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Symbolic Violence
Symbolic Violence is a term coined by Pierre Bourdieu, a prominent 20th-Century French sociologist appearing in his works as early as the 1970's. Symbolic violence describes a type of non-physical violence manifested in the power differential between social groups, that is often unconsciously agreed upon by both parties and is manifested as an imposition of the norms of the group possessing greater social power on those of the subordinate group. Symbolic violence can be manifested across different social domains such as nationality, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic identity, etc.

The term began to see use by other sociologists and authors in the early 1990’s. Bourdieu made efforts to stress that symbolic violence is generally not a deliberate action by a hegemonic power, rather an unconscious reinforcement of the status quo that is seen as the “norm” by those who exist within that social stratification.

Slavoj Žižek discusses symbolic violence in Violence (2008), arguing that it is located in the signification of language itself, i.e. the very ways in which we talk to one another sustain relations of domination.

History
The term symbolic violence first appeared in Pierre Bourdieu’s book La Distinction in 1979 alongside the similar concepts of symbolic power and cultural capital which make physical analogy to the power differentials between social groups within a hierarchy. Although La Distinction focused mainly on aesthetics and taste within modern French culture, it established a framework within which he and other Sociologists would examine meta-behavior within society as it relates to power, social capital, and individual habitus.

Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence further elaborates and develops Max Weber’s thoughts on the role of legitimation in domination. Power requires justification and belief. The concept of symbolic violence was created to argue that hard power is not sufficient for the effective exercise of power. Symbolic violence finds expression through body language, comportment, self-presentation, bodily care, and adornment.

Since its establishment in the sociological lexicon, symbolic violence has been applied in multiple disciplines of the social sciences and in numerous case studies.

Social Media
In the decades following the introduction of the term symbolic violence by Pierre Bourdieu came a rapid advancement in technology that brought about social media platforms such as that can be used in the dissemination of symbolic violence primarily on women and minority groups

Gender
Symbolic violence is central to women’s repression in the form of subordination. Beate Krais argued that regardless of whether within or outside the family, symbolic violence maintains a dominant relation upon women. Key to women’s repression, “is the social construction of women as the quintessential ‘other’” regarding female behavior as weak, female jobs as less prestigious, female activities as of less value, etc. Social reproduction is important in analyzing symbolic violence in women as the adherence to sociocultural norms in both men and women plays a key role in subordination. Symbolic violence towards women often takes the form of cultural lexical expressions. Normative phrases like, “hit like a girl” or “run like a girl” subtly develop views about the subordination of women in a linguistic form.

Race
Many studies have identified the different ways disciplinary action is handled by educators with race and class. In the United States there is a national rhetoric regarding the term “ghetto,” where a set of behavioral norms and traits symbolizing impoverished, crime-prone, dilapidated, and violent neighborhoods are ascribed to blacks in or near urban centers.

A study, lead by Melanie Jones Gast, focused on 44 black students in the span of two months. race, class, and status were combined in everyday language towards black students. With less than 10 percent of educators being black, many black students also had a lack of guidance from educators. Despite making up less than half the population of students, black students received more than 70 percent of all 500 disciplinary infractions.

Language
The Royal Spanish Academy is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. Since there are so many variations of the Spanish language, the Academy serves as the policy maker to ensure that Spanish is as constant as it can be. Spanish speakers from all different places are prone to sound extremely different, and often times use different words for the same thing, which is dependent on location. Castilian Spanish is the most famous variation of the Spanish, which is only used in the region of Spain called Catalonia. The Royal Spanish Academy’s policy towards Catalan ensure that the Catalan does not turn into a completely different language altogether. Speaking Catalan in a different Spanish speaking region may produce negative stereotypes attributed to the speaker. Also, Spaniards are generally stereotyped because of their so called “lisp”, that does not occur in any other region. Hypothetically speaking a person from Spain could completely understand and communicate with a person in Mexico, however, negative stereotypes and a decreased human capital are extremely possible.

A study was done by Ana Celia Zentella that explains how the Royal Spanish Academy produces symbolic violence by their policies and actions that are designed to produce a "pure" Spanish. Zentella proposes the idea that there are many different forms of English, that sound and are spelled differently (such as English in the United Kingdom vs English in the Northeast of the United States), therefore, the Spanish language should have the same implications. This idea exemplifies symbolic violence because people are ostracized if they do not speak the form of Spanish that the Academy coins “correct”. Zentella explains how people would react if a person spoke with a “lisp” in the area she grew up, “if any Spaniard in our circle had ever dared to speak that way they would have been ridiculed”. The main way that the Royal Spanish Academy performs symbolic violence is by normalizing the language, and expecting all speakers to conform to the normalization that they provide. Another way that Zentella relates symbolic violence to the work of the Royal Spanish Academy is through human capital. Since their is a certain expectation of how Spanish is supposed to sound in Spain, speakers from Latin American that sound different are subject to decreased human capital based on the fact that they do not sound the way they should.