Ethical Hegemony
Open-Access (Uncorrected) Preprint Version
Do Not Cite!
Publication version available in Rethinking Marxism, Volume 21, Issue 3 July 2009 , pages
355 - 365.
DOI: 10.1080/08935690902955062
Dr. P. Kerim Friedman
Assistant Professor
National Dong Hwa University
Department of Indigenous Cultures
No. 1, Sec. 2, Da Hsueh Rd.,
Shoufeng, Hualien 97401
Taiwan
http://kerim.oxus.net/
FRIEDMAN, Ethical Hegemony (Preprint)
Ethical Hegemony
In Peter Ives' book, Gramsci's Politics of Language (Ives 2004), he argues that by better
understanding Gramsci's theory of language we can better understand his concept of
hegemony. Specifically, we can come to see "how his concept of hegemony is not only
sociological but also moral and ethical" (Ives 2004: 19). That hegemony is a moral and
ethical concept is important for Ives because it allows him to distinguish between progressive
and repressive forms of hegemony (Ives 2004: 19). The possibility of creating a progressive
hegemony is what motivates Gramsci's politics, as well as that of Peter Ives, who ends his
book with a call for "critical change" (Ives 2004: 178). Although Ives does not mention
sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu by name, it is precisely the difficulty of conceptualizing a
progressive alternative within his theory of the habitus which has frequently led progressive
intellectuals who might otherwise be drawn to his work to turn to Gramsci. After exploring
the link between Gramsci's theory of language and his concept of hegemony as discussed in
Ives' book, I will return to Bourdieu's theory in order to explore in more detail how
Bourdieu's own theory of language differs from that of Gramsci, as well as to examine how
Bourdieu's sociological theory articulates with the ethical dimensions of Gramsci's theory as
spelled out by Peter Ives. Specifically, I make two claims about the differences between these
two theorists: First, I argue that despite the equal emphasis both Gramsci and Bourdieu place
on the historically contingent nature of society's prevailing norms, only Gramsci's historical
method allows for the possibility of articulating a progressive hegemony capable of
challenging these norms. Second, I argue that Bourdieu's theory of symbolic capital allows us
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to usefully distinguish prestige from hegemony, thus overcoming a limitation of Gramsci's
writings. Because Gramsci conflates these two terms, he is unable to fully theorize the
obstacles facing organic intellectuals who wish to promote an alternative hegemony.
In using Bourdieu as an interlocutor, I am following the methodology of Ives' book, which
consists of a series of interrogations of the linguistic writings of members of the Bakhtin
Circle and the Frankfurt School, each of which serves to illustrate Ives' central point, which is
that "all language takes place within normative contexts, however spontaneous they may
appear" (Ives 2004: 176), a stance which he sees as central for understanding Gramsci's
political theory. This is crucial for Ives, as it holds out the possibility of distinguishing
progressive and repressive forms of hegemony. Ives' ethical conception of hegemony is
directly derived from Gramsci's distinction between "normative" and "spontaneous"
grammars. In fact, Ives goes so far as to define hegemony as "the relationship between
spontaneous grammar and the prevailing normative grammar" (Ives 2004: 50). In his first
chapter, Ives, drawing on Lo Piparo, provides a genealogical argument for the importance of
these terms, tracing them back to Gramsci's college studies in linguistics with Matteo Bartoli.
Bartoli, we learn, saw his own work as opposed to that of the Neogrammarians who believed
that immutable phonetic laws drive linguistic change. Bartoli believed instead that "all
languages are the historical result of sociocultural conflict" (Ives 2004: 25), with dominant
languages supplanting those with less prestige. Ives cites Lo Piparo to argue that it is from
this Bartolian concept of prestige that the term hegemony arises, for at this time "the terms
prestigio (prestige), dittatura (dictatorship), and egemonia (hegemony) were being used
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almost synonymously" (Ives 2004: 27). But Ives' doesn't just want to show a genealogical
link between Gramsci's later theories and his early work in linguistics, he shows that these
issues remained central to Gramsci throughout his life, influencing all aspects of his thought.
Spontaneous vs. Normative Grammar
Before we proceed further, it is necessary to define what Gramsci meant by the distinction
between spontaneous and normative grammar. Because of the numerous connotations
retained by both terms, this is best done by process of elimination, excluding the most
obvious misunderstandings implied by their everyday meanings. By the phrase "spontaneous"
Gramsci did not mean to imply what linguists call "universal grammar," the underlying
genetic structures in our brain which allow us to learn a language. Nor did he mean to refer to
dialects or other non-standard language varieties as opposed to the standard language,
although that is somewhat closer to Gramsci's meaning. The difference being that
spontaneous grammars are influenced by the history of a people as well as the history of an
individual. As such, "The number of 'immanent or spontaneous grammars' is incalculable
and, theoretically, one can say that each person has a grammar of her own" (Ives 2004: 42).
In fact, the term spontaneous seems uniquely unsuited for the uses Gramsci put the word to:
His 'spontaneous grammar' is not spontaneous at all; rather, it is created
throughout the molecular processes of learning a language from birth
throughout one's entire life. This process of sedimentation is affected by
religion, class, gender, and geographic location (i.e., dialect). In different
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circumstances, many of these processes contain different normative grammars.
(Ives 2004: 44)
From this quote we also learn that spontaneous grammar is not simply the opposite of
normative grammar. What distinguishes the two seems to be the process by which they are
formed. The former is produced from the life-history of an individual. As such, spontaneous
grammar is shaped by the linguistic norms explicitly laid down according to past and present
normative grammars, but is not reducible to those norms. Normative grammar, on the other
hand, is the attempt to impose these norms on the population either informally, or by
encoding them in grammar books, or even in the law. As such, normative grammar "amounts
to the exercise of power and law (even if informal customary law, as in the case of the
peasant who moves to the city) over some people" (Ives 2004: 42).
This definition makes clear that the phrase normative grammar does not simply refer to the
standard variety of a language, but refers more specifically to the process of standardization a process which can result in multiple standards through the lifetime of a language. And it is
here that the ethical element enters into the equation, for this process of standardization can
either be democratic, resulting in a normative grammar closely tied to the preexisting
spontaneous grammars of the people, serving as a unifying force, or it can be divorced from
those spontaneous grammars and function as a repressive force by deligitimating everyday
speech. In the Marxist-inspired linguistics of Bakhtin, to whom we now turn, it is
inconceivable that a grammar could be both normative and democratic at the same time.
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Linguistic Utopias vs. Vernacular Materialism
The practical implications of Gramsci's theory of language come into focus through Ives
interrogation of various visions of linguistic utopias: Croce's "pure expression," Esperanto,
Bakhtin's heteroglossia, "polyglot Europe," Benjamin's "the language of things," "mimesis"
in Horkheimer and Adorno, and Habermas' "undistorted communication." Each of these
utopias is carefully compared and contrasted with Gramsci's own "vernacular materialism," a
phrase coined by Ives to highlight the impossibility of opposing language to "the 'matter' of
the 'real' world" (Ives 2004: 5). The definition of this term is slowly shaped through a series
of critical encounters with each of these various linguistic utopias. The end result is not
simply an exegesis of Gramsci's ideas, but a perceptible shift in the geography of each of
these linguistic utopias. In my mind, the most significant contribution is our richer
understanding, as a result of these critical encounters, of Gramsci's own utopian-sounding
devices: the organic intellectual, spontaneous philosophy, and progressive hegemony. Ives
argues forcefully that these devices merely sound utopian, and I think he is correct that,
anchored as they are in the Italian context in which Gramsci was politically active, these
concepts are resolutely anti-utopian.
This anti-utopianism is seen most clearly in Gramsci's support of a unified Italian language.
Ives quotes his letter rejecting a request by the Milan section of socialist party to support
Esperanto as the official language of Italy. In it Gramsci argues that while a truly
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international communist society may create the linguistic conditions within which linguistic
unification could take place, such change must happen organically, "from the bottom
upwards" and cannot be imposed from above (Ives 2004: 32). Moreover, the choice of
language must derive from democratic, bottom-up processes:
Instead of trying to impose a normative grammar on a people, be it the
normative grammar of Esperanto or some specific dialect like Tuscan, it
would be more ethical and more pragmatic to develop a native grammar that
did not have to manage these various frictions but instead was itself the
product of their resolution. (Ives 2004: 51)
Just as Gramsci argued that Italian communism had to follow its own unique path before
Italians were ready to join in an international movement, so too did he believe that linguistic
unification in Italy had to arise organically out of the Italian language, thus rejecting the
possibility of imposing an alien language like Esperanto.
Ives later returns to this argument in light of his discussion of Bakhtin, whose advocacy of
heteroglossia, a term which refers to multi-vocality or linguistic heterogeneity, seems to
contrast sharply with Gramsci's call for Italian linguistic unification:
Gramsci's advocacy of a unified national langauge - which I have argued is a
metaphor for hegemony - is met by Bakhtin with an almost equally strong
disdain. (Ives 2004: 72)
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Ives explains this difference of opinion in terms of their different careers (the scholar vs. the
politician), but also (and more importantly) in terms of the different contexts in which they
worked:
As noted earlier, Bakhtin is absorbed with Stalin's centralization of everything
involving culture and language. Gramsci is preoccupied with the
disorganization and chaos of a working-class movement [i.e. the biennio rosso
uprising of 1919] that ended in defeat. (Ives 2004: 72)
Despite these differences, however, Ives sees their fundamental conception of language as
being remarkably similar. While some scholars portray heteroglossia as an essentially
normative view of langauge, Ives argues that "heteroglossia is not an inherent aspect of
language itself, but rather an aspect of the social world in which language resides" (Ives
2004: 78). This is important because it rescues Bakhtin's approach from the uncomfortable
stance of having to declare that monological language is somehow antithetical to the very
nature of language:
Defining heteroglossia as the manifestation of social diversity in language has
two important implications. First, without divorcing language from everyday
life, it makes the issue of whether language is heteroglottic irrelevant by
focusing on the strong connections between languages and social activity ...
Second, it avoids reductions that heteroglossia is necessarily good and
democratic whereas monoglossia is inherently bad and antidemocratic. (Ives
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2004: 79)
Whether or not we consider heteroglossia to be desirable, there is no reason to therefore
define language as inherently heteroglossic, and indeed Ives finds that while Bakhtin was
inconsistent on the matter, he tended to take the position that "heteroglossia is not an inherent
aspect of language itself, but rather an aspect of the social world in which language resides"
(Ives 2004: 78). This holds open the possibility – essential for Ives' argument – of a
progressive hegemony in which a top-down monologic standard is replaced with one that is
democratically generated from the bottom up. This is precisely Gramsci's vision of linguistic
unification in Italy, which he felt was necessary to overcome the fragmentation of the
subaltern classes (Ives 2004: 77, 82-83)
As Ives states, Gramsci's position is a "political and moral argument, not a factual one" (Ives
2004: 94). There is no such thing as a truly monological linguistic community (Lippi-Green
1997). Nor did Gramsci seem to consider linguistic heterogeneity to be a bad thing. In a letter
he wrote from prison to his sister, he insisted that his nephew be allowed to continue to speak
Sardinian, his mother-tongue, at home (Ives 2004: 43). Gramsci did not see linguistic
unification as requiring the suppression of local language varieties, although he seemingly
didn't mind if this were a long-term consequence of such a policy.
What Gramsci cared about was creating the social conditions necessary for a democratic
linguistic unification. His emphasis was on the process rather than the product of such a
unification, thus eliding the differences in emphasis between him and Bakhtin with regard to
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their final goals. However, this emphasis on process also highlights an important difference
between the two thinkers: their thinking about the role played by intellectuals in bringing
about linguistic change.
linguists and philosophers of language have functioned as traditional
intellectuals, by obscuring challenges to the status quo. Bakhtin does not allow
any role for organic intellectuals, who could highlight this mutability of
language and still work toward creating a unified language by different means.
(Ives 2004: 82)
Organic intellectuals are crucial to a theory of hegemony defined (in Ives terms) as "the
relationship between spontaneous grammar and the prevailing normative grammar," and
which sees "the goal of ... any progressive social force" as working out the tension between
the two "by paying careful attention to the formation of the normative grammar in the first
place" (Ives 2004: 50). This definition of hegemony, emphasizing as it does the role played
by cultural and linguistic norms in maintaining social inequality, has a strong resemblance to
Bourdieu's theory of the habitus. And yet, as we have seen with Bakhtin, Gramsci's emphasis
on the role of intellectuals in bringing about social change holds out the possibility of a
progressive hegemony which remains under-theorized in Bourdieu's work. It is to these
similarities and differences that we now turn.
Is habitus just another word for hegemony?
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At first brush, Gramsci's theoretical framework seems to map easily onto that of Bourdieu.
Take, for instance, Gramsci's conception of spontaneous grammar, "created throughout the
molecular processes of learning a language from birth throughout one's entire life" (Ives
2004: 44). This bears a striking similarity to John Thompson's description of Bourdieu's
theory of the habitus:
The habitus is a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in
certain ways. The dispositions generate practices, perceptions and attitudes
which are 'regular' without being consciously co-ordinated or governed by any
'rule." ... Dispositions are acquired through a gradual process of inculcation in
which early childhood experiences are particularly important. (Thompson
1991: 12).
Both spontaneous grammar and the habitus are the product of each individual's own life
history, with class differences emerging out of the different opportunities and experiences
available to those individuals.
What confuses the issue, however, is that the concept of habitus shares equally strong
similarities with Gramsci's concept of normative grammar.
'[Normative grammar] is constituted by reciprocal control, by reciprocal
teaching, and by reciprocal "censorship," which manifest themselves with the
questions: "What did you intend, or want to say?", "Explain yourself better,"
etc... With caricature and teasing, this whole complex of actions and reactions
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combines to determine a grammatical conformism, to establish "norms" or
judgements of correctness and incorrectness, etc.' (Gramsci cited in Ives 2004:
41)
Again, compare this with Thompson's account of the habitus:
Through a myriad of mundane processes of training and learning, such as
those involved in the inculcation of table manners ('sit up straight', 'don't eat
with your mouth full', etc.), the individual acquires a set of dispositions which
literally mould the body and become second nature. The dispositions produced
thereby are also structured in the sense that they unavoidably reflect the social
conditions within which they were acquired (Thompson 1991: 12).
Habitus seems to contain elements of both spontaneous and normative grammar. But since
Gramsci himself viewed spontaneous grammar as the product of interaction with numerous
normative grammars, and hegemony is, as Ives shows us, the relationship between
spontaneous and normative grammar, it is easy to see why some scholars might find the
terms habitus and hegemony to be interchangeable.
To equate the two terms, however, would be to ignore the lesson we have learned from Ives'
book. Namely, that despite their similarities, spontaneous and normative grammars are the
results of very different social processes. The former arises out of the life-histories of
individuals, and the latter is the result of conscious political processes. Gramsci's work
attempts to theorize these social processes, whereas (as discussed below) Bourdieu's work
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seemingly takes them for granted. Just as Gramsci's teacher, Bartoli, rejected the linguistic
arbitraries of the Neogrammarians, so too does Gramsci argue that choice of normative
grammar is anything but arbitrary. We see this in Gramsci's rejection of Esperanto for its lack
of connection to pre-existing spontaneous grammars. Gramsci is always careful to emphasize
the role of politics in the emergence of a particular standard.
In his notebooks Gramsci takes up an essay by Croce entitled "This round table is square," a
nonsense phrase chosen, like Chomsky's famous "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously," in
order to illustrate the underlying logic of grammar even in situations of semantic absurdity
(Gramsci 1985: 179). Gramsci counters that such an expression could have expressive
meaning rather than a purely logical one.1 He then goes on to argue that
Grammar is ‘history’ or ‘a historical document’: it is the ‘photograph’ of a
given phase of a national (collective) language that has been formed
historically and is continuously developing (Gramsci 1985: 179-80)
This highlights what I think is key difference in Gramsci's writing and that of Bourdieu.
Whereas both scholars explore the institutional processes of reproducing consent, only
Gramsci provides us with an account of the specific political processes by which consent is
(or is not) manufactured. This explains why, as we will see in the next section, Bourdieu
emphasizes formal institutions such as schools, whereas Gramsci emphasizes the role of
1.
In discussing this passage Ives focuses on the fact that Croce's essay already anticipates such
critique, hypothesizing that Gramsci did not have access to the original document in prison
(Ives 2004: 38). While it may be true that Gramsci created a straw-man, here I would like to
focus attention on what Gramsci did with his straw-man rather than the veracity of his claims.
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political parties as a socializing force.
The cultural arbitrary vs. the historical bloc
In Bourdieu's early work with Passeron, we find the term "the cultural arbitrary" used in a
way which seems to quite similar to Gramsci's concept of normative grammar.
In any given social formation the cultural arbitrary which the power relations
between the groups or classes making up that social formation put into the
dominant position within the system of cultural arbitraries is the one which
most fully, though always indirectly, expresses the objective interests
(material and symbolic) of the dominant groups or classes. (Bourdieu and
Passeron 1990: 9).
In developing this concept, Bourdieu draws upon William Labov's early work which showed
that "members of a speech community can share allegiance to the same standard, despite
differences in the (nonstandard) varieties they themselves speak" (Hanks 2005: 76).
Bourdieu's work with Passeron serves to highlight how the educational system
institutionalizes these arbitrary standards, thus naturalizing the success of the elite who are
socialized into these norms before they even set a foot in school. In Bourdieu's terminology,
people misrecognize educational success as merit, not privilege. Unlike normative grammar,
however, the phrase "cultural arbitraries" reveals a lingering Saussurian structuralism. The
specific content of the dominant cultural or linguistic form is less important for Bourdieu's
theory than the mere existence of an arbitrary standard which is recognized as legitimate even
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by those who unable to perform it.
While Bourdieu does repeatedly emphasize the historically contingent nature of the dominant
cultural and linguistic forms, it is only the fact of their institutionalization which ultimately
matters for his theory of the habitus, not the process by which this institutionalization took
place. The consequences of Bourdieu's emphasis on the forces of social reproduction over
those of social change have been widely remarked upon, often by way of contrast with
Gramsci (Friedman 2005; Haeri 1997; Jenkins 2002; Woolard 1985). For Gramsci, the
content of the hegemonic cultural and linguistic forms reflects the process of their
institutionalization, just as they did for his teacher Bartoli. Gramsci's theory of hegemony
emphasizes the process of building political alliances between classes and thus avoids the all
too easy assumption of a one-to-one fit between the material and symbolic interests of these
dominant classes and the form of the cultural arbitrary which they actively promote.
In Gramsci's work, especially in his writings on "passive revolution" (Gramsci et al. 1972:
108), he employs the comparative-historical method to explain the differential development
of class relations in various modern nation-states. In comparing the French and Italian
bourgeois revolutions, Gramsci argues that the major difference between the two lies
precisely in the ability of the Jacobins to “widen [their] class interests and to discover those
interests which [they] had in common with the popular sectors” (Mouffe 2002: 295). Gramsci
uses the term "passive revolution" to refer to the failure of the Italian urban bourgeoisie to do
the same (Gramsci et al. 1972: 108). It is a "passive" revolution because, unlike the French
case, the Italian bourgeoisie allied with the Southern aristocracy against the peasants instead
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of forging a new hegemony which would institutionalize their shared interests against those
of the old order. This is also the cause of the division between the industrial workers in the
North and the peasants in the South which Gramsci saw as responsible for the failure of the
northern workers during the biennio rosso uprising which lasted from 1919 to 1920 (Gramsci
1957).
Gramsci's historical method serves to highlight the cross-class alliances which stabilize in
any given "historical bloc" - a phrase which refers to the "complex, contradictory and
discordant ensemble of the superstructures" and corresponding "relations of production"
(Gramsci et al. 1972: 366). The hegemonic ideology of any given bloc does not simply reflect
the interests of the ruling elite, but also those of the other classes with whom they have
entered into alliances with -- and even the very process by which that alliance took shape. For
instance, even though America's financial elite share a generally secular libertarian ideology,
the Conservative movement was able to succeed by combining elite interests with those of
evangelical southern white Christians. This has its roots in post-Civil War reconstruction and
the "southern strategy" adopted by Nixon's Republican Party in the wake of the civil rights
movement (Krugman 2007; Phillips 1969). Choices regarding hegemonic cultural forms are
not arbitrary, nor do they simply reflect the cultural forms of the elite. They are the product of
the "complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble" of a given historical bloc. While
Bourdieu may tacitly acknowledge the importance of such processes, his theory of the
"cultural arbitrary" retains its structuralist roots.
Another consequence of Bourdieu's focus on the mere fact of institutionalized norms as
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opposed to the process of their institutionalization is that he emphasizes the role of those
intellectuals who benefit from institutional norms, and downplays the role of those who seek
to change those norms. In Gramscian terms, Bourdieu focus on "traditional intellectuals" at
the expense of "organic intellectuals."
A traditional intellectual simply refines and adjusts the already created
organization of the world view of the dominant class. In contrast, an organic
intellectual must organize more thoroughly that which is in chaos. (Ives 2004:
45-46)
It is the organic intellectual's ability to translate between spontaneous and normative
grammar which makes a progressive hegemony possible. Yet, despite Bourdieu's relative
lack of attention to the role played by organic intellectuals, his theory of "symbolic capital"
nonetheless provides us with a useful addendum to Gramsci by elaborating the hidden
mechanisms through which the legitimacy of hegemonic forms are inculcated in the habitus.
Prestige vs. Hegemony
In his writing on language Bourdieu sought to challenge the reductionism of Chomskyian
linguistics by highlighting the role power relations play in our evaluation of linguistic
utterances:
It follows from the expanded definition of competence that a language is
worth what those who speak it are worth, i.e. the power and authority in the
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economic and cultural power relations of holders of the corresponding
competence (Bourdieu 1977: 652)
We have already discussed the limitations of Bourdieu's assumption that there exists a oneto-one correspondence between the habitus of the ruling elite and the hegemonic cultural
forms in a given era, but despite this limitation Bourdieu's work still offers us insight into the
process by which a "social hierarchy ... is transposed into stylistic hierarchy" (Hanks 2005:
75).
For Bourdieu, symbolic systems are "structuring as well as structured," and his theory of
"symbolic capital" suggests that by "engaging in linguistic practice" we become "complicit
with the pervasive power relations in which [our] language is embedded" (Hanks 2005: 77).
Bourdieu's use here of the market metaphor is analogous to Marx's discussion of "commodity
fetishism" in which he shows that the experience of exchange relations serve to obscure the
inequitable social relations of production which make commodity markets possible (Marx
1977: 163-77). Similarly, our routine engagement in linguistic exchanges is predicated upon
an invisible "systems of distinction and division" which makes possible the social production
of meaning (Hanks 2005: 77).
Ives informs us that in Gramsci's milieu, "the terms prestigio (prestige), dittatura
(dictatorship), and egemonia (hegemony) were being used almost synonymously" (Lo Piparo,
in Ives 2004: 27). I would like to conclude by suggesting that we might usefully distinguish
prestige from hegemony, and that by doing so we can successfully combine Bourdieu's
insight into the "structuring" nature of linguistic power structures with Gramsci's insights into
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the historical processes by which given structures become hegemonic. Doing so allows us to
understand what is at stake in replacing one normative grammar with another one. From Ives'
book we learn that hegemony is an inherently normative concept, and that a progressive
hegemony requires a new normative grammar to be selected through democratic processes.
By adding to this Bourdieu's theory of symbolic capital, we can better understand how the
prestige of an existing normative grammar serves to undermine efforts to bring about a
progressive hegemony. This is especially pertinent in understanding the situation faced by
speakers of minority languages, for whom pluralist language policies usually mean being
regulated to the bottom of a de-facto linguistic hierarchy (Friedman 2005; May 2001). Only
by combining Bourdieu's insights with those of Gramsci's can we ensure that a genuinely
progressive hegemony is formed through democratic processes which take into account the
gap in linguistic prestige between mainstream and minority populations.
Aknowledgements
Thanks to Peter Ives and Jacinda Swanson for their generous feedback.
P. Kerim Friedman: Assistant professor in the Department of Indigenous Cultures at
National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan, where he teaches linguistic and visual
anthropology. He is founding member of the anthropology blog Savage Minds
(savageminds.org) and a documentary filmmaker. His last film is Acting Like a Thief (D.E.R.
2005).
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