Bridging Classroom Language Ethnography, New Literacy Studies, and Bourdieu’s Social Philosophy: Principles and Practice

• In Event: Bridging New Literacy Studies, Classroom Language Ethnography, and Bourdieu’s Social Philosophy

Abstract

The paper analyzes and synthesizes the various ways that
Classroom Language Ethnography, New Literacy Studies, and Bourdieu’s social philosophy can be integrated, and exemplifies the discussion with each of the symposium case studies. The goal is to provide fresh perspectives and insights on literacy in all its manifestations; one which establishes foundations for a more robust science of language in education.

For Bourdieu, ethnography must be shaped by a series of epistemological breaks, issues and questions, all of which pertain to the nature of the scientific endeavour itself and the character of the resultant knowledge.

We shall see how the four case studies offer us the means to objectify the main elements of our Classroom Language Ethnography from a Bourdieusian perspective and demonstrate the way that Bourdieu’s social philosophy provides an understanding that is both stable but dynamic. Also, how concepts such as field and habitus are the basis for exploring the relations inherent in the language classroom. We see how fundamental aspects of communication are involved in the subordinate and super-ordinate positions created by the structural relations established between internal and external literacy forms, and the way these are played out in educational contexts. The key issue is not so much that particular literacy events are arbitrary in terms of underlying values, but that such values need to be understood as a symbolic expression of the particular field interests that generate them in the first place.

Each paper therefore describes tension between what Bourdieu calls the ‘legitimate’ and the ‘illegitimate’ - the ‘consecrated’ and the ‘non-consecrated’ forms through which the values of conformity and non-conformity are expressed. Such value products amount to ‘cultural capital’; in other words, the medium for entry to and exclusion from what is considered acceptable in terms of literacy. This relation implies certain dilemmas of belief and behaviour on the part of the students – a ‘double bind’ necessitated by the demands for a ‘double consciousness’. The cause and consequences of this are examined.

For Bourdieu, the structural relations inherent in the classroom, its surrounding external context, and the policy world of power enshrined in official documents are clearly influential in what actually occurs in classroom practice. There is therefore a need for an analysis of relations ‘within the field’. Each of the case studies shows a way that both the external context and the ‘pedagogic habitus’ of the teachers involved can be observed in terms of being ‘sedimented’ in literacy events embedded in the classroom discourse, and actualised in practice.

The paper will argue that it is necessary to ‘re-conceptualise’ Classroom Language Ethnography in terms of field relations and the structural articulation of principles of practice set up between them; in other words, the particular habitus of those involved in the actual literacy event - how the generating structures of individuals, derived from their own socio-cultural background, predispose them to think and act in certain (creative) ways in the face of present (field) imperatives and necessities.

Author

• Michael James Grenfell, Trinity College, University of Dublin