The Linguistic Marketplace (Part 2)
Diving into how standard / "native" English became so powerful and why it'll likely remain powerful for the foreseeable future
English opens doors. Or at least that’s how the narrative goes: you learn English and then you can apply to more universities and land more jobs.
That’s true. But in a way, it’s partially true; it conceals part of the truth.
Take the U.S. for example. There are countless dialects of English in the U.S. But not all the dialects are valued the same. Some dialects lead directly to the door of opportunities. Other dialects don’t. Instead, they lead to a path of learning another, a “better,” more valued English before getting a glimpse at the door of opportunity.
So, English opens doors, but we need to ask which English opens doors? And which groups are benefitting the most from this hierarchy of Englishes?
Today, we’re exploring those question through the idea of the linguistic marketplace, a metaphorical(?) place in which different forms of language have different values. And where valuable language can be traded in for other forms of value, like access to jobs.
Buckle in—we’re analyzing society
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from Bourdieu has nothing to do with language, which makes sense since he was a sociologist. Some of his most famous work has to do with how the status quo—especially in relation to social classes—is produced and reproduced without much conscious effort. In other words, how is it that the status quo stays strong without most people actively supporting it?
Those are good questions. And to answer them, Bourdieu offers his idea of habitus, which is two things:
On a group level: We all live in a social group. This can be related to our class, race, where we live, etc. Inside of each social group, Bourdieu believes that there is a habitus, a worldview created by the dominant people in that group to maintain their social and cultural worldviews (this sounds intense, but we’ll dive into it more in just a bit).
On an individual level: We’re all individuals living in our social groups. Habitus to us, as individuals, influences the way we go about our lives and how we perceive other people’s lives.
You can think of habitus as a default worldview that we, as individuals, have. For example, in high school, I believed that working hard to get into a good college was the best path. I believed that as an individual. But I lived in a society that also promoted that as the best path.
The Beauty Standard
For some reason, Bourdieu’s idea is easier for me to understand through something like the beauty standard. So, we’ll see how it applies to beauty before applying it to language (but keep in mind beauty and language are just two aspects of habitus).
Inside my habitus, I’ve received certain messages about what beauty is. Off the top of my head, here’s a list of what I feel counts as beauty in my habitus:
Positive value: being thin, being toned, using makeup, using perfume, using jewelry, having large eyes, a small nose, plump lips
Negative value: being overweight/obese, looking like you don’t care about your appearance, having acne, dark circles, cellulite
While the beauty standard in another habitus might look similar, there will likely be differences. For example, the beauty standard in Bogotá is likely different than the beauty standard in Tokyo. And they’re both likely different from the beauty standard in my habitus.
But back to my habitus.
As an individual in my group, I could list positive and negative aesthetic values quite easily. But the interesting part is that no one ever sat down to tell me what the beauty standard in my group is. Rather, I learned it implicitly: through magazines, social media, or even through family and friends who buy certain products or use certain filters.
And even more interesting is that if you ask me whether I care about the beauty standard, I would say no. But at the same time, I like wearing makeup, using perfume, using jewelry, etc.
Without consciously meaning to, I conform to the beauty standard.
And most people around me do too. But some people need to conform more than others depending on how far away from the standard they are.
At this point, Bourdieu would want us to ask the important questions:
Who looks the most like the beauty standard?
For whom is it easiest to adhere to the beauty standard?
Value Distribution
The habitus is connected to a marketplace. And in the marketplace, conforming to the standards gives you a certain capital (which you can think of as value you can trade). In regards to beauty, pretty privilege gives you cultural capital.
The part where things start to really matter is that inside the marketplace, you can trade your cultural capital for other forms of capital.
With the beauty standard example, you can trade in your cultural capital for economic capital—as in studies that show that prettier people are more likely to be hired. But the reverse also works, in that having access to economic capital can help you gain cultural capital—as in buying skincare and makeup.
You’re either born into the standard, or you use other forms of capital to buy your way into the standard
Capital being unfairly distributed in the marketplace is the reason for social inequality. The reason why Bourdieu connects the standards to dominant groups is because they created these standards and they benefit the most from them.
In the case of the beauty standard, it was created by one group of people who made their features the standard of beauty. That group has privileged the most from the beauty standard. Other groups, wanting access to the cultural and economic capital attached to the standard, have had to work much harder to reap the benefits attached to looking like the beauty standard.
That, to Bourdieu, is the source of social inequality, and why it continuously persists. Dominant groups are born with capital. Dominated groups need to mimic the dominant group to even begin to receive some capital. And through mimicking, they’re unintentionally strengthening the idea that the beauty standard is valid.
In other words, the habitus, in this case the beauty standard, is reproduced.
Now take the idea of a beauty standard and apply it to anything that has a standard, including language
Language, in my experience as a student and teacher, is different from beauty in that the messages are oftentimes explicit. In school, I learned that there’s a right and a wrong way to use language. Off the top of my head, here are somethings tied to linguistic capital (another form of cultural capital):
Positive value: sounding “native,” using the standard language
Negative value: having a perceptible foreign accent, using local speech
In my experience, the idea of “native” and standard English being best has gone unquestioned. Growing up in school, for example, there was no discussion about it: I either had to write in standard English, or I’d fail English class. I either wrote my college essays in standard English, or I wouldn’t get into college.
Not only did I need standard English for school and university, I needed it for jobs. As an ESL teacher, I can look at job adverts and see that standard English doesn’t have the most linguistic capital. Rather, standard “native” English has the most linguistic capital. And the consequence of speaking “native” English is economic: I can either speak it and apply for more jobs or I can not speak it and not apply for fewer jobs.
Who sounds most like English?
If we return to Bourdieu’s key questions of who benefits most from the standard, we know that the answer is the same as it was for the beauty standard: the people who created the standard are benefitting the most.
In American English, the standard was based off of White, upper-middle class, Mid Western English. That English has the most linguistic capital. And all other versions of English, in the U.S., get their value relative to the standard. Spanglish, for example, is quite far from the standard. And as a result, it’s quite stigmatized. So Spanglish speakers are heavily incentivized to learn standard English.
The Catch
People learning standard English because of the linguistic capital attached to it reproduces the same habitus in which standard English has the most linguistic capital. It’s a cycle. And in the cycle, there are winners and losers.
The winners grow up speaking standard English. They’re born into linguistic capital. The losers need to learn standard English. And then if that’s not enough, learn a “native” version of English. And then maybe1 they'll have as much linguistic capital as the winners started off with. But they had to work a lot harder for it.
Conclusion
That cycle is what kept me up at night after reading this paper: As a teacher who really cares about social justice, I can’t simply teach my students the “best” form of English. Even though that might open doors for them, as individuals, it closes the door a little more for each other individual that comes after them with that accent or language that didn’t conform.
I realized that in my effort to challenge the status quo by making standard English more accessible, I was reinforcing the status quo. And I didn’t even know it.
That’s the power of habitus.
This doesn’t get into other forms of capital, like economic, which is often needed for accent reduction classes. It also doesn’t account for other forms of cultural capital, like race, which is important in discussions of native speakerism.