Domestic Workers Talk

Language Use and Social Practices in a Multilingual Workplace

Kellie Gonçalves, Anne Ambler Schluter (Autoren)

Buch | Hardcover

168 Seiten

2024
Multilingual Matters (Verlag)
978-1-80041-675-8 (ISBN)

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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.

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.

Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Advancing Methodology: Using a Mixed Methodological Approach within a Multilingual Cleaning Company

Chapter 3. Magda: The Personal and Professional Trajectory of Shine’s Owner

Chapter 4. The Interplay between Identity, Ideology and Capital that Strengthens Cultural Attachments: The Pull of Portuguese and the Portuguese-Centric Ironbound Community for Shine's Hispanophone Employees

Chapter 5. Multicompetence as Essential and English-Language Proficiency as Secondary: Examining the Shape of Customer–Employee Interactions between Speakers who do not Share a Common Language

Chapter 6. Conclusion

References

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	21.11.2023
Reihe/Serie	Language at Work
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	410 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Sozialpsychologie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Kommunikationswissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-80041-675-X / 180041675X
ISBN-13	978-1-80041-675-8 / 9781800416758
Zustand	Neuware