Response to Simon Susen’s “Bourdieusian Reflections on Language: Unavoidable Conditions of the Real Speech Situation”

This paper argues that Simon Susen’s “Bourdieusian reflections on language: Unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation” does not sufficiently acknowledge that Bourdieu’s work is always “conjunctural”, a consequence of his “position-taking” as an individual and intellectual. It examines in detail the historical context between 1972 and 1982 of most of Bourdieu’s texts considered a-historically by Susen. It suggests that Susen’s analysis wrongly attempts to situate Bourdieu as a philosopher of language, rather than as a socio-linguist. Although he differentiates Bourdieu from Habermas in showing that Bourdieu emphasizes the social context of linguistic exchanges, Susen does not follow Bourdieu in applying this contextualization to his own practice, with the result that he strangely approves of Bourdieu almost in terms established by Habermas, rather than in the terms set by Bourdieu himself.