AbstractThis paper discusses symbolic violence in sociolinguistic research on multilingualism. It revisits an archived recording of a group discussion between four boys about their chances of having sex with a female researcher. The data is rife with symbolic violence. Most obviously, the conversation enacted a heterosexist form of symbolic violence. This was, however, not the only direction in which violence was exerted. As argued by (Bourdieu & Wacquant. 1992. An invitation to reflexive sociology. Cambridge: Polity), symbolic violence involves two fundamental elements – domination and complicity. In the case at hand, the boys’ sexist banter conformed to dominant expectations about their linguistic behavior, imbued in the research event. This is symbolic complicity of the kind that the Bourdieusian notion foresees. Yet another subordination to the dominant vision occurred when the researchers captured the conversation on tape, but decided to exempt it from publication. Here, we argue that giving deepened attention to sociolinguists’ own run-ins with symbolic violence during research is valuable, because it provides an opportunity to reflexively consider the social conditions of the research practices, in relation to the data produced and analyzed. Ultimately, this reflexive exercise may help sociolinguists sharpen their tools for understanding the give and take of dominance and complicity unfolding in their data.
Spatially interested sociolinguistics has cared little about the semiotics of nonexistence. The present article
argues that the field would benefit from deepening its interest in questions of erasure and relative absence. A case in point, as
the article shows, is graffiti. By analysing some semiotic facets of the erasure of graffiti, the article brings home the point
that a semiotics of nonexistence is deeply embedded in the semiotic regimentation of space. The persistence of this condition
calls for an analytical sensitisation to less obvious forms of semiosis.
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