Digital Language as Symbolic Capital: Generational Exclusion in a Teacher Online Community of Practice

Abstract

This study reconceptualizes digital language practices as an emergent form of symbolic capital within Bourdieu's field theory and investigates how these practices generate generational exclusion in a teacher online community of practice. Drawing on three months of WeChat group data and semi-structured interviews with six teachers from distinct generational cohorts, a Bourdieusian critical discourse analysis reveals that novice and veteran teachers deploy contrasting digital discourse strategies—techno-lexical display, hyperlink bombardment, achievement narratives, and long voice messages—to compete for professional authority. These strategies function as symbolic capital, positioning speakers along a hierarchy of "innovative" and "outdated" teaching. Exclusion emerges not through overt conflict but through subtle patterns of polite neglect, discursive silencing, and the naturalization of a techno-centric doxa. The analysis identifies a symbolic exclusion spectrum and demonstrates how micro-level discursive interactions reproduce macro-level generational power asymmetries. Deviant cases reveal that hybrid discourse strategies—blending narrative substance with digitized formal features—can mitigate exclusion, suggesting the hierarchy is not simply generational but shaped by field-specific legitimacy standards. Findings contribute to theorizing digital habitus and symbolic violence in professional learning contexts and urge teacher education programs to design digitally inclusive collaboration structures that pluralize legitimate modes of professional voice.