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Academic Discourse: Linguistic Misunderstanding and Professorial Power
Education depends crucially on language: knowledge and skills are taught through a process of linguistic exchange. But how much of the language used by teachers and professors is actually understood by students? To what extent does the social background of students affect their capacity to understand the language used in the classroom or the lecture hall? Why do students and teachers overestimate the success of the educational process and underestimate the degree of misunderstanding involved? In this important work Pierre Bourdieu and his associates explore these and other questions through a careful study of the role of language and linguistic misunderstanding in the teaching contexts of higher education.
136 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
Pierre Bourdieu
355 books1,331 followersBourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life. His work emphasized the role of practice and embodiment or forms in social dynamics and worldview construction, often in opposition to universalized Western philosophical traditions. He built upon the theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Georges Canguilhem, Karl Marx, Gaston Bachelard, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Erwin Panofsky, and Marcel Mauss. A notable influence on Bourdieu was Blaise Pascal, after whom Bourdieu titled his Pascalian Meditations.
Bourdieu rejected the idea of the intellectual "prophet", or the "total intellectual", as embodied by Sartre. His best known book is Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, in which he argues that judgments of taste are related to social position. His argument is put forward by an original combination of social theory and data from surveys, photographs and interviews, in an attempt to reconcile difficulties such as how to understand the subject within objective structures. In the process, he tried to reconcile the influences of both external social structures and subjective experience on the individual (see structure and agency).
Bourdieu rejected the idea of the intellectual "prophet", or the "total intellectual", as embodied by Sartre. His best known book is Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, in which he argues that judgments of taste are related to social position. His argument is put forward by an original combination of social theory and data from surveys, photographs and interviews, in an attempt to reconcile difficulties such as how to understand the subject within objective structures. In the process, he tried to reconcile the influences of both external social structures and subjective experience on the individual (see structure and agency).
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December 19, 2023
I’ve been torturing myself lately – swinging back and forth – trying to follow Bourdieu and his criticism of Bernstein. This is the latest of the books I’ve read on the topic. Just to re-cap – Bernstein says the differences between middle-class and working-class language is that middle-class language tends to be more universal (that is, not limited to the context in which it is used, and so can be understood by anyone – that is, middle and upper class kids tend to talk as if they were books). Bourdieu claims that most of the difference is really a matter of ‘taste’ rather than anything objectively ‘better’ about how middle class kids think.
This book makes Bourdieu’s point in what I think is a very amusing way. Bourdieu puts his ideas to work in a series of surveys he conducts on university students in France in 1963-64. The point of these surveys is to test the students’ knowledge of the kinds of language that is expected in higher education. The students are asked to define words that are pretty standard in academia – words like epistemology, methodology, method, phenomena. The problem is that very few of the students prove able to define these words.
“After the administration of a test which included definitions, students were asked why they did not object to terms in lectures which nearly all of them were unable to define. They invariably replied that they ‘understood them in context’: ‘It’s a phenomenon of habit. We’ve always already heard these philosophical terms or very nearly all of them; that’s why we always think we recognise them.’ But this ‘context’, as we have seen, is not only the semantic context; it presupposes the whole teaching situation, its constraints and its ritual.” p.32
Bourdieu’s point is that the transmission of information is one of the least important things being learnt at university – in fact, of much more importance is the ‘cultural disposition’ one gains there from participating in the ritual. As another of the writers of this volume, Christian Baudelot, says, essays tend to be the preferred means of assessing learning at university, but that is because of the vagueness of the criteria:
“Famous prescriptions for composing essays, far from supplying the basic principles of logic and rhetoric, usually try to persuade the student that this ‘literary genre’ is first and foremost a matter of taste, and requires from those who would practice it a set of gifts which cannot be methodically acquired.” p.81
That is, that rather than an essay being a way of judging what a person has learnt it is, in fact, a way to judge how well someone has learnt the style of presenting information. This is compounded by the fact that academic language is vague and often doesn’t have any substance behind it at all. The point of much of academic discourse is to sound like you know what you are talking about, rather than actually knowing anything at all. This point is made in a lovely quote from Bourdieu:
“Similarly, the student who, in preparing an essay under the present assessment regime, gives up all the protections and securities that come from emulating the rhetoric of his lecturers and abandons the techniques of distancing the examiner through false generalities and prudent approximations that are not even wrong – in short, the student who risks exposing the exact level of his understanding and knowledge by using the clearest possible code of communication – gives up the chance of assuring (as they say) a mark between 9 and 11. Unless saved by exceptional talent, he necessarily pays a price for clarity.” p.14
That is, there is a price for clarity – and that price is failure or really having to know your stuff.
The point of all this is that: “Academic language is a dead language for the great majority of French people, and is no one’s mother tongue, not even that of the children of the cultivated classes.”p.8 Even so, upper class students are much more likely to be somewhat familiar with the form of academic language than working class students. “As such, it is very unequally distant from the language actually spoken by the different social classes.” p.8
This advantage is never mentioned, since academic language and academic qualifications are presented in our society as being granted on merit. However, the fact upper class people have a felicity with academic language that is often denied working class people makes displays of this ability disproportionately easier for upper class students.
“A methodical observation of behaviour at an oral examination leads us to distinguish the verbal ease most directly recognised and most appreciated by the teacher – the one that combines facility of expression with offhandedness of delivery and smoothness of tone – from the forced ease peculiar to working-class and middle-class students who do their best – by volubility of delivery and by not a few discordant tones – to conform to the norms of academic verbalization. The false ease, shot through with an anxiety which stands out all too clearly and dominates, makes its function as a foil too transparent not to be suspected of self-seeking vulgarity in the eyes of teachers wedded to the prestigious fiction of an exchange which, even during examinations, should remain an end in itself.” p.30
And so, “What is in question here is less a language as such than a relationship to language.” p.34 A lifetime immersed in language and books, in art galleries and museums, provides advantages in the performance that is academic language – and a large part of the marks students receive (particularly in arts) is from presenting the right ‘tone’ with an appropriate confidence of delivery.
As Bourdieu summarises: “Our survey reveals two fundamental facts: the importance of linguistic misunderstanding in higher education and the determining role of linguistic inheritance in academic success.” p.37
I’m going to end with a beautiful quote on the paradoxes and contradictions involved in writing essays from Baudelot, where what is really being asked of the student is hidden and what is assessed is not what has been nor can be taught:
“Refuse to pose precise questions; solicit personal views on final solutions to problems without solutions and perspectives on topics which are open-ended; invite the candidate to engage in anti-rhetoric; and glorify the whole exercise with the vocabulary of intellectual creation – the setting of the essay topic is an attempt to escape the unreal character of the essay by a complete lack of realism, and to transform what is essentially a scholastic test in rhetoric into a project of inspired creativity. Deny them, refuse them, scorn them, ignore them – rhetorical skills are still among the fundamental criteria of academic judgement.
“That particular ‘know-how’ which the teacher neither teaches nor openly demands, he still looks for ‘in expression and in discussion and in composition’ but fails to find:” pp.82-83
My lecturer translated this from French – but it is very strange that in the whole of Melbourne Uni there is only one copy of this book and it is available only for overnight loan. Basically, I’m telling you this is not an easy book to get hold of, but if you ever do get hold of it I can’t really recommend it too highly – a fascinating bit of educational research.
This book makes Bourdieu’s point in what I think is a very amusing way. Bourdieu puts his ideas to work in a series of surveys he conducts on university students in France in 1963-64. The point of these surveys is to test the students’ knowledge of the kinds of language that is expected in higher education. The students are asked to define words that are pretty standard in academia – words like epistemology, methodology, method, phenomena. The problem is that very few of the students prove able to define these words.
“After the administration of a test which included definitions, students were asked why they did not object to terms in lectures which nearly all of them were unable to define. They invariably replied that they ‘understood them in context’: ‘It’s a phenomenon of habit. We’ve always already heard these philosophical terms or very nearly all of them; that’s why we always think we recognise them.’ But this ‘context’, as we have seen, is not only the semantic context; it presupposes the whole teaching situation, its constraints and its ritual.” p.32
Bourdieu’s point is that the transmission of information is one of the least important things being learnt at university – in fact, of much more importance is the ‘cultural disposition’ one gains there from participating in the ritual. As another of the writers of this volume, Christian Baudelot, says, essays tend to be the preferred means of assessing learning at university, but that is because of the vagueness of the criteria:
“Famous prescriptions for composing essays, far from supplying the basic principles of logic and rhetoric, usually try to persuade the student that this ‘literary genre’ is first and foremost a matter of taste, and requires from those who would practice it a set of gifts which cannot be methodically acquired.” p.81
That is, that rather than an essay being a way of judging what a person has learnt it is, in fact, a way to judge how well someone has learnt the style of presenting information. This is compounded by the fact that academic language is vague and often doesn’t have any substance behind it at all. The point of much of academic discourse is to sound like you know what you are talking about, rather than actually knowing anything at all. This point is made in a lovely quote from Bourdieu:
“Similarly, the student who, in preparing an essay under the present assessment regime, gives up all the protections and securities that come from emulating the rhetoric of his lecturers and abandons the techniques of distancing the examiner through false generalities and prudent approximations that are not even wrong – in short, the student who risks exposing the exact level of his understanding and knowledge by using the clearest possible code of communication – gives up the chance of assuring (as they say) a mark between 9 and 11. Unless saved by exceptional talent, he necessarily pays a price for clarity.” p.14
That is, there is a price for clarity – and that price is failure or really having to know your stuff.
The point of all this is that: “Academic language is a dead language for the great majority of French people, and is no one’s mother tongue, not even that of the children of the cultivated classes.”p.8 Even so, upper class students are much more likely to be somewhat familiar with the form of academic language than working class students. “As such, it is very unequally distant from the language actually spoken by the different social classes.” p.8
This advantage is never mentioned, since academic language and academic qualifications are presented in our society as being granted on merit. However, the fact upper class people have a felicity with academic language that is often denied working class people makes displays of this ability disproportionately easier for upper class students.
“A methodical observation of behaviour at an oral examination leads us to distinguish the verbal ease most directly recognised and most appreciated by the teacher – the one that combines facility of expression with offhandedness of delivery and smoothness of tone – from the forced ease peculiar to working-class and middle-class students who do their best – by volubility of delivery and by not a few discordant tones – to conform to the norms of academic verbalization. The false ease, shot through with an anxiety which stands out all too clearly and dominates, makes its function as a foil too transparent not to be suspected of self-seeking vulgarity in the eyes of teachers wedded to the prestigious fiction of an exchange which, even during examinations, should remain an end in itself.” p.30
And so, “What is in question here is less a language as such than a relationship to language.” p.34 A lifetime immersed in language and books, in art galleries and museums, provides advantages in the performance that is academic language – and a large part of the marks students receive (particularly in arts) is from presenting the right ‘tone’ with an appropriate confidence of delivery.
As Bourdieu summarises: “Our survey reveals two fundamental facts: the importance of linguistic misunderstanding in higher education and the determining role of linguistic inheritance in academic success.” p.37
I’m going to end with a beautiful quote on the paradoxes and contradictions involved in writing essays from Baudelot, where what is really being asked of the student is hidden and what is assessed is not what has been nor can be taught:
“Refuse to pose precise questions; solicit personal views on final solutions to problems without solutions and perspectives on topics which are open-ended; invite the candidate to engage in anti-rhetoric; and glorify the whole exercise with the vocabulary of intellectual creation – the setting of the essay topic is an attempt to escape the unreal character of the essay by a complete lack of realism, and to transform what is essentially a scholastic test in rhetoric into a project of inspired creativity. Deny them, refuse them, scorn them, ignore them – rhetorical skills are still among the fundamental criteria of academic judgement.
“That particular ‘know-how’ which the teacher neither teaches nor openly demands, he still looks for ‘in expression and in discussion and in composition’ but fails to find:” pp.82-83
My lecturer translated this from French – but it is very strange that in the whole of Melbourne Uni there is only one copy of this book and it is available only for overnight loan. Basically, I’m telling you this is not an easy book to get hold of, but if you ever do get hold of it I can’t really recommend it too highly – a fascinating bit of educational research.
October 3, 2017
The butler did it.
Then the butler explained it to the butler's students, in a language most of the students did not understand. Some of them learned to mimic that language; some of them gradually learned from mimicry to have some understanding--perhaps, or perhaps only a misrecognition of understanding. Those became the next generation of butlers.
Then the butler explained it to the butler's students, in a language most of the students did not understand. Some of them learned to mimic that language; some of them gradually learned from mimicry to have some understanding--perhaps, or perhaps only a misrecognition of understanding. Those became the next generation of butlers.
May 6, 2014
Kind of sobering to realize that while we teach to an ideal student (who somehow understands everything we do), our classes are full of actual students (who definitely do not). Granted the empirical research is someone time and space constrained (French students of the 60s), but the conclusions and concepts are quite universal.
I love the quote that academic discourse is a dead language for most people and no one's mother tongue (8) and there are some other lovely bits as well.
Teaching is at its most effective not when it succeeds in transmitting the greatest quantity of information in the shortest time (and at the least cost), but rather when most of the information conveyed by the teacher is actually received” (5).
Lnagauge is not just words but “a system of transposable mental dispositions. These go hand in hand with values which dominate the whole of our experience and, in particular, with a vision of society and of culture” (8).
Research which demonstrates “the illusion of being understood, the illusion of understanding and the illusion of having always understood are mutually reinforcing, and supply alibis to each other” (15) as teachers assume they are speaking same language as their students.
Instructors will use a word frequently, without stopping to define it, assuming their students understand (37).
Rich folk, he assumes “their desire for a broad education to deal with problems in their human context and to transent the narrowness of the expert betrayed a search for symbolic confirmation of their hereditary right o occupy position of power and presitge” (101) and the bourgeoise “either to perfect the general education which guarentees their privileges or to obtain qualifications and to enter careers without which they risk their status” (110)
There is a apprenticeship in learning this language, often in families “an apprenticeship in language which is unequally complex, according to family background” (21).
In a footnote mentions that “Most [instructors] seem to react to the student’s lack of understanding with a perverse sort of joy, as if linguistic misunderstanding becoming an objectively known fact justified an opinion that they had held all along” (30)
I love the quote that academic discourse is a dead language for most people and no one's mother tongue (8) and there are some other lovely bits as well.
Teaching is at its most effective not when it succeeds in transmitting the greatest quantity of information in the shortest time (and at the least cost), but rather when most of the information conveyed by the teacher is actually received” (5).
Lnagauge is not just words but “a system of transposable mental dispositions. These go hand in hand with values which dominate the whole of our experience and, in particular, with a vision of society and of culture” (8).
Research which demonstrates “the illusion of being understood, the illusion of understanding and the illusion of having always understood are mutually reinforcing, and supply alibis to each other” (15) as teachers assume they are speaking same language as their students.
Instructors will use a word frequently, without stopping to define it, assuming their students understand (37).
Rich folk, he assumes “their desire for a broad education to deal with problems in their human context and to transent the narrowness of the expert betrayed a search for symbolic confirmation of their hereditary right o occupy position of power and presitge” (101) and the bourgeoise “either to perfect the general education which guarentees their privileges or to obtain qualifications and to enter careers without which they risk their status” (110)
There is a apprenticeship in learning this language, often in families “an apprenticeship in language which is unequally complex, according to family background” (21).
In a footnote mentions that “Most [instructors] seem to react to the student’s lack of understanding with a perverse sort of joy, as if linguistic misunderstanding becoming an objectively known fact justified an opinion that they had held all along” (30)
January 6, 2015
Star Rating Art: 5 Stars
Star Rating Story: 5 Stars
Self Purchase for Kindle.
One of my favorite things about this graphic novel series is that there is no text to read. It���s all images. Occasionally, that does make it a little hard to understand what the artist/author is trying to say. I do kinda wish it were in color. This series is very Juicy. Juicy is a term my husband came up with for feel good, happy, warm and fuzzy feelings. Even my three year old son is using the term now. The Owl is so tenderhearted. The worm, is adorable especially when he sticks his tongue out when he is concentrating. The Racoon makes an appearance, it���s so fuzzy and cute. Every issue seems to introduce another animal. This issue, it seems to be a flying squirrel. LOVE how the worm gets to fly on the squirrel���s back. I guess I never noticed that the Owl doesn���t fly. In this volume, he gets flying lessons. Super Juicy!!!
A little bit of anxiety when the poor Owl wakes up and his best buddy who normally sleeps next to him isn���t in his bed.
Recommendations: If you like Mutts or anything with animals, you will love this.
Star Rating Story: 5 Stars
Self Purchase for Kindle.
One of my favorite things about this graphic novel series is that there is no text to read. It���s all images. Occasionally, that does make it a little hard to understand what the artist/author is trying to say. I do kinda wish it were in color. This series is very Juicy. Juicy is a term my husband came up with for feel good, happy, warm and fuzzy feelings. Even my three year old son is using the term now. The Owl is so tenderhearted. The worm, is adorable especially when he sticks his tongue out when he is concentrating. The Racoon makes an appearance, it���s so fuzzy and cute. Every issue seems to introduce another animal. This issue, it seems to be a flying squirrel. LOVE how the worm gets to fly on the squirrel���s back. I guess I never noticed that the Owl doesn���t fly. In this volume, he gets flying lessons. Super Juicy!!!
A little bit of anxiety when the poor Owl wakes up and his best buddy who normally sleeps next to him isn���t in his bed.
Recommendations: If you like Mutts or anything with animals, you will love this.
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