"Linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, folklorists converge more and more today in studies of situated discourse. The link between the dynamics of situations and the dynamics of society as a whole goes largely neglected. For that articulation one needs the resources of a social theory. Here Bourdieu's analyses of symbolic power and practice are our best resource; one might say they are indispensable. The starting point is not the uniform language of educational elites and formal linguists, but expressive styles; not social structure as fixed and given, but fields and fractions in which identities are ever-contested; power as collusion as well as compulsion; configurations that theory not only discloses but also effects; all in all, a perspective that is both sceptical and empirical, broad yet subtle, engaged and insightful." <i>Professor Dell Hymes, University of Virginia </i>