A timely exploration of issues of power in language use and mobility

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.

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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.

"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