[In the following review, Olson characterizes Language and Symbolic Power as “one of the most intellectually stimulating books about language.”]

Because he examines the sociological aspects of language, Pierre Bourdieu, a Professor of Sociology at the Collège de France, has written a series of essays that are rich in implication for students of rhetoric, communication and media. Most the essays were published earlier in French in Ce que parler veut dire, but this volume of translated essays [Language and Symbolic Power] does contain five additional essays and omits two from the earlier volume.

Bourdieu's essays argue that language expresses and reproduces the social structure (2). He takes issue with the ideal of an autonomous symbol system, especially as articulated by linguists Saussure and Chomsky. Bourdieu argues that we cannot separate “the linguistic instrument from its social conditions of production and utilization” (33). He underscores, “The all-purpose word in the dictionary … has no social existence: in practice it is always immersed in situations, to such an extent that the core meaning which remains relatively invariant through the diversity of markets may pass unnoticed” (39). While these general claims are not news to researchers in communication and rhetoric, who have long recognized the vital role of context in the very nature of meaning, the vocabulary that Bourdieu proposes for situating language in its sociological context and the perspective that shapes his account of it represent a powerful and highly suggestive contribution to our literature.

To support his claim that the conception of an autonomous symbols system is illusory, he points to examples of performative utterances in which language brings into being that which it utters—such as formal namings, blessings, curses, orders, wishes, and legal decisions (42). He adds that legitimate language has its basis in power in the sense that one necessary condition for speech is an authorized or legitimate speaker, who derives his or her authority from an underlying institution taken in a broader sense than the English term may suggest (see 8-9). Further, he points to French words like tu and vous to illustrate the claim that social relations undergird the use of language (80). Beyond this, he describes expressions that function “as marks of neutralizing distance” (85) and affirms that “the power of words is nothing other than the delegated power of the spokesperson, and his speech” (107)—all to support his central contention that language systems are not autonomous. Therefore, we cannot adequately account for language without considering the social conditions of its production and use (61, 69, 109, 139).

To Bourdieu, the study of language should entail attention to the habitus and the field because symbols are ineluctably situated in the relationship between the habitus and field, or market (14). The habitus is a set of dispositions which incline agents to act in certain ways, reflecting and reproducing class relations because of its relationship to power (e.g. the relative ease of powerful; the hyper-correction of relatively powerless). In this account, the habitus may be transmitted through means other than language: “There is every reason to think that the factors which are most influential in the formation of the habitus are transmitted without passing through language and consciousness, but through suggestions inscribed in the most apparently insignificant aspects of the things, situations and practices of everyday life” (51). Bourdieu affirms that the factors that exercise a determining influence on the habitus include sex, generation, social position, social origin, and ethnic origin (95). The concept of habitus holds promise for those communication scholars interested in exploring how the diversity of people contributes to the diversity of communication practices.

The field, for Bourdieu, is the site of struggle between individuals and groups seeking to maintain or alter the distribution of forms of capital: “A field or market may be seen as a structured space of positions in which the positions and their interrelations are determined by the distribution of different kinds of resources or ‘capital’” (14)—symbolic as well as material. To Bourdieu, the “market” or field “plays a part in shaping not only the symbolic value but also the meaning of discourse” (38). The terms “capital” and “market” are metaphorical in that they are not strictly economic (15 and 67), perhaps illustrating a principle that Bourdieu discusses in “Censorship and the Imposition of Form.” In addition, the structure of the field censors the use of language in that the field governs both the access to participate and the form of expression (138). As a consequence, power, censorship, access, the authority to speak, tension, and symbolic violence are among the major variables within a market (99).

Within a specific field, symbolic power is enacted in social life. Participation within a field entails the “active complicity” of all participants, because to Bourdieu the exercise of power through symbolic exchange always rests on a foundation of shared belief (23). To Bourdieu, language may be understood as a compromise between an expressive interest and a censorship constituted by the structure of the field. Symbolic violence is one by-product of certain fields that legitimate some discourses, but not others, leaving the alternatives of outspokenness or silence (139). His discussion of silence, which he treats as an attribute of the dominated within a field, is a source of disappointment, because silence is far more complex than the treatment of it here suggests.

Even so, Language & Symbolic Power is rich in implications for the study of rhetoric and communication. For example, his discussion of “Authorized Language” could be drawn upon to examine the production and use of Black English in urban U.S. culture, by situating it in an asymmetrical relationship of power to “standard English” understood as the code of a dominating race. His essay on “Rites of Institution” holds great promise for communication scholars seeking to explain why so many Americans became overwrought at the prospect of President Clinton changing the initiation rituals for admitting servicemen and women into the military. It also could provide a means for explaining how the marriage ritual as practiced in the U.S. tends to exclude and marginalize some groups while providing access to a wealth of special privileges for those authorized by organized religion and by law to participate in it In brief, rites of institution “consecrate or legitimate an arbitrary boundary,” whose function is both to keep out and to keep in (118 and 122). Such rites are characterized always by both transition and exclusion (e.g. the circumcision ritual transforms a boy to man, while at the same time marking in symbolism a difference between male and female).

While Bourdieu's book represents a landmark in the study of communication, its commentary suggesting a method is sparse. He suggests analyzing utterances with reference to the constitution of the political field and the relation between this field and the broader space of social positions and processes (28). He underscores the value of attending to symbols as situated between the habitus and the field (see 37, for example). He stresses that the student of language should treat “class” as multiple, not merely economic (29), and in this respect distinguishes his approach from Marxist analysis, as discussed explicitly in “Social Space and the Genesis of ‘Classes.’” He also focuses upon the relationship between properties of discourse, properties of person speaking, and properties of institution (111).

To what extent is the perspective articulated in this book informed by French culture in ways that inherently distinguish its production and use from discourses in U.S. culture, and, as a consequence, to what extent might the perspective require revision in another cultural context? This is a question that I would encourage readers to contemplate as we consider the implications of Bourdieu's book for scholarship in rhetoric and communication in the U.S. In requesting consideration of this factor, I am questioning the assumption in cultural studies that method or perspective can be treated as transcultural. First, for example, to what extent does the relative salience of Leftist politics in France inform the perspective in ways that cannot be easily transposed upon U.S. culture, where leftist politics is weak? Second, to what extent do differences in the citizens' perceptions of relative class mobility in France and the U.S. matter as one considers both the habitus and the field? Third, given the formal role of the Académie français in legitimating the French language itself, a body which has no U.S. equivalent, to what extent do variations in official language, and relations of language, political power, and regionalism become concerns as one considers the implications of Bourdieu's work for language in U.S. culture? Surely this last question has important implications for the langue/parole distinction as well as the idea of an idiolect. Fourth, the salience of equality as a value in U.S. culture may pose serious problems for a theory which begins from the frank assumption that all relations are ineluctably characterized by differences in power and authority such that all gestures toward equality are illusory, merely acts of self-delusion or condescension. Such factors lead me to urge a skeptical attitude as we engage one of the most intellectually stimulating books about language.