English Language Teaching in its Social Context

272 ANGEL M. Y. LINparticipate in their own domination (c.g. see Canagarajah, Chapter 13 of this book). Thischapter is written forTESOL practitioners and researchers who want to listen to more ofthe lived stories of English in the world and who share a similar concern in exploring waysof doing TESOL that do not participate in the reproduction of student disadvantage.2 A theoretical preamble: cultural capital, symbolic violence, andcreative, discursive agencySome theoretical notions that can serve as analytical tools for achieving a greaterunderstanding of social phenomena of reproduction are discussed in this section. Givenlimited space, what goes below must be treated as a highly synoptic characterization andthe interested reader is urged to consult the references themselves for a more detailedaccount.Cultural capitalThis is a concept from Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1973; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Bourdieu,1977; Bourdieu, 199 1) referring to language use, skills, and orientations/dispositionsattitudedschemes of perception (also called “habitus”) that a child is endowed with by virtueof socialization in her/his family and community. Bourdieu’s argument is that their familialsocialization bestows on children of the socioeconomic elite the right kind of cultural capitalfor school success (i.e., their habitus becomes their cultural capital). A recurrent theme inBourdieu’s works is that children from disadvantaged groups, with a habitus incompatiblewith that presupposed in school, are not competing with equal starting points with childrenof the socioeconomic elite; hence the reproduction of social stratification. The notion ofcultural capital has been used by educationists (e.g., Delpit, 1988; Luke, 1996) to describethe disadvantaged position of ethnic and linguistic minorities and to problematize the notionthat state education in modern societies is built on meritocracy and equal opportunity.Symbolic violenceAnother recurrent theme in Bourdicu’s works concerns how the disadvantaging effect ofthe schooling system is masked or legitimized in people’s consciousness. School failure canbe conveniently attributed to individual cognitive deficit or lack of effort and not to theunequal initial shares of the cultural capital both valued and legitimized in school:the dominated classes allow (the struggle) to be imposed on them when they acceptthe stakes offered by the dominant classes. It is an integrative struggle and, by virtueof the initial handicaps, a reproductive struggle, since those who enter this chase, inwhich they are beaten before they start, as the constancy of the gaps testifies, implicitlyrecognize the legitimacy of the goals pursued by those whom they pursue, by the merefact of taking part. (Bourdieu, 1984: 165)Symbolic violence, according to Bourdieu, is the imposition of representations of the worldand social meanings upon groups in such a way that they are experienced as legitimate.Thisis achieved through a process of misrecognition. For instance, thc recent “English Only”campaigns in the United States provide illustrations of the political struggles required tocreate and maintain a unified linguistic market in which only one language is recognized as