Abstract The global expansion of English-medium lectures (EMLs) in higher education has predominantly been approached in the context of globalization characterized by neoliberalism. While the spread of EMLs has been viewed as an outcome of institutional pursuit of global competitiveness and internationalization, ongoing global approaches risk overlooking local elements critical for the ascendance of English in specific local contexts. This paper seeks to balance the scholarly inquiry into EMLs by offering a local historical perspective, with the higher education sector of South Korea as a key site of investigation. A focus is placed on the intellectual habitus of Korean higher education which the paper argues has served as a fertile ground for EMLs to take hold. Within the context of the global centre-periphery binary, the article specifically examines how the binary relationship has been internalized in Korean higher education through local historicity in which the U.S. has metaphorically been established as the centre. The superior-inferior binary divisions between the U.S. and Korea have contributed to the construction of the local intellectual habitus marked by the domination of American educated elite groups and the emergence of English as the language of the centre. In conclusion, the paper challenges the normative claim of English as a global language by illustrating EMLs in Korea as a historical-structural construct resulting from the interplays between the global and local power inequalities.
{"title":"English as a global language?: Naturalization of English through intellectual habitus in Korean academia","authors":"Jinhyun Cho","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2021-0080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0080","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The global expansion of English-medium lectures (EMLs) in higher education has predominantly been approached in the context of globalization characterized by neoliberalism. While the spread of EMLs has been viewed as an outcome of institutional pursuit of global competitiveness and internationalization, ongoing global approaches risk overlooking local elements critical for the ascendance of English in specific local contexts. This paper seeks to balance the scholarly inquiry into EMLs by offering a local historical perspective, with the higher education sector of South Korea as a key site of investigation. A focus is placed on the intellectual habitus of Korean higher education which the paper argues has served as a fertile ground for EMLs to take hold. Within the context of the global centre-periphery binary, the article specifically examines how the binary relationship has been internalized in Korean higher education through local historicity in which the U.S. has metaphorically been established as the centre. The superior-inferior binary divisions between the U.S. and Korea have contributed to the construction of the local intellectual habitus marked by the domination of American educated elite groups and the emergence of English as the language of the centre. In conclusion, the paper challenges the normative claim of English as a global language by illustrating EMLs in Korea as a historical-structural construct resulting from the interplays between the global and local power inequalities.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"34 6","pages":"61 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41285659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Accentism refers to the ways that “unequal English accents” become re-allocated in particular English-speaking dominant contexts, creating different presumptions, ideologies and attitudes towards the English accent and pronunciation of English speakers. Using data derived from two larger ethnographic studies, this article aims to explore the ways that English as an Additional Language (EAL) migrants experience covert accentism – the social exclusion caused covertly when the dominant members of society misunderstand the accents of EAL users. Our study shows that EAL users express their worry of being stereotyped for their English accents, which interferes with their social and daily life. In particular, the participants noted forms of social exclusion such as a lack of interest in them or their experiences, and deficit perspectives surrounding their overall English practices including their accents. We conclude that such instances of covert accentism can lead to more serious implications, such as having difficulty fostering relationships with members of the dominant society, accent bullying, and psychological damage.
{"title":"Unequal English accents, covert accentism and EAL migrants in Australia","authors":"Sender Dovchin, Stephanie Dryden","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2021-0079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0079","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Accentism refers to the ways that “unequal English accents” become re-allocated in particular English-speaking dominant contexts, creating different presumptions, ideologies and attitudes towards the English accent and pronunciation of English speakers. Using data derived from two larger ethnographic studies, this article aims to explore the ways that English as an Additional Language (EAL) migrants experience covert accentism – the social exclusion caused covertly when the dominant members of society misunderstand the accents of EAL users. Our study shows that EAL users express their worry of being stereotyped for their English accents, which interferes with their social and daily life. In particular, the participants noted forms of social exclusion such as a lack of interest in them or their experiences, and deficit perspectives surrounding their overall English practices including their accents. We conclude that such instances of covert accentism can lead to more serious implications, such as having difficulty fostering relationships with members of the dominant society, accent bullying, and psychological damage.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2022 1","pages":"33 - 46"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41528296","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper focuses on English as a lingua franca, an area of research that has gone through several phases of reconceptualization over recent years. What has not changed despite the reframing is the insistence that ELF, with its focus on intelligibility rather than formal accuracy, is not to be judged on the basis of standard English norms. In response to these claims, researchers have argued from linguo-political and philosophical perspectives that re-labelling English ‘ELF’ does not remove native-speaker privileges and linguistic injustice. This paper addresses the topic by presenting some results of an investigation into students’ language choices and practises during study abroad. Drawing on data gained by means of a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews, it will show that, despite their use of English in lingua franca situations, a considerable number of students adhere to standard English as an appropriate model and measure their own proficiency in English and progress in language learning against native-speaker norms.
{"title":"English as a lingua franca and linguistic justice: insights from exchange students’ experiences","authors":"Sabine Fiedler","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2021-0075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0075","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper focuses on English as a lingua franca, an area of research that has gone through several phases of reconceptualization over recent years. What has not changed despite the reframing is the insistence that ELF, with its focus on intelligibility rather than formal accuracy, is not to be judged on the basis of standard English norms. In response to these claims, researchers have argued from linguo-political and philosophical perspectives that re-labelling English ‘ELF’ does not remove native-speaker privileges and linguistic injustice. This paper addresses the topic by presenting some results of an investigation into students’ language choices and practises during study abroad. Drawing on data gained by means of a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews, it will show that, despite their use of English in lingua franca situations, a considerable number of students adhere to standard English as an appropriate model and measure their own proficiency in English and progress in language learning against native-speaker norms.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2022 1","pages":"17 - 32"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47629076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Theorists of linguistic justice tend to assume that English (particularly its native varieties) has paramount and stable value as a global communicative tool. From this alleged value they identify several injustices for non-native speakers, like unequal opportunities and lower dignity, related to the instrumental and identity-related values of languages. In this article we challenge assumptions about the real-life value of English by engaging in an interdisciplinary dialogue that connects normative theories and sociolinguistic theories of value. Through the analysis of ethnographic case studies, we conclude that the value of English (and nativeness in English) as linguistic capital is highly context-dependent, to the extent that possessing native skills may have no positive effects for an English speaker. Both language-centred factors (linguistic awareness and adaptive skills) and non-language centred factors (markets and social indexicalities) determine this value. We highlight that normative approaches to languages cannot address instrumental and identity-related values separately, because identity is instrumental to communicative interactions. We conclude that multilingualism fulfils better than monolingualism (either in English or in state majority languages) the goals of linguistic justice traditionally associated with the latter. Finally, we engage in a critical reflection about the suitability and conditions of possibility of interdisciplinary research.
{"title":"The value(s) of English as global linguistic capital: a dialogue between linguistic justice and sociolinguistic approaches","authors":"Eva Codó, Elvira Riera‐Gil","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2021-0076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0076","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Theorists of linguistic justice tend to assume that English (particularly its native varieties) has paramount and stable value as a global communicative tool. From this alleged value they identify several injustices for non-native speakers, like unequal opportunities and lower dignity, related to the instrumental and identity-related values of languages. In this article we challenge assumptions about the real-life value of English by engaging in an interdisciplinary dialogue that connects normative theories and sociolinguistic theories of value. Through the analysis of ethnographic case studies, we conclude that the value of English (and nativeness in English) as linguistic capital is highly context-dependent, to the extent that possessing native skills may have no positive effects for an English speaker. Both language-centred factors (linguistic awareness and adaptive skills) and non-language centred factors (markets and social indexicalities) determine this value. We highlight that normative approaches to languages cannot address instrumental and identity-related values separately, because identity is instrumental to communicative interactions. We conclude that multilingualism fulfils better than monolingualism (either in English or in state majority languages) the goals of linguistic justice traditionally associated with the latter. Finally, we engage in a critical reflection about the suitability and conditions of possibility of interdisciplinary research.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2022 1","pages":"95 - 119"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45488466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract As part of a large survey project designed to examine language shift in Indonesia, we examine speakers’ categorization and labeling of the language varieties in their repertoire with respect to language ideologies and the language ecology of Indonesia. This paper is both a methodological paper – arguing for the usefulness of surveys in the investigation of language shift scenarios – as well as an initial report of findings from those surveys, focusing on how speakers in different parts of Indonesia name language varieties. We demonstrate the benefits of a survey with open-ended questions about linguistic repertoire in investigating the use of particular language labels as markers of local and national identity and discuss these in terms of differences in local language ecologies on the islands of Bali, Java, and Sumatra. In addition, we report on how language labels are used in different communities in Indonesia in the context of different local ecologies, and against a backdrop of widespread reported language shift from the local languages of the Indonesian archipelago to the national language Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), following decades of successful language planning efforts promoting Indonesian as a unifying language in a linguistically diverse nation.
{"title":"Language labeling and ideology in Indonesia","authors":"M. Abtahian, A. Cohn, Yanti","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2021-0104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0104","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As part of a large survey project designed to examine language shift in Indonesia, we examine speakers’ categorization and labeling of the language varieties in their repertoire with respect to language ideologies and the language ecology of Indonesia. This paper is both a methodological paper – arguing for the usefulness of surveys in the investigation of language shift scenarios – as well as an initial report of findings from those surveys, focusing on how speakers in different parts of Indonesia name language varieties. We demonstrate the benefits of a survey with open-ended questions about linguistic repertoire in investigating the use of particular language labels as markers of local and national identity and discuss these in terms of differences in local language ecologies on the islands of Bali, Java, and Sumatra. In addition, we report on how language labels are used in different communities in Indonesia in the context of different local ecologies, and against a backdrop of widespread reported language shift from the local languages of the Indonesian archipelago to the national language Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), following decades of successful language planning efforts promoting Indonesian as a unifying language in a linguistically diverse nation.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2022 1","pages":"147 - 171"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42355677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Revisiting data from a sociolinguistic ethnography of an in-bound Swiss call centre (2010–2011), I will show how the scripted smile of agents is fused strategically with the use of the dialect in order to produce ‘affective-discursive practices’ that aim for a projection of quality of service. These practices include ‘scripted affective efficiency’ and the ‘stylization of Swiss authenticity’. Inherently embedded in and emblematic of the political economy, these particular affective-discursive practices are conducive to the company’s branding strategies of authenticity, directly linked to market distinction and profit generation. From today’s standpoint, i.e. 10 years later, transformations in ICT (Information and Communications Technology) have displayed the limits of these affective practices and their underlying discourses and ideologies in the face of cost-benefit analyses when the number of incoming calls dwindled due to the development of smartphones. This paper will discuss affective-discursive practices from a political-economic and critical sociolinguistic perspective.
{"title":"Scripting Swiss smiles: a sociolinguistic analysis of affective-discursive practices in a Swiss call centre","authors":"Mi-Cha Flubacher","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2021-0094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0094","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Revisiting data from a sociolinguistic ethnography of an in-bound Swiss call centre (2010–2011), I will show how the scripted smile of agents is fused strategically with the use of the dialect in order to produce ‘affective-discursive practices’ that aim for a projection of quality of service. These practices include ‘scripted affective efficiency’ and the ‘stylization of Swiss authenticity’. Inherently embedded in and emblematic of the political economy, these particular affective-discursive practices are conducive to the company’s branding strategies of authenticity, directly linked to market distinction and profit generation. From today’s standpoint, i.e. 10 years later, transformations in ICT (Information and Communications Technology) have displayed the limits of these affective practices and their underlying discourses and ideologies in the face of cost-benefit analyses when the number of incoming calls dwindled due to the development of smartphones. This paper will discuss affective-discursive practices from a political-economic and critical sociolinguistic perspective.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2022 1","pages":"93 - 116"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66806733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This special issue contributes to scholarship on language and affective economy by exploring the role played by affect in shaping work and workers under current configurations of capitalism. We take as a starting point the observation of increased valorisation and instrumentalisation of affect in the contemporary phase of capitalism. In this editorial introduction to the special issue, we set the scene by first outlining our questions, aims and objectives. Subsequently, we situate the contribution made by this issue in a larger social theorisation of affect and capitalism, particularly the notion of affective capitalism, and reflect on how this theorisation can contribute to sociolinguistic scholarship on work. The introduction concludes with an outline of the articles in this special issue, highlighting the way, empirically and conceptually, each article contributes to our understanding of the intersections between language, work and affective capitalism.
{"title":"Introduction: language, work and affective capitalism","authors":"Kati Dlaske, Alfonso Del Percio","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2022-0046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2022-0046","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This special issue contributes to scholarship on language and affective economy by exploring the role played by affect in shaping work and workers under current configurations of capitalism. We take as a starting point the observation of increased valorisation and instrumentalisation of affect in the contemporary phase of capitalism. In this editorial introduction to the special issue, we set the scene by first outlining our questions, aims and objectives. Subsequently, we situate the contribution made by this issue in a larger social theorisation of affect and capitalism, particularly the notion of affective capitalism, and reflect on how this theorisation can contribute to sociolinguistic scholarship on work. The introduction concludes with an outline of the articles in this special issue, highlighting the way, empirically and conceptually, each article contributes to our understanding of the intersections between language, work and affective capitalism.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2022 1","pages":"1 - 13"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49413177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract How has the ability to express reflexivity, including regulating affect, come to be part of the bundled self that workers are required to be? This paper offers a rigorous genealogical analysis of the multiple histories of knowledge and power that have informed the emergence and shaping of ‘reflexive registers,’ or socially typified ways of speaking and reflecting about oneself that stand for morally marked models of selfhood. It takes as a starting-point programs documented in my ethnography of employability programs in London, UK where workers of all sorts are asked to learn to examine their personalities and to express their feelings. It then draws on original historiographical and ethnographic data that allows documentation of the logics and circumstances informing the emergence and development of reflexivity as a resource for employability. It argues for an interdisciplinary understanding of reflexivity and its communicability that theorises the workers as products of history, capital, and affect.
{"title":"Genealogies of reflexivity: register formations and the making of affective workers","authors":"Alfonso Del Percio","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2021-0090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0090","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract How has the ability to express reflexivity, including regulating affect, come to be part of the bundled self that workers are required to be? This paper offers a rigorous genealogical analysis of the multiple histories of knowledge and power that have informed the emergence and shaping of ‘reflexive registers,’ or socially typified ways of speaking and reflecting about oneself that stand for morally marked models of selfhood. It takes as a starting-point programs documented in my ethnography of employability programs in London, UK where workers of all sorts are asked to learn to examine their personalities and to express their feelings. It then draws on original historiographical and ethnographic data that allows documentation of the logics and circumstances informing the emergence and development of reflexivity as a resource for employability. It argues for an interdisciplinary understanding of reflexivity and its communicability that theorises the workers as products of history, capital, and affect.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2022 1","pages":"41 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44650366","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In this contribution, I will look at the imbrication of language, labour and affective capitalism in the exemplary context of a Chilean private university, as part of a larger sociolinguistic ethnography project that seeks to examine processes of precarisation in university teachers. I argue that the affective-discursive practices used by three English Language teachers, which they called the pedagogy of love, constitute a register. This register is one of the many available to women and men, which they can manage, negotiate, manipulate and capitalise on. I show in this article the way teachers enact, align with and detach from the register to make sense of their professional identities and navigate a precarious higher education market, and how the university benefits from it to regulate teachers’ labour and students’ expectations and eventually, obtain financial stability.
{"title":"The pedagogy of love: a register of precarised English teachers in Chile","authors":"Rommy Anabalon Schaaf","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2021-0095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0095","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this contribution, I will look at the imbrication of language, labour and affective capitalism in the exemplary context of a Chilean private university, as part of a larger sociolinguistic ethnography project that seeks to examine processes of precarisation in university teachers. I argue that the affective-discursive practices used by three English Language teachers, which they called the pedagogy of love, constitute a register. This register is one of the many available to women and men, which they can manage, negotiate, manipulate and capitalise on. I show in this article the way teachers enact, align with and detach from the register to make sense of their professional identities and navigate a precarious higher education market, and how the university benefits from it to regulate teachers’ labour and students’ expectations and eventually, obtain financial stability.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2022 1","pages":"15 - 39"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42888693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In contemporary work arrangements that are premised on the exchange of information, communication, and services, one dominant instrumentality of affective capitalism is the practice of emotional labor. In this paper, I turn my attention to the promise of empowerment in the workplace and propose that it is another instrumentality of affective capitalism. Specifically, I examine the ways through which positive feelings are evoked and maintained in the Philippine call center industry through the circulation of empowerment narratives that are of particular significance to its Filipino workers. Using Wetherell’s notion of affective practice and Ahmed’s notion of the stickiness of emotion, I examine the affective-discursive dimensions of the empowerment narratives, trace their repeated telling, and surface the other narratives upon which they draw to show how particular affects become sticky, that is, how they gain recognition and resonance, and are felt and taken up by the same bodies that circulate them. In making explicit the relationship between the empowerment narratives and their sticky affects, I demonstrate that the promise of empowerment in the call centers is as much a discursive practice as it is an affective one. Thus, to make sense of the workings of affective capitalism in the new work order, it is crucial to interrogate not only the affective dispositions that workers are made to occupy in the workplace, but also dominant workplace discourses that are, in fact, designed to evoke, circulate, and maintain the desired affects.
{"title":"Empowerment narratives and sticky affects: the workings of affective capitalism in Philippine call centers","authors":"Aileen O. Salonga","doi":"10.1515/ijsl-2021-0096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2021-0096","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In contemporary work arrangements that are premised on the exchange of information, communication, and services, one dominant instrumentality of affective capitalism is the practice of emotional labor. In this paper, I turn my attention to the promise of empowerment in the workplace and propose that it is another instrumentality of affective capitalism. Specifically, I examine the ways through which positive feelings are evoked and maintained in the Philippine call center industry through the circulation of empowerment narratives that are of particular significance to its Filipino workers. Using Wetherell’s notion of affective practice and Ahmed’s notion of the stickiness of emotion, I examine the affective-discursive dimensions of the empowerment narratives, trace their repeated telling, and surface the other narratives upon which they draw to show how particular affects become sticky, that is, how they gain recognition and resonance, and are felt and taken up by the same bodies that circulate them. In making explicit the relationship between the empowerment narratives and their sticky affects, I demonstrate that the promise of empowerment in the call centers is as much a discursive practice as it is an affective one. Thus, to make sense of the workings of affective capitalism in the new work order, it is crucial to interrogate not only the affective dispositions that workers are made to occupy in the workplace, but also dominant workplace discourses that are, in fact, designed to evoke, circulate, and maintain the desired affects.","PeriodicalId":52428,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of the Sociology of Language","volume":"2022 1","pages":"117 - 143"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43442771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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