Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

190 Part 3: Language and Variation
affected wider social patterns and conventions; as a result there was a
danger of trivialising these conventions as mere resources in the interaction,
or exaggerating the power of individual agents (Rampton, 2003: 53).
One serious attempt at overcoming these diffi culties and reconciling
social conventions as well as individual agency has been offered by social
constructionist theory (Giddens, 1976, 1984).
In general, social constructionism holds that people in their daily lives
are neither the victims of powers they do not comprehend or understand,
nor omnipotent creators of their own circumstances (cf. Varenne &
McDermott, 1999). Principally, people are seen to at least partly create
their (unequal, socially stratifi ed) societies anew in their daily interactions.
Hence, social constructionists suggest that how we speak is more than the
mere refl ection of or response to pre-existing social structures. Rather, language
is one of the primary resources for social actors to actively and creatively
shape and reshape their social surroundings. A crucial point is that
these interactions do not take place in a vacuum: they are curbed and
streamlined because social life tends to congeal and produces routines
and habits that consequently constrain the range of possible new actions.
Although social actors are constantly recreating the social world, they are
mostly encouraged to reproduce the existing social structures. Still, these
habits do not totally determine what social actors can do, and allow for
actions that resist, question or negotiate with current routines. In this way,
social constructionism reconciles the stability and continuity of social
systems with their susceptibility to change.
A potent motive for people’s tendency to reproduce social routines is
that they generally trust each other to reproduce the world as they know
it, since the routines in that world provide recognisable frames, identities
and relations (Giddens, 1984: 60ff ). Conversely, deviating from routine
behaviour causes confusion and indignation: it displays a different interpretation
of the interaction, and indicates that existing identities and relations
cannot be taken for granted anymore. Sociologists such as Garfi nkel
and Goffman have described how those who (potentially) deviate or
offend are therefore persistently held accountable or held in check with a
variety of delicate reproaches but also less subtle social penalties (Garfi nkel,
1967; Goffman, 1967, 1971). Indeed, since each person is fundamentally on
his or her own, non-routine behaviour ultimately threatens the idea of an
intersubjectively shared world (Giddens, 1984: xxiii). Deviations from the
routine will therefore often be avoided, minimised or presented as exceptional
and temporary. Of course, those in power will agree that this is
necessary, whereas those with less infl uence will often feel ill at ease or
apprehensive about deviating from the routines in which they have
learned to think, feel and act.
Taken together, the concepts of routine, trust and accountability force
all social actors to take into account existing habits up to the point where