Domestic Workers Talk

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.