Language and Power in Bourdieu: On Hasan's “The Disempowerment Game”

✍ Scribed by Lilie Chouliaraki; Norman Fairclough

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 82 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0898-5898
• DOI: 10.1016/s0898-5898(00)00018-8

✦ Synopsis

In this brief response to Hasan's critique of Bourdieu, we selectively address three issues: 1. We discuss Hasan's critique of Bourdieu's view of language as excluding the semologic, in terms of his epistemology of constructivist structuralism; 2. We discuss Hasan's view of the co-genetic relationship between the semologic and the sociologic in terms of a conception of practice as articulation; 3. We address the issue of social change, as discussed by Hasan.

(A) THE SEMOLOGIC IN BOURDIEU

(i) We agree with Hasan that the focus on the semologic, the generative power of semiosis to signify needs to be theorized in its own right, that is, in terms of the specific logic and mechanisms of language and other semiotic modalities. We also agree with her that the necessity to theorize the semologic stems from the necessity