Linguistic Capital Creating Geo-Cultural Mobility: The Case of Estonia

By:
Anu Masso
To add a paper, Login.

The present paper concentrates on associations between geo-cultural mobility (travelling, contacts to different countries) and linguistic capital (e.g. foreign language skills). The theoretical starting point is the action theory of Pierre Bourdieu and the less empirically studied ideas about symbolic (linguistic) capital. The ideas of subjective and objective cultural elements by Georg Simmel are used as framework. The empirical part of the paper uses survey data conducted in transition country Estonia that enables closer to analyse the cultural consequences of sudden globalisation. Methodologically the paper aims to challenge the gravity law of spatial interactions (e.g. social interactions could be explained by direct relations with mass and indirect with distant). The results of the analysis have shown that mobility as one of the possible indicator of globalization should not necessarily lead to weakening social contacts and interactions. In transition country the close relationships could rather support the cultural opening and successive widening of networks. On the other hand, the symbolic or linguistic capital have supported the cultural opening and increase of mobility in the beginning of transition period, but in the course of time the additional supportive structures are arising for decreasing the possible cultural risks.


Keywords: Geo-cultural mobility, linguistic capital, transcultural communication, post-communist countries.
Stream: Cultural Sustainability
Presentation Type: 30 minute Paper Presentation in English
Paper: Cultural Sustainability in a Transition Society

Anu Masso

PhD Student, Department of Journalism and Communication, University of Tartu, Estonia
Tartu, Estonia

During my master studies in sociology I concentrated on identity formations among Estonian Russian-speaking population. Now I’m a third year PhD-student in media and communication. In my present PhD-thesis I’m interested in developments of geo-cultural space (e.g. distances with different cultures, mobility and its relations with social and linguistic capital) in Estonia, one of the post-communist countries. My second interest is methodology of social sciences, that I can implement in writing my PhD thesis as well as in giving some lectures and seminars (quantitative data analysis, qualitative interview, qualitative data analysis techniques and software) at the Department of Journalism and Communication, University of Tartu.

Ref: S07P0034