ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a theory of the subject based on L. Althusser's notion of ideological interpellation. It synthesise various theoretical resources to create a framework that is able to account for the relationship between language, subjectivity and the symbolic economy as an example of materialised ideology. For Pierre Bourdieu, forms of speech, like slang or any expression that seems to involve a negation or subversion of the dominant use of language by speakers, should not in fact be read as an outright rejection of dominant modes of expression. Accent, language and disposition all form part of the habitus. One's subjectivity may be initiated through an ideology that seems to curtail one's agency, or determine one's social position, but once this power has been established, founded, germinated in the subject, 'power shifts from its status as a condition of agency to the subject's 'own' agency'. Bourdieu clearly sees the subject's relationship to power as highly constrained and historically specific.
