Domestic Workers Talk

Language Use and Social Practices in a Multilingual Workplace

By (author) Kellie Gonçalves, Anne Ambler Schluter

Publication date:

16 January 2024

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

234x156mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781800416758

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.

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

With their innovative application of embodied sociolinguistics and the post-humanist paradigm, Kellie Gonçalves 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.