Reconstruction Vol. 11, No. 4
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Bourdieu, Language and the Media by John Myles / Mark Beachill
<1> John Myles’ Bourdieu, Language and the Media is a comprehensive argument for media and communication studies to fully engage with the late Pierre Bourdieu’s views on language. While Bourdieu is influential in these academic disciplines, Myles convincingly puts the case that there has been an “overplay” of Bourdieu’s concept of field in the concentration on how media and journalism are structured, but avoidance of using Bourdieu’s analysis of how media and journalism relate to language and the “symbolic violence” enacted through language. Myles tackles criticisms of Bourdieu in the various linguistic/socio-linguistic schools in a constructive engagement requiring a dense navigation of a series of conceptual frameworks, drawing on Bourdieu’s major work on the subject Language and Symbolic Power (Bourdieu and Thompson 1991) first published in French thirty years ago. He puts forward a strong case for the validity of a sociological approach to language in the face of continued linguistic domination of the subject. The close examination of Bourdieu’s ideas sets up his argument for the need for fuller application of the theory in studies of the media. Myles demonstrates how this might be done and how it might add to media analysis in the second half of the book through five case studies – on local reporting, photojournalism, opinion polls, text messaging and local radio.
<2> Media studies does often appear overly concerned with structure, organisation and ethics: relatively static, internal concerns. Myles, looking at the use of Bourdieu, calls this a “sociological formalism” where the power structures of the media are totted up in a “topography of positions” behind Bourdieu’s concept of field. Myles understands that the field should be understood as an “analogy”– think perhaps of an electromagnetic field – such that it can be used to elicit an autonomous, yet interactive, area of activities and the field described. This becomes useful for media-related academic disciplines because they can focus on the media and aspects of its inner logic while avoiding the difficulties that such a focus might bring. That the field concept allows for multiple interactions with other fields helps to undermine charges of ignoring other explanatory factors. This creates the space to bring out internal rules and workings that can counter both reductionism – where media become merely an expression of social forces – and deconstruction – where narrative-based approaches might insist on the dismantling of any “meta” analysis. In other words, Bourdieu’s framework, although using an analogy, can put flesh on the bones of relative autonomy. That said, there has been a reluctance among Bourdieu’s users to venture beyond the structure of the media field by examining the key interactions that the framework insists on. As Myles argues, the action of the business of journalism and the media – through the production of symbols and its action on and through the language field – has tended to be neglected.
<3> Myles bemoans the literature on Bourdieu which, though it addresses later political works on media-related subjects, has tended to skip over his major work Language and Symbolic Power other than at an abstract theoretical level; Couldry (2000) being a notable exception. Bourdieu’s book was a call to arms on two fronts. First against the wielding of symbolic power – where dominance in language can act to rob those being dominated of even the means to express opposition to real violence. Second against the linguistic turn in sociology where, according to Bourdieu, the linguistic approach had gained much influence (perhaps illustrated today by widespread use of the terms discourse and narrative in social theory). His argument was that by taking language as a natural science, linguistics naturalised social relations. In other words that by assuming dominant, but arbitrary, features of language (e.g. as shown by received pronunciation in the UK and standard English in the USA) and by setting up actors abstracted from their social relations, linguistics smuggled features of domination into sociology through the Trojan Horse of a seemingly neutral scientific framework. Bourdieu’s goal in Language and Symbolic Power was not to understand language as such but instead to have a “sociology of language” showing how structures in society become reinterpreted through, in and by structures in language. As a result of this alternative orientation, Bourdieu’s take on language also claims greater explanatory power in the language field. Elements of language such as parole – or language in use rather than the formal system of language – and “hexis” – the positioning and bodily communication that goes with language – both of which convey additional information and meaning are generally seen as incidental and ignored in linguistic analysis. Thus by avoiding capture within the inner-workings of language, Bourdieu could incorporate vital aspects of the actual use of language which lay outside a linguistic framework.
<4> Myles’ book rehearses some of Language and Symbolic Power’s key arguments through a critique of the response of linguistics to Bourdieu’s challenge. This involves having to deal with the fragmentation of linguistics into several schools, caused at least in part by the difficulties of attempting to maintain an approach to language which stands separate from the social and gives primacy to linguistic rules. It is to Myles’ credit that he systematically, yet succinctly, picks through the approaches of ‘systemic functional semantics’, Critical Discourse Analysis, Ethnomethodology and postmodern views of language. These are disciplines laden with terminology (as their names suggest), something which can be daunting to those from a sociological background. Many of the criticisms of Bourdieu revolve around attempts to undermine the meaning he ascribes to the practical use of language, or parole, as distinct from language rules, or langue. Arguments Myles tackles include those claiming that parole involves expression rather than meaning; that stylistic elements of language existing within linguistic rules cannot be accommodated by Bourdieu; that language as used in Bourdieu is not specific to medium; and that Bourdieu discounts the action of language rules on the background (or “habitus”) of the subject using language. Myles’ response is to examine how the interplay between the structures of language and the social is fluid in Bourdieu, and that the reality it addresses has the merit of containing “orders of practice” rather than “textual orders”.
<5> In defending Bourdieu, Myles also looks to “rebalance” his work towards a more reflexive reading of the lay use of language and thus give a different stress on the relationship between objective and subjective aspects of his theory. Here he draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of “voice”, which has many parallels with Bourdieu’s view of language. Whereas Bourdieu stresses the subordinate role of lay speech in a system of domination, Myles sees greater scope for seeing a playful and creative use of language in everyday use as noted by Bakhtin. Similarly, Myles looks at Bourdieu’s use of Edmund Husserl’s view of the divergence between lay and expert knowledge. Bourdieu uses Husserl to argue that expert knowledge need periodically check itself to ensure it is not merely recreating ‘common sense’. However, following Husserl, Myles also stresses the need to understand that language in use has elements of intentionality and is creatively constituted rather than merely reflecting linguistic domination. This allows Myles to suggest common ground for discussion with Ethnomethodologists who similarly use Husserl to emphasize the situation and intentionality of individuals as being important – although they fail to recognize the deeper social structures present in individual-to-individual interactions.
<6> Establishing Bourdieu’s credentials on language gives force to Myles’ criticism of media, journalism and communication studies for neglecting a critical engagement with language in media analysis. Unless language is addressed sociologically then an analysis of the field is crucially incomplete by failing to fully draw out what media and journalists do. Logically Myles must himself move on to the application of theory, which he does using case studies on media and the use of language. The first looks at the portrayal of urban regeneration in Manchester’s local press. Here, Myles argues that there is an unreflexive journalism that accepts urban planners as “primary definers” of discourse and accepts what is a neo-liberal outlook in technical-rational terms. Subtle changes in the verb “to be” are used here – what Bourdieu calls “paralogism”. Projects “will be” or “are”, although still on the drawing board. Reports attempt balance by including an opposition voice quoted at the end of an article, but this formula merely helps define the “primary definers” and puts gloss on the pretence of a debate. The second case study looks at urban photojournalism, again in the local press. Myles strikingly illustrates the use of the body which has middle class subjects shot from below looking into the sky, and disgruntled working class people sad or grimacing, looking straight into the camera. By analysing photographs over a period of time, Myles demonstrates a pattern of social coding at work where status is implied through a “functional ranking” of the actors involved. Here the media’s symbolic production extends into a visual language that subtly sets expectations alongside written copy. In the third case study, Myles looks at UK local radio where commercial pressures for a broad audience and state regulation of broadcasting licenses set a “mundane” voice as the default. He examines first the struggle of a local “soca-calypso” station to establish a distinct voice, and then the regional voices and views that appear in a working-class “mimicry” that is not quite local, or indeed anywhere. In the fourth case study Myles looks at opinion polls where a technically refined language is used to elicit an objective response. However the language does not exist in a vacuum. Myles uses Bourdieu’s work on “Don’t Knows” and suggests that answers to fixed questions can often be seen as “identification bids” to fit into perceived norms of opinion within a community. Here views from experience can only be expressed obliquely. A mass-mediated public opinion then infuses discussion where more interactive techniques might be used to elicit a truer response. Myles examines text-messaging (SMS) in the fifth case study, testing Bourdieu’s approach with new technology. “Text-speak” has become a site of contestation over language with moral panics developing over the dilution of standards. While discussion of texting has focused on young people and its role as individualising technology, Myles suggests that the differentiations of class can be seen in its particular use by young working class people and that the communication taking place replicates many of the features Bourdieu identifies in parole.
<7> Those in media studies will be familiar with Stuart Hall’s analysis in Policing the Crisis (Hall et al, 1978) where he uses the example of “mugging” to show language’s effect with un-reflexive journalistic practice. What Myles argument and examples highlight is that this type of analysis is done all too rarely. There is instead often a limited “Marxist” view of the media which fixates on its relationship between state and the market. While writers might demur parole and laud clarity in writing and meaning attached to a standardised non-verbal English, social meaning is also attached here. A classic text on the subject, George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (1946), is an argument for a selection of words to counter the effect of assumed meanings and official language.
<8> Myles’ argument strongly relates to the continued importance of class as taken up by Bourdieu. And, while class politics can seem absent today, Myles puts a strong case that media analysis can and must address the stratification and contestation that appears within and through language and the role that media play as an agent in this. For those looking for a gateway to investigate language from a sociological perspective – rejecting the notion that “language explains language” – Myles has done a valuable service. Bourdieu, Language and the Media offers negotiation through hostile linguistic waters and critical approaches to the analysis of language in the media.
References
Bourdieu, P. and Thompson, J. B. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press
Couldry, N. (2000) The Place of Media Power: Pilgrims and Witnesses of the Media Age, London: Routledge
Hall, S., Critcher, S., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order, London: Macmillan.
Orwell, G (1946) “Politics and the English Language” Available at http://mla.stanford.edu/Politics_&_English_language.pdf [Accessed 12 April 2011]
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