One must be careful, however, not to overlook the profound transforma’ tions which borrowed words and sayings undergo, in their function and significance, when they enter into the ordinary speech of everyday exchanges: thus some of the most typical products of the aristocratic cynicism of 'tough guys’ can, in their common use. function as kinds of neutralized and neutralizing conventions which allow men to speak (within the limits of a strict sense of decency) of affection, love or friendship, or, quite simply, to name loved ones, parents, son, wife (the more or less ironic use of terms of reference like ‘the boss', ‘the queen mother', or 'her ladyship’, for example, provide a way of avoiding terms like ‘my wife' or simply a first name, which are felt to be too familiar).17
At the other extreme in the hierarchy of dispositions towards the legitimate language, one would doubtless find the youngest and the most educated women who, though linked professionally or through marriage to the world of agents poorly endowed with economic or cultural capital, are undoubtedly sensitive to the demands of the dominant market and have the ability to respond to it which gives them something in common with the petite bourgeoisie. The effect of generation is in essence confused with the effect of changes in the mode of generation, that is, with the effect of access to the educational system, which certainly represents the most imponant of the differentiating factors between age groups. However, it is not certain that schooling has the homogenizing effect on linguistic competences that it endeavours to have and that one might be tempted to ascribe to it: first, because the academic norms of expression, when they are accepted, may remain limited in their application to oral and especially written academic productions; second, because the school system tends to distribute pupils in classes that are as homogeneous as possible with regard to academic criteria, and. co {relatively, with regard to social criteria, so that the peer group tends to have an influence which, as one moves down the social hierarchy of institutions and sections and therefore of social origins, contradicts with increasing force the effects that may be produced by the educational process; and finally because, paradoxically. in creating durable and homogeneous groups of adolescents who have broken with the school system and. through it, with the social order, and who are placed in a situation of virtual inactivity and prolonged irresponsibility.l* the sections to which the children from the most deprived classes are doomed - and notably the sons of immigrants, especially North African ones - have undoubtedly helped to provide the most favourable conditions for the elaboration of a kind of ‘delinquent culture' which, among other manifestations, expresses itself in a speech form which has broken with the norms of the legitimate language-
No one can completely ignore the linguistic or cultural law. Every time they enter into an exchange with the holders of the legitimate competence, and especially when they find themselves in a formal situation, dominated individuals are condemned to a practical, corporeal recognition of the laws of price formation which are the least favourable to their linguistic productions and which condemns them to a more or less desperate attempt to be correct, or to