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Title: Language and Symbolic Power by Pierre Bourdieu, John B. Thompson ISBN: 0-674-51041-0 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Sociology and Language
Comment: Bourdieu's point is not to explore linguistics but rather to explore the larger impact that language has on shaping symbols, meaning and power in the social context. Symbolic interactionists and conflict theorists would probally find this book to be a great read.
Rating: 5
Summary: abstract but has a lot of potential
Comment: This book will most likely not appeal to US students in linguistics. Because Bourdieu deals with rather abstract concepts which cover a lot of social ground (e.g., symbolic, cultural, economic capital, field, etc.)and not enough linguistic ground, some linguists will have trouble applying concepts to the actual production of speech at the phonological, morpho-syntactic, pragmatic and discourse level. He never really deals with actual production of language by speakers, so it creates a lot of work for the reader to fill in the details of what, for example, an actual linguistic habitus might look like, what its dispositions might be, and how they might be coordinated in their habitus set.
However, unlike many US linguists, he assumes there is an empirical connection between language use and larger social domains; furthermore, he is able to explain the way power often operates through exclusion and devaluation (dialect analysis). One of the less abstract chapters, the chapter on Searle, is excellent. Bourdieu accurately locates the efficacy of the speech act, not in the functional form of the utterances, such as christening, ordering, requesting, etc., but in the recognition by all involved that the agent who produces the speech act has the right to be obeyed and that the material circumstances of the speech act are appropriate. Mary Jane down the street and the mayor of NY may christen a new warship using the exact same functional words, but the power of those words depends on our recognition that, in this example, the mayor, not just anybody, has the authority to name. Bourdieu masterfully argues this point, and I would recommend reading that chapter first for its accessibility and accuracy in pointing out that the extra-linguistic is as much linguistic as the linguistic.
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Title: An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism by Madan Sarup ISBN: 0820315311 Publisher: University of Georgia Press Pub. Date: June, 1993 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Reality Isn't What It Used to Be : Theatrical Politics, Ready-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and O by Walter Truet Anderson ISBN: 0062500171 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 14 February, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn ISBN: 0226458083 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Soul's Code : In Search of Character and Calling by James Hillman ISBN: 0446673714 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Human Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Approaches by Paul K. Moser, Arnold Vander Nat ISBN: 0195149661 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: August, 2002 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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