[Linganth] Language, Inequality and Global Care Work -IJSL Special Issue Callfor Papers

[anne.schluter]

As special issue editors of the International Journal of the Sociology 
of Language, we invite abstracts for an issue devoted to language, 
inequality, and global care work. Abstracts should be submitted by the 
February 1st, 2016 deadline. Details provided below:

Call for Papers:

Language, Inequality and Global Care Work

International Journal of the Sociology of Language Special Issue

Special Edition Editors: Kelly Gonçalves and Anne Schluter

Studies on care work have often been theorized from a feminist 
perspective that analyzes the intersection between gender, race, 
ethnicity, class, sexuality and citizenship. Such studies find women’s 
subordination in this work context to be a by-product of both capitalist 
and patriarchic structures, which, as part of the global economy, act to 
reinforce exploitive and asymmetrical relations (Rollins 1985; 
Hondagneu-Sotelo 1990; Parreñas Salazar 2000; Anderson 2001; Romero 
2002; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2004; Lan 2006; Lutz 2011; Romero et al. 
2014). Many of these studies have focused on the nanny trade (Yeates 
2005) and tend to be one-sided in their consideration of care workers' 
or employers’ experiences only. These studies are valuable for raising 
awareness of the different forms of inequality surrounding care work; 
however, their scope needs to be expanded to include analysis of 
workers’ acquisition of communicative skills and the communicative 
practices between care workers and their employers (Gonçalves 2015). To 
date, very few studies have considered the linguistic dimensions that 
are connected to race, ethnicity, gender, and class that affect the 
asymmetrical relations between transnational care workers and their 
employers or the social discrimination experienced by care workers based 
on their language proficiency.

This special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of 
Language brings together empirical work by a diverse group of scholars 
from various settings to address issues of asymmetrical power relations 
within different care work contexts, including private home and 
institutionalized workplace settings. Moreover, we seek to explore the 
connections between the access to various symbolic resources and the 
power relations that ultimately influence and are influenced by 
language. Deconstructing the complex issues of these types of language 
use and language resources enhances our comprehension of the mechanisms 
through which employers maintain power over their workers and, in some 
cases, employees hold over fellow employees.

The investigation of discourse produced by employers and employees as 
well as the discourses surrounding the Global Care Chain at specific 
worksites allows us to reveal the complex structural dynamics at play on 
a micro-level. These dynamics are often reflected and constrained by 
macro social structures. A secondary goal of this issue, therefore, 
entails the interpretation of micro-level findings with respect to the 
macro-level setting. As this special issue will include contributions 
from authors across different regional and national contexts, it aims to 
provide a comparative perspective on care work, language and inequality 
at both micro and macro levels. It will bring together research on care 
work that uses language and communication as a tool for evaluating the 
links between social categories (like class, race, ethnicity, 
citizenship and gender) and inequality experienced by care workers 
worldwide. Topics include:

•	 Analysis of the ways in which language and other semiotic resources 
influence social inequality across various transnational and minority 
language-speaking care work contexts.

•	 Examination of the pivotal role of language with respect to the links 
between labor markets and the socio-political factors that contribute to 
the current global flow of care workers

•	The construction and deconstruction of language-related inequality 
through employers’ and employees’ use of language to meet their 
communicative needs.

•	Investigation into employers’ legitimated domination (Grillo 1989) 
over care workers, especially migrant women and/or minority language 
speakers, and its influence over care workers’ access to the language(s) 
of the host society.

•	Evaluation of the effect of place: a comparison of the ways in which 
care workers and employers achieve communication in different workplace 
contexts. Such comparisons may include institutionalized settings, like 
hospitals or day care centers, versus private homes.

All papers will undergo full peer review. Authors interested in 
contributing should submit a title and abstract (up to 300 words) to the 
guest editors of the special thematic issue, Kellie Gonçalves 
(goncalves at ens.unibe.ch) and Anne Schluter (schluteranne at gmail.com), by 
February 1st 2016. Subsequent to an initial abstract selection process, 
authors will be informed and invited to submit full papers for 
double-blind peer review by October 1st 2016. Publication of this 
special issue is anticipated in late 2017. For information about the 
journal and author guidelines, see: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ijsl



Anne Schluter, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics
Department of Foreign Language Education
Marmara University- Göztepe Campus
Kadıköy, Istanbul 34730

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