Book Title

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

Authors

Kellie Gonçalves, Anne Ambler Schluter (Department of English and Communication),

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Year of Publication

2024

ISBN

9781800416758

Introduction

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 play into the employer’s legitimated domination over her employees; moreover, her L1 Portuguese and her command of English both represent important forms 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 customers, directly impacting their individual agency. This book contributes to current debates on extra-linguistic modes of communication in multilingual settings and thematic analyses of care work, migration, and the role of English. Furthermore, it adds to the growing literature devoted to the sociolinguistics of migrant domestic workers.

Content

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

* Owners of respective book covers are credited. Book covers are for reference only. FH is unable to accept responsibility of any inaccurate information.