English language arts and the economy: discursive constructions of two fields

This article presents discourse analyses of two teachers’ statements about the economic payoff of studying English in the United States’ high schools. Specifically, the article examines how English teachers construe reading as an economic asset that can be developed in schools and used on the job. Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital are mobilized to explore how teachers (a) construe and relate the fields of English and the economy and (b) define the resources operative in and across both fields. The present study uses methods of discourse analysis to develop detailed pictures of teachers’ theories of the economic dimensions of English (as described in original interviews). The teachers’ views are read against widely circulating arguments about the economic value of English. The teachers involved in the study construe basic skills reading as being of less economic value than practices of reading driven by curiosity and enjoyment.