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4 - “I Do Things with Words, Therefore I Am”

from Part II - The Power of Symbolic Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2020

Claire Kramsch
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Summary

Using as an example an exchange between Donald Trump and FBI director James Comey in the Oval Office in February 2017, this chapter revisits in a post-structuralist perspective canonical concepts from pragmatics and sociolinguistics , such as Austin’s performative, Searle’s speech act, Goffman’s participation framework and Brown and Levinson's concept of politeness through facework. It shows the workings of symbolic power in the most mundane interaction rituals. It introduces the notion of institution, not only in the form of particular organizations such as the Government, the Family, the Army, or the Church, but also any durable social relation which endows individuals with power, status and resources of various kinds, for example, membership in a club, association, corporation or online community, but also more unspoken relations of wealth, race, ethnicity or gender that represent institutionalized forms of symbolic power. These institutions give people authority, legitimacy and the right to speak and be listened to. Communicative practice is therefore not just the ability to speak correctly and appropriately, but an individual and institutional struggle to be heard and taken seriously.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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