Ethical hegemony

Abstract: Drawing upon Peter Ives' book, Gramsci's Politics of Language, this article examines the linguistic origins of Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony. This is then compared with Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the habitus, with a particular focus on how the two theories conceptualize social change. Ives shows that Gramsci understood language standardization as either democratic or repressive depending on the nature of the standardization process. Ives uses this to argue that the opposite of repressive hegemony is not the absence of hegemony but a progressive hegemony grounded in democratic processes. While Boudieu's emphasis on social reproduction over social change makes his work less useful for conceptualizing such a progressive hegemony, this paper argues that his theory of symbolic capital (including linguistic capital) offers us a unique insight into the obstacles faced by agents of progressive social change and in so doing sheds light on the limitations of Gramsci's approach

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Preprint ; begutachtet ; In: Rethinking Marxism ; 21 (2009) 3 ; 355-365

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Sprache, Linguistik

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2009
• Creator: Friedman, P. Kerim

Further information

• URN: urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-63635
• Rights: Open Access; Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 25.03.2025, 1:46 PM CET