Raciolinguistics and the aesthetic labourer

Select studies on aesthetic labour explore how race becomes a component in ‘looking good’ for customers. However, there is little mention of how race is also salient in ‘sounding right’. This article addresses this issue by exploring the impact of race on the vocal demands placed on aesthetic labour...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of industrial relations 2019-11, Vol.61 (5), p.726-738
Main Author: Ramjattan, Vijay A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetics
Call centers
Consumers
Customers
English language
Interconnections
Labor
Labor relations
Literature reviews
Outsourcing
Race
Social privilege
Sociolinguistics
Teaching
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Summary:Select studies on aesthetic labour explore how race becomes a component in ‘looking good’ for customers. However, there is little mention of how race is also salient in ‘sounding right’. This article addresses this issue by exploring the impact of race on the vocal demands placed on aesthetic labourers. Using raciolinguistics, a field that investigates the interconnections between language and race, the article specifically notes how two sites of language-focused aesthetic labour, English language teaching and Indian call centres, reinforce conceptions of sounding right that privilege Whiteness. A review of the literature from these sites highlights how looking good and sounding right constitute one another. Indeed, while a White body in English language teaching signifies nativeness/clarity in English, Indian call centre agents make themselves look better in the minds of western callers by ‘whitening’ their voices. These examples act as a call to simultaneously examine the racialized body and voice in future aesthetic labour research.
ISSN:0022-1856
1472-9296
DOI:10.1177/0022185618792990