Abstract
This essay compares Bourdieu’s and Fairclough’s accounts of relationships between language, power, and social structure. It argues that both theorists, through concepts such as linguistic capital and symbolic power on the one hand and orders of discourse and ideology on the other, treat language use as socially determined and as a mechanism through which social structures are reproduced, and that both allow for social change through linguistic practice, though only along a broadly top-down path. The essay then compares the two theorists’ differing accounts of power, of how power is exercised—through habitus versus a combination of coercion and consent—and of the methods each adopts for analysis. It closes by raising two concerns: whether Bourdieu’s concept of habitus can adequately account for cases of social mobility, and whether Fairclough’s CDA, given its lack of unified theoretical and methodological standards, risks allowing its critical presuppositions to shape its findings.
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How to cite this paper
Bourdieu and Fairclough on Language, Power, and Social Reproduction: A Comparative Note
How to cite this paper: Li Peng. (2026) Bourdieu and Fairclough on Language, Power, and Social Reproduction: A Comparative Note. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 10(7), 763-767.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.07.003