Domestic Workers Talk: Language Use and Social Practices in a Multilingual Workplace

Author:   Kellie Gonçalves ,  Anne Ambler Schluter
Publisher:   Multilingual Matters
ISBN:  

9781800416758


Pages:   168
Publication Date:   16 January 2024
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Domestic Workers Talk: Language Use and Social Practices in a Multilingual Workplace


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Overview

Set in a multilingual cleaning company that serves Anglophone customers in the upper-(middle) class suburbs of New York City, this book presents an ethnographic study into power, language policy and communication from the perspectives of the Brazilian-American employer as well as the company's Hispanophone and Lusophone employees. Power asymmetries in internal communication demonstrate the employer's legitimated domination over her employees and her L1 Portuguese as a form of linguistic capital. Employees' resourcefulness and multicompetence - rather than quantifiable levels of English-language proficiency - determine the extent to which they rely on language brokering to facilitate communication with their customers, directly impacting their agency. The book contributes to current debates on extra-linguistic modes of communication in multilingual settings and thematic analyses of care work, migration, communication and the role of English.

Full Product Details

Author:   Kellie Gonçalves ,  Anne Ambler Schluter
Publisher:   Multilingual Matters
Imprint:   Multilingual Matters
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.30cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.410kg
ISBN:  

9781800416758


ISBN 10:   180041675
Pages:   168
Publication Date:   16 January 2024
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

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Reviews

With their innovative application of embodied sociolinguistics and the post-humanist paradigm, Kellie Goncalves and Anne Schluter provide a welcome and necessary addition to multilingual studies of language and the workplace. Their ethical and engaged research approach comes through on each page, and the focus on emotional intelligence offers a fresh and very different way of approaching female leadership, particularly for sociolinguistics. * Helen Kelly-Holmes, University of Limerick, Ireland * I enjoyed this book very much. I found it well written and accessible to scholars who do not speak English as a first language, such as myself. The authors develop and draw upon approaches predicated on competing and complementary orientations, including language policy and planning, post-structural approaches to language, post-humanism, gender studies, and language research in Lusophone countries, to focus on domestic labor in a global context, an important area of research that is beginning to attract the attention that it deserves. In particular, the authors provided an excellent analysis of female domestic labor which enhances our understanding of gender relations in contexts of asymmetrical power relations. * Sinfree Makoni, Pennsylvania State University, USA *


Author Information

Kellie Gonçalves is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University of Bern, Switzerland. She is the author of Labour Policies, Language Use and the ‘New’ Economy: The Case of Adventure Tourism (2020, Palgrave Macmillan) and co-editor of Language, Global Mobilities, Blue-Collar Workers and Blue-Collar Workplaces (2021, Routledge with H. Kelly-Holmes). Anne Ambler Schluter is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Communication, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research focuses on the sociolinguistics of migration, discourse analysis, affective attachment/emotional labor, healthcare communication, and minority language and belonging.

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