Practice and Domination: Toward a Theory of Political Micro-Economy

Chad Nilep

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ABSTRACT. Older siblings play a role in their younger siblings' language socialization by ratifying or rejecting linguistic behavior. In addition, older siblings may engage in a struggle to maintain their dominant position in the family hierarchy. This struggle is seen through the lens of language and political economy as a struggle for symbolic capital. Bilingual adolescent sibling interactions are analyzed as both acts of identity and expressions of symbolic power. This paper draws a theory of political micro-economy, which relates face-to-face interaction to larger structures of political economy through a process of fractal recursivity.

Chad Nilep is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado, and associate editor of Colorado Research in Linguistics. He can be reached at Chad.Nilep@Colorado.EDU.

Colorado Research in Linguistics - Volume 17, Issue 1 - June 2004