourdieu on Language: Critical Discourse Analysis, Postmodernism and Ethnomethodology

Abstract

This chapter engages with some of the key criticisms of Bourdieu’s approach in the field of linguistics and discourse analysis and then moves on to discuss rejoinders and modifications of his position. Bourdieu has been criticized from traditions within linguistics, such as structuralism and critical discourse analysis, and from directly competing sociological approaches to language, such as sociolinguistics and ethnomethodology. We will look, firstly, at critical discourse analysis and postmodernist approaches and then go on to consider, principally, the ethnomethodological challenge to Bourdieu. The discussion in this chapter is focused on the theoretical issues that Bourdieu deals with in Language and Symbolic Power and the repercussions of his criticisms of sociolinguistic approaches and what he refers to as ‘subjectivist’ approaches, such as interactionism and ethnomethodology. As such, the theoretical issues here relate to academic debates in the ‘internal’ area of the linguistic field. As will become apparent, it is these important theoretical issues that have been left unaddressed by the literature which has applied Bourdieu’s ideas to the media. These debates are very much theoretical ones and abstract, but they nevertheless form the background to the arguments in the chapters which discuss language and the media in case study form.