Distributed knowledge, distributed power: A sociolinguistics of structuration
-
Monica Heller
Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education and the Centre de recherches en éducation franco-ontarienne, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her recent publications include
Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography (2nd edition; London, Continuum, 2006);Langue et nouvelle économie: le cas du Canada (co-edited with Josiane Boutet; special issue ofLangage et Société 118, 2006);Discourses of Endangerment: Ideology and Interest in the Defense of Languages (co-edited with Alexandre Duchêne; London, Continuum, 2007); and an edited volume,Bilingualism: A Social Approach (London, Palgrave, 2007).
Abstract
This paper examines ways in which Cicourel's approach to understanding the construction of socially distributed knowledge in workplaces and institutions opens up possibilities for examining basic processes of social structuration. I focus on one particular dimension of that problem: how what gets to count as knowledge (of different kinds) is directly implicated in the dimensions of structuration that involve the construction and definition of categories and relations of social difference and social inequality. I draw on the notions of resources, trajectories, and discursive spaces to illustrate how Cicourel's ideas about distributed knowledge linking interactional orders and processes to institutional ones has allowed me to ask how distributed knowledge is linked to distributed power. I illustrate this approach with a discussion of such an analysis of categorization and stratification in a French-language minority high school in Ontario (Canada), drawing on fieldwork conducted in the early 1990s.
About the author
Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education and the Centre de recherches en éducation franco-ontarienne, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her recent publications include Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography (2nd edition; London, Continuum, 2006); Langue et nouvelle économie: le cas du Canada (co-edited with Josiane Boutet; special issue of Langage et Société 118, 2006); Discourses of Endangerment: Ideology and Interest in the Defense of Languages (co-edited with Alexandre Duchêne; London, Continuum, 2007); and an edited volume, Bilingualism: A Social Approach (London, Palgrave, 2007).
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial: The anatomy of interpretation: Coming to terms with the analyst's paradox in professional discourse studies
- Introduction: Aaron V. Cicourel and the emergence of critical perspectives on social scientific inquiry
- Aaron Cicourel's contributions to language use, theory, method, and measurement
- Discourses of collaborative medical work
- Distributed knowledge, distributed power: A sociolinguistics of structuration
- Discourses in European Union organizations: Aspects of access, participation, and exclusion
- The Gallup poll, democracy, and the vox populi: Ideologies of interviewing and the communicability of modern life
- Global markets as global conversations
- A personal, retrospective view of ecological validity
- Bibliography: Aaron V. Cicourel
- Index of articles in Volume 27 (2007)
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial: The anatomy of interpretation: Coming to terms with the analyst's paradox in professional discourse studies
- Introduction: Aaron V. Cicourel and the emergence of critical perspectives on social scientific inquiry
- Aaron Cicourel's contributions to language use, theory, method, and measurement
- Discourses of collaborative medical work
- Distributed knowledge, distributed power: A sociolinguistics of structuration
- Discourses in European Union organizations: Aspects of access, participation, and exclusion
- The Gallup poll, democracy, and the vox populi: Ideologies of interviewing and the communicability of modern life
- Global markets as global conversations
- A personal, retrospective view of ecological validity
- Bibliography: Aaron V. Cicourel
- Index of articles in Volume 27 (2007)
