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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 17:1 (2018) ► pp.24–45

The roles of field and capital in negotiating language policy in the Slovene parliament

ORCID logo | Prince of Songkla University

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of integrating Bourdieu’s notions of field and capital in discursive analyses of language policy. The paper presents an analysis of a debate in a committee session of the Slovene parliament, where different actors negotiated about the contents of a language policy strategy. The study draws on nexus analysis by focussing on the situated nature of discursive actions in particular settings, and presents a historical ethnography which combines analysis of transcripts with interviews and a detailed examination of policy documents. The analysis uncovers the efforts of actors to legitimize their authority and achieve their goals with the support of capital accumulated in different fields, and focusses particularly on the dynamics involved in translating the value of sources of capital across the borders of different fields.

Keywords: language policy, parliamentary discourse, field, capital
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Policy as an intersection of social spaces
  • 3.Data and method
  • 4.Debating a language strategy in the Slovene parliament
    • 4.1The importance of capital from Linguistics
    • 4.2‘Experts’ and ‘politicians’
    • 4.3Capital in political decision-making
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.17013.sav
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