33.410, Review: Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Kramsch (2020)

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Subject: 33.410, Review: Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Kramsch (2020)

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Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2022 11:14:49
From: Vladan Sutanovac [vladan.sutanovac at univie.ac.at]
Subject: Language as Symbolic Power

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-3492.html

AUTHOR: Claire  Kramsch
TITLE: Language as Symbolic Power
SERIES TITLE: Key Topics in Applied Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Vladan Sutanovac, Universität Wien

SUMMARY 

As the most recent addition to the book series “Key Topics in Applied
Linguistics”, Claire Kramsch’s “Language as Symbolic Power” makes its key
contribution to the domain by carving the nature of this particular face of
language at its joints from a contemporary vantage point. The book should be
viewed as an informed attempt at critically responding to the challenges which
the current volatile political climate and the increasingly digitized age pose
to us as socio-linguistic actors. Translated to the epistemic space of the
book, Kramsch aligns its rhetoric with the post-modernist/structuralist
critical tradition concerned with the quotidian interplay of language and
power. With respect to the issues this interplay raises for applied
linguistics and, especially, contemporary (foreign) language education, as a
field where the symbolic power struggles (most covertly) legitimize their
potency to construct the social and, by extension, the linguistic reality of
language learners as social actors. What becomes, in effect, a guiding looking
glass is the Bakhtin-like dialogue, manifested here as the dialectical tension
between the constitutive moments of symbolic reciprocity – cognizance,
knowledge, and recognition/acknowledgement (Bourdieu, 1993). By bringing the
above key “moments”, together with the key “voices” - educational, social,
cultural, political, and key “actors” - philosophers, sociolinguists,
sociologists, applied linguists, language (ab)users, on the same dialectical
plane, Kramsch gives rise to an expansive critical purview. In turn, such
expansiveness allows Kramsch to problematize and lay bare the omnipresent
workings of language as symbolic power. What makes this approach particularly
potent in the face of the increasingly pervasive polit-technological
“weaponization of language” (p. 15) is that it brings together the above key
moments, voices  (educational, social, cultural, political), and key actors
(philosophers, sociolinguists, sociologists, applied linguists, language
(ab)users), on the same dialectical plane. This allows Kramsch to tap into the
variety of linguistic codes and unearth how, concretely, the use of each of
the different codes can contribute to the construction and manipulation of
meanings. Equally importantly, she also unearths how the knowledge and
cognizance of this can be utilized to recognize and, ultimately, resist
symbolic violence in all walks of everyday life (macro-level). Walking the
applied linguistics walk, Kramsch takes the field of language education
(micro-level) as particularly potent for raising the
learners’-as-social-actors awareness of the real world symbolic power
struggles (both in face-to-face and online exchanges), the effects of their
utterances/speech acts on others, and the capacity of symbolic power to,
despite its non-arbitrary nature, sway people into believing it is as
arbitrary as Trump’s “artistically beaded waffle curtain” (p. 20). 

In keeping with its dialectic dialogism, the book takes its underlying
argument-turned-narrative and divides it across three main thematic units -
“THE POWER OF SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION” (Part I), “THE POWER OF SYMBOLIC
ACTION” (Part II) and “THE POWER TO CREATE SYMBOLIC REALITY” (Part III). Each
of these units gives voice to a distinct reflector of power. This reflector
acts then, in a way, as a moderator of the discussion taking place between the
individual chapters, as enactors of the contextualized examples of power
struggles at play in the current political and quotidian landscapes. More
specifically, the opening act of each individual chapter voices a trigger
incident that encapsulates the chapter’s underlying theme and sets the
rhetorical stage for the subsequent discussions. The discussions themselves
build their argumentative power and symbolic astuteness by playing out as
Bakhtinian dialogues of the voices in constant tension. Symbolically, Kramsch
reveals these voices to reify the dominant actors in the
language-and-symbolic-power game. Namely, the scholarly (exemplified by
philosophers, sociolinguists, sociologists and applied linguists), current
political (exemplified by Trump) and social (exemplified by the general
public) actors as the living and breathing personifications of the symbolic
struggles. The very same struggles which the former actors seek to demystify,
the middle seek to mask (in “Trumpian Newspeak” (Kramsch, 2020, p. 125)) with
the “artistically designed steel slats” of meaning (Trump (@realDonaldTrump),
December 19, 2018) and the latter struggle to desymbolize. 

Part I (Chapters 1-3) contextualizes the power which symbolic representations
exert on us on a daily basis and through our daily communicative interactions.
It does so by capitalizing on the critical insights made accessible through
the rich body of work in both seminal and contemporary linguistics and
semiotics. These insights particularly concern the workings of language as an
exponent of a symbolic system, more specifically, how the use of linguistic
signs empowers us, on the one hand, to partake in the
interpretation-categorization of the world and the meaning-making and, on the
other, how it empowers us to also take the made meaning apart, construct it
anew and manipulate it. This is all for the purpose of gaining symbolic and,
by extension, the socio-economic capital which, in turn, legitimizes us as the
speakers and the architects of the collective narratives (i.e. larger
discourses) that, as the more recent political climate has shown, have the
power to equally appeal to and appal our collective and “symbolic selves”
(Deacon, 1997). As Kramsch’s dialogue with Bruner reveals, it is due to this
immense potential to affect, as a “form not only of representing but of
constituting reality” (Bruner, 2002, p. 5), that the narrative gains the
status of the quintessential means(-to-an-ends) in the eyes, and the hands, of
symbolic power. In the hands of Kramsch, the narrative is but a quintessential
means to establish a bridge between the (politics of) representation and the
(politics of) action. And, as the constructor of the space of possibilities,
it also serves as a mirror to how the identities brought about through the
interplay of representation and action turn from a possibility into a defining
face of a social group with which its social actors will fundamentally
identify.

As Kramsch’s narrative leaves the space of the politics of representation and
gives way to that of the politics of action, Part II (Chapters 4-6) lays bare
the innards of the power of symbolic action by furthering the book’s epistemic
purview in the direction of sociolinguistics and critical applied linguistics.
By building on the research from these two fields that focuses on quotidian
social interaction rituals, this part of Kramsch’s narrative demonstrates how
different ways of playing games with words can play out as exercise of
symbolic power and, oftentimes, of symbolic violence on other(s) despite the
best intentions. Mindful of this, the particularly relevant contribution of
this thematic unit is its problematization of “language” as a “loaded weapon”
(Bolinger, 1980). In particular, it reflects on the tendency of certain social
actors to appropriate and mobilize language as a weapon to fight political
opponents and any resisting actors, even though the symbolic system they are
manipulating is essentially everyone’s property (Bolinger, 1980, p. 186). As
this thematic unit underscores, if an analysis of symbolic violence and its
abuses is to be educative, it is necessary to complement its epistemic space
with a critical inquiry into how specifically the media wields symbolic power
to construct the symbolic realities social actors live by. 

Part III (Chapters 7-9) takes the concluding point of the previous thematic
unit as its point of departure. Namely, it zeroes in on the power to create
symbolic reality. The insights which this part capitalizes on stem from the
post-structuralist and post-modern theoretical deliberations on the discursive
face of language and to the manifestations of these deliberations in current
digital communication practices. The main contribution of this thematic unit
comes in the form of an insight that the power which social actors wield
through the use of novel technologies not only leads to information
dissemination and identity creation but also to the responsive engagement with
the acts of symbolic violence in novel and unforeseen ways. On the one hand,
this has given rise to a “climate of symbolic uncertainty and anxiety” (p.
195). On the other, more encouraging, hand, this has also given rise to an
increased (and continuously increasing) awareness by language/digital systems
users of the “paradoxical effects of language as symbolic action” (ibid.),
which continuously unfold in our quotidian doings with words. The silver
lining comes here in the form of Kramsch’s sketch of the different ways to
respond to the linguistic rattling of symbolic violence by capitalizing on
what she terms the very axes of our symbolic existence.  

With the concluding chapter, Kramsch achieves narrative unity by providing an
encompassing take on “Language” as the “Measure of Our Symbolic Lives”.
Offered here is a succinct summary of the argument that motivates and, at the
same time, glues the symbolic fabric of the book together. The summary also
includes the more specific major implications for critical applied linguistic
research and (educational) practice. 

EVALUATION

What makes Kramsch’s book a potent deliberative resource is its topical
breadth and thematic unity.  It thrives on state-of-the-art post-modern work,
worked out using real world examples spanning all walks of our symbolic
reality. This results in a vantage point that offers a far-reaching view of
the manifold faces of pervasive power as it is enacted through and by the
agency of language acting in the fields (in Bourdieusian sense) as diverse as
politics and workplaces to digital spaces and everyday life. Kramsch achieves
this unparalleled breadth by co-constructing the book’s dialogical space with
the most influential voices stemming from the likes of cognitive linguistic,
constructivist, performativity, politeness, sociolinguistic, communication and
digital symbolic systems theory. The main take-aways of this encounter,
together with the novel implications for critical applied linguistics research
and language teaching practice, are effectively summarized in the concluding
chapter. Translated to a singular argument for the benefit of contextualizing
symbolic power is that it sheds critical light on how different social actors
create and communicate meaning, and how these meanings achieve legitimacy
through the power of institutions. In terms of its target audience, which is
language educators and teachers, the book, as Kramsch emphasizes, is not
intended as a textbook. However, as a closer reading reveals, it can prove a
prolific codebook for deciphering the surreptitious parlance of symbolic
power, making language teaching and learning more relevant and making language
learners more responsive to the symbolic complexities of the world. As the
author additionally underscores, due to its straightforward narrative
approach, and the fact that for the most part it requires no previous
knowledge, this book can also prove an effective codebook for any social actor
interested in getting to the bottom of how language is used to play symbolic
power games. 

REFERENCES

Bolinger, Dwight. 1980. Language - the loaded weapon. New York: Longman. 

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The field of cultural production. Cambridge: Polity
Press.

Bruner, Jerome. 2002. The narrative construction of reality. In M. Mateas and
P. Sengers (eds.). Narrative intelligence. 41-62. 

Deacon, Terrence. 1997. The symbolic species. New York: Norton. 

Kramsch, Claire. 2020. Language as symbolic power (Key Topics in Applied
Linguistics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Vladan Sutanovac is a cognitive scientist, cognitive/experimental
ethnopragmatist, cognitive semanticist and philosopher of language. He holds a
Ph.D in intercultural/cognitive pragmatics, semantics and philosophy of
language, a soon-in-hand MSc in cognitive science, Mag. phil. in applied
linguistics and MA in English language and literature. His research focuses on
the investigation of cognitive underpinnings of linguistic cultures, speech
act conceptualization and meaning-making practices across cultures as well as
the neurophysiological underpinnings of affective perception and affective
disorders (with clinical application).





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