Weekly Reflection Book # 3: On Bourdieu As I continue reading Bourdieu's Language and Symbolic Power, I am able to achieve a better understanding of his vision about the language differences between the bourgeois and the peasants, and how these differences have been sustained, by the dominant classes, to maintain power distinctions. A particular term called my attention, neutralizing distance (p. 85), which is used by Bourdieu to define how the bourgeoisie use their language to maintain distances with other classes living within the same society. In oder to explain this concept, Bourdieu relies, and at the same time criticizes, the Lakoff and Labov's findings on the speech of the bourgeoisie. Bourdieu uses these findings to claim that the
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It is particularly interesting for me because, the allophone of this sound, the assibilated [ř], found in certain dialects of Spanish, has traditionally been stigmatized for being thought to be as a result of the intense contact of indigenous languages and Spanish (Klee, & Lynchs, 2009). However, empirical data shows that his sound, pejoratively called la erre de los indios [the indians' R], is also used by well-educated Spanish speakers within certain regions in Ecuador (Robinson, 2012). This is my personal case, I produce the assibilated [ř], which when I am in my hometown, it is not stigmatized; however, some of my relative, who live in Quito (the capital of Ecuador) make fun of me when I produce this sound. They even have a word, they say to me “no seas arrastrada” [don't be arrastrada], arrastrada is the word they use to refer to the way I use the assibilated [ř]. I do not have an exact word to translate it into English. In a personal conversation with an Ecuadorian professor of linguistics, he said to me that in Quito, the elites do not assibilate the /r/ at all; rather, they seem to be dropping the /r/ to have an allophone more related to the one produced by the elites in the coast region. My experience could exemplify Bourdieu's concept of neutralizing distance. In one hand, we have a sound, which has been stigmatized by the
It is particularly interesting for me because, the allophone of this sound, the assibilated [ř], found in certain dialects of Spanish, has traditionally been stigmatized for being thought to be as a result of the intense contact of indigenous languages and Spanish (Klee, & Lynchs, 2009). However, empirical data shows that his sound, pejoratively called la erre de los indios [the indians' R], is also used by well-educated Spanish speakers within certain regions in Ecuador (Robinson, 2012). This is my personal case, I produce the assibilated [ř], which when I am in my hometown, it is not stigmatized; however, some of my relative, who live in Quito (the capital of Ecuador) make fun of me when I produce this sound. They even have a word, they say to me “no seas arrastrada” [don't be arrastrada], arrastrada is the word they use to refer to the way I use the assibilated [ř]. I do not have an exact word to translate it into English. In a personal conversation with an Ecuadorian professor of linguistics, he said to me that in Quito, the elites do not assibilate the /r/ at all; rather, they seem to be dropping the /r/ to have an allophone more related to the one produced by the elites in the coast region. My experience could exemplify Bourdieu's concept of neutralizing distance. In one hand, we have a sound, which has been stigmatized by the