The Kind Of Language And Cultural Capital Game

Pierre Bourdieu was a famous contemporary French sociologist, who was very wellpublished and has far-reaching impacts in academia. Literary, art and the aesthetic ideologyplayed an important role in Bourdieu’s entire theoretical system of sociology. Many of hisviews were based on the artistic and aesthetic studies. His famous "field theory" was derivedfrom the research on art field. In particular, the "cultural capital" is an important concept thatBourdieu put forth using domination metaphor. He believed that "cultural capital”can be usedin the same way as that of economic capital, and it can be invested in a variety of markets andgenerate appropriate return. Since the "Cultural capital" is mainly reproduced by inheritage, itreflects the unequal allocation of resources within the society and the inequality relationshipamong the members. Bourdieu’s concepts of "art field" and "cultural capital", creativelyillustrated the social formation of art and the rules of survival, which provides a newperspective for art study.In the early 20th century, oil painting was fully introduced into China as a symbol andpractice form of scientific and advanced cultural patterns. There is no doubt that the oil paintingin Chinese art market was influenced by the traditional culture and political reality in China. Atthe same time, it affected the modern transformation of Chinese art form. During differenthistorical periods of development, it expresses different language forms. Especially since the1970s and 80s, the evolution of Chinese oil painting language played an important rule duringthe development of Chinese art field. This paper intends to, from Bourdieu’s field theory’sperspective, investigate and trace the evolvement of Chinese oil painting language in itshistorical context, and reveal the intrinsic relationship between the oil painting languagetransformation and cultural capital exchange in the art field.In this paper, we employed the research method of combining particular theoreticalperspective with specific text interpretation. It is divided into three parts. In the first chapter,Bourdieu’s theoretical system and its main concepts are introduced. In addition, the feasibilityof using "field theory" to interpret Chinese oil painting is discussed. In the second and thirdchapters, we examine the diachronic changes of Chinese oil painting language form duringdifferent historical periods in the 20th century, and discuss the relationship between culturalcapital exchange and the evolvement of language form. With both the big picture and individual cases, we strive to depict as vividly as possible the interaction between the cultural capitalexchange within the oil painting field and the evolvement of language form. The finalconclusion is that the exchange of cultural capital is an important driving force for the evolutionof language form.With these three chapters and from the perspective of cultural capital based on the fieldtheory, we studied the phenomenon and underling causes of language form evolvement in thefield of Chinese modern oil painting, and provided novel interpretations on the causes of artlanguage change. We hope with this perspective, some fresh revelation could benefit people inunderstanding the relationship between language form evolvement in the art field and thecompetition for the right to speak regarding cultural capital.