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

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).