grip on ‘reality', a concern which often inspires the projects of ‘micro-sociology’, can lead one purely and simply to miss a reality' that does not yield to immediate intuition because it lies in structures transcending the interaction which they inform. There is no better example of this than that provided by strategies of condescension. Thus a French-language newspaper published in Bearn (a province of south-west France) wrote of the mayor of Pau who. in the course of a ceremony in honour of a Bearnais poet, had addressed the assembled company in Bearnais: ’The audience was greatly moved by this thoughtful gesture'.1 In order for an audience of people whose mother tongue is Bearnais to perceive as a 'thoughtful gesture’ the fact that a Bearnais mayor should speak to them in Bearnais, they must tacitly recognize the unwritten law which prescribes French as the only acceptable language for formal speeches in formal situations. The strategy of condescension consists in deriving profit from the objective relation of power between the languages that confront one another in practice (even and especially when French is absent) in the very act of symbolically negating that relation, namely, the hierarchy of the languages and of those who speak them. Such a strategy is possible whenever the objective disparity between the persons present (that is. between their social properties) is sufficiently known and recognized by everyone (particularly those involved in the interaction, as agents or spectators) so that the symbolic negation of the hierarchy (by using the ’common touch’, for instance) enables the speaker to combine the profits linked to the undiminished hierarchy with those derived from the distinctly symbolic negation of the hierarchy - not the least of which is the strengthening of the hierarchy implied by the recognition accorded to the way of using the hierarchical relation. In reality, the Bearnais mayor can create this condescension effect only because, as mayor of a large town, attesting to his urbanity, he also possesses all the titles (he is a qualified professor) which guarantee his rightful participation in the ‘superiority’ of the ‘superior’ language (no one, and especially not a provincial journalist, would think of praising the mayor s French in the same way as his Bearnais, since he is a qualified, licensed speaker who speaks ‘good quality' French by definition, ex officio). What is praised as ‘good quality Bearnais', coming from the mouth of the legitimate speaker of the legitimate language, would be totally devoid of value — and furthermore would be sociologically impossible in a formal situation - coming from the mouth of a peasant, such as the man who, in order to explain why he did not dream of becoming mayor of his village even though he had
obtained the biggest share of the vole, said (in French) that he •didn’t know how to speak’ (meaning French), implying a definition of linguistic competence that is entirely sociological. One can see in passing that strategies for the subversion of objective hierarchies in ihe sphere of language, as in the sphere of culture, are also likely to be strategies of condescension, reserved for those who are sufficiently confident of their position in the objective hierarchies lo be able to deny them without appearing to be ignorant or incapable of satisfying their demands, if Bearnais (or. elsewhere. Creole) is one day spoken on formal occasions, this will be by virtue of its takeover by speakers of the dominant language, who have enough claims to linguistic legitimacy (al least in the eyes of their interlocutors) to avoid being suspected of resorting to the stigmatized language faute de mieux.
