The notion of ‘popular speech’ is one of the products of the application of dualistic taxonomies which structure the social world according to the categories of high and low (a ‘low’ form of speech), refined and coarse (coarse language) or rude (rude jokes), distinguished and vulgar, rare and common, well mannered and sloppy: in short, categories of culture and nature. (Do we not talk of langue verte, ‘slang’ or ‘fruity language’, and mots crus, language that is ‘raw’, as in ‘raw humour’?) These are the mythical categories which introduce a decisive break in the continuum of speech forms, ignoring, for example, all the overlapping that occurs between the relaxed speech of dominant speakers (the fam.) and the tense speech of dominated speakers (which observers like Bauche or Frei class with pop.), and above all the extreme diversity of speech forms which are universally relegated to the negative category of ‘popular speech’.9
But by a kind of paradoxical repetition, which is one of the standard effects of symbolic domination, the dominated speakers themselves, or at least certain groups among them, may apply to their own social universe principles of division (such as strong/weak, submissive; intelligent/sensitive, sensual; hard/soft, supple; straight, frank/bent, cunning, false, etc.) which reproduce within their order the fundamental structure of the system of dominant oppositions
pertaining to language.10 This representation of the social world retains the essence of the dominant vision by affirming the opposition between virility and docility, strength and weakness, real men, ‘tough guys’, ‘lads’, and others, like the females or effeminates who are doomed to submission and contempt.11 Slang, which has been turned into the form par excellence of ‘popular speech’, is the product of the kind of repetition which leads to the application, to ‘popular speech' itself, of the principles of division which produce it. The vague feeling that linguistic conformity implies a form of recognition and submission which raises doubts about the virility of men who abide by it,12 together with the active pursuit of the distinctive deviation which creates style, lead to a refusal to ‘try too hard’; and this in turn leads to a rejection of the most strongly marked aspects of the dominant speech form, and especially the most tense pronunciations or syntactic forms, as well as leading to the pursuit of expressiveness based on the transgression of dominant censorships - notably in matters of sexuality - and on the will to distinguish oneself vis-a-vis ordinary forms of expression.1*1 The transgression of official norms, linguistic or otherwise, is, at the very least, directed as much against the ‘ordinary’ dominated individuals who submit to them, as against dominant individuals or, a fortiori, against domination as such. Linguistic licence is part of the labour of representation and of theatrical production which ‘tough guys’, especially adolescents, must pursue in order to impose on others and assume for themselves the image of the ‘lad’ who can take anything and is ready for anything, and who refuses to give in to feelings and to sacrifice anything to feminine sensitivity. And even if it may suit the propensity of all dominated speakers to vulgarize distinction (i.e. specific difference) by reducing it to the universality of the biological sphere through irony, sarcasm or parody, nevertheless the systematic denigration of affective, moral or aesthetic values, in which analysts have identified the deep-seated ‘intention* of slang vocabulary, is above all the assertion of an aristocratic inclination.
Regarded, even by certain dominant speakers, as the distinguished form of ‘vulgar* language, slang Is the product of the pursuit of distinction, but is consequently dominated and condemned to produce paradoxical effects which cannot be understood if one tries to force them into the dichotomy of resistance or submission, which governs ordinary ways of thinking about ‘popular speech1 (or culture). One can perceive the effects of counter-finality inherent in any dominated position by simply stepping outside the logic of the mythic vision. When the dominated pursuit of distinction leads
dominated speakers to assert what distinguishes them - that is, the very thing in the name of which they are dominated and constituted as vulgar - according to a logic analogous to the kind which leads stigmatized groups to claim the stigma as the basis for their identity, should one talk of resistance? And when, conversely, they strive to shed that which marks them as vulgar, and to appropriate what would allow them to become assimilated, should one talk of submission?
