“What the fuck is this for a language, this cannot be Deutsch?” language ideologies, policies, and semiotic practices of a kitchen crew in a hotel restaurant

Abstract

In line with the post-Fishmanian turn that contributes to new understandings of social-semiotic practices in different contexts this study is concerned with the language management of 'backstage performers' of a three-star hotel kitchen crew in an Austrian alpine village that economically thrives on tourism, where employers and employees do not always share a common 'language'. Recent free mobility labor rights for certain EU citizens have facilitated economic migrants' ability to work abroad while simultaneously filling labor shortages within the country's service industry in peripheral zones that are salient economic hubs. Drawing on ethnography and moment analysis, results indicate that for language-marginal occupations such as dishwashers, linguistic entrepreneurship is resisted since relying on shared semiotic repertoires and material objects for communicative purposes is preferred given the physically demanding occupation and stressful moments in a restaurant kitchen. The study questions Spolsky's recently modified theory of language policy and management concerning the individual level regarding 'advocates without power' and employability contributing theoretical insights to ongoing explorations of bottom-up LPP.

Untitled

“…Canagarajah (2013) betonar dock att flexibilitet i val av register och språkliga resurser i vissa yrken kan vara viktigare än kunskaper i engelska, även om denna typ av kompetens sällan lyfts fram. Påståendet styrks av en studie av kommunikationen i ett restaurangkök i Österrike av Gonçalves (2020), där arbetskraft från flera olika EU-länder anlitas. I motsats till många andra sociolingvistiska studier av språk och arbete visar undersökningen att kunskaper i särskilda språk varken behövs för anställning, social rörlighet inom företaget eller intern kommunikation.…”

A preliminary study of Japanese co-workers’ attitudes towards migrant workers’ Japanese language skills in blue-collar workplaces

“…As more migrant workers arrive and blue-collar workplaces become more diverse, adherence to Japanese will stand in contrast to the reality that translanguaging is the norm when people from different backgrounds are brought together (Blackledge and Creese, 2017;Creese and Blackledge, 2019;Creese, Blackledge and Hu, 2018). Studies conducted in blue-collar workplaces (Dijkstra et al, 2020;Goncalves, 2020;Theodoropoulou, 2019) also attest to the effectiveness and prevalence of translanguaging.…”

“…In addition to the successful use of translanguaging, a hotel kitchen in Austria also shows how an inclusive work environment can be achieved when higher-level employees are willing to accommodate to the communication needs of lower-level employees. In this workplace, higher-level Austrian employees accommodate for lower-level Romanian employees by using online translation services, fragments of various languages, gestures, body language, and signs (Goncalves, 2020). This unusual bottom-up approach results in an inclusive and successful workplace, and serves as an example for Japanese co-workers and employers.…”

“…A good example of willingness to communicate or accommodate has been given in section 5.1, in the hotel kitchen in Austria where higher-level Austrian employees adapt to the language abilities of lower-level Romanian employees (Goncalves, 2020). This is partly motivated by the desire to have an inclusive workplace and partly due to the fact that there is a labour shortage.…”

A critical sociolinguistic study of diasporization among Hungarians in Catalonia

“…These oppositions resulted in several political developments by the advent of the new millennium. For instance, numerous member-states of the European Union started to amend their policies of application for citizenship by requiring language tests (Horner 2009); in the meantime, free movement was provided for EU passport holders in countries adhered to the Schengen Agreement (Gonçalves 2020). As members of the European Union, Hungarian citizenship holders in other member countries get simultaneously exposed to the ideals of the European multilingual citizen and to the discourse of integration on a personal and state level as well despite the model of free movement.…”