Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T08:24:04.478Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Metadiscursive regimes of diversity in a multinational corporation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Joseph Sung-Yul Park
Joseph Sung-Yul Park*
Affiliation:
English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore, AS5, 7 Arts Link, Singapore 117570ellpjs@nus.edu.sg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Informed by recent work on the commodification of language and identity, this article offers a critique of the neoliberal corporate discourse of “diversity management,” in which the diversity of the workforce is conceived as a resource for maximizing profit. Through a close analysis of the language ideologies deployed in an interaction between three mid-level managers at a multinational corporation and a researcher, this article shows how the discourse of diversity management, constituting a metadiscursive regime, works to rationalize and justify the inequalities of the global workplace through the specific ways in which older and newer discourses of language and identity are juxtaposed. The findings emphasize how sociolinguistic research may contribute to a deeper understanding of the conditions of work in the new economy by identifying language as an indispensable part of the mechanism that sustains processes of control. (Metadiscursive regime, diversity management, neoliberalism, work, language ideology)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 42 , Issue 5 , November 2013 , pp. 557 - 577
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agha, Asif (2007). Language and social relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Sara (2007). The language of diversity. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(2):235–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauman, Richard, & Briggs, Charles (2003). Voices of modernity: Language ideologies and the politics of inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan; Collins, James; & Slembrouck, Stef (2005). Polycentricity and interactional regimes in ‘global neighborhoods.’ Ethnography 6(2):205–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boutet, Josiane (2012). Language workers: Emblematic figures of late capitalism. In Duchêne & Heller, 207–29. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brown, Megan (2009). The cultural work of corporations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Deborah (2000). Good to talk? Living and working in a communication culture. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Sarah, & Roberts, Celia (2007). Migration, ethnicity and competing discourses in the job interview: Synthesizing the institutional and personal. Discourse & Society 18(3):243–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles (1995). Postscript on control societies. In Negotiations: 1972–1990, 177–82. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Duchêne, Alexandre, & Heller, Monica (eds.) (2012). Language in late capitalism: Pride and profit. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duff, Patricia; Wong, Ping; & Early, Margaret (2000). Learning language for work and life: The linguistic socialization of immigrant Canadians seeking careers in health care. Canadian Modern Language Review 57:9–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman (2002). Language in new capitalism. Discourse & Society 13(2):163–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1991). Governmentality. In Burchell, Graham, Gordon, Colin, & Miller, Peter (eds.), The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality, 87–104. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan (2012). Sociolinguistic regimes and the management of “diversity.” In Duchêne & Heller, 22–42.Google Scholar
Gee, James Paul; Hull, Glynda; & Lankshear, Colin (1996). The new work order: Behind the language of the new capitalism. St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Gordon, Avery (1995). The work of corporate culture: Diversity management. Social Text 13(3):3–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, John J. (1992). Interviewing in intercultural situations. In Drew, Paul & Heritage, John (eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings, 302–27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Harvey, David (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heller, Monica (2003). Globalization, the new economy, and the commodification of language and identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7:473–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heller, Monica (2010a). The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology 39:101–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heller, Monica (2010b). Language as resource in the globalized new economy. In Coupland, Nikolas (ed.), The handbook of language and globalization, 349–65. Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Holborow, Marnie (2007). Language, ideology and neoliberalism. Journal of Language and Politics 6(1):51–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holvino, Evangelina, & Kamp, Annette (2009). Diversity management: Are we moving in the right direction? Reflections from both sides of the North Atlantic. Scandinavian Journal of Management 25:395–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, Glynda A. (1999). What's in a label? Complicating notions of the skills-poor worker. Written Communication 16(4):379–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iedema, Rick, & Scheeres, Hermine (2003). From doing work to talking work: Renegotiating knowing, doing, and identity. Applied Linguistics 24(3):316–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirton, Gill, & Greene, Anne-Marie (2010). The dynamics of managing diversity: A critical approach. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kubota, Ryuko (2011). Questioning linguistic instrumentalism: English, neoliberalism and language tests in Japan. Linguistics and Education 22:248–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Llopis, Glenn (2011). Diversity management is the key to growth: Make it authentic. Forbes, June 13, 2011. Online: http://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2011/06/13/diversity-management-is-the-key-to-growth-make-it-authentic/; accessed 2 January 2013.Google Scholar
Lorbiecki, Anna, & Jack, Gavin (2000). Critical turns in the evolution of diversity management. British Journal of Management 11:S17–S31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Makoni, Sinfree, & Pennycook, Alastair (2007). Disinventing and reconstituting languages. In Makoni, Sinfree & Pennycook, Alastair (eds.), Disinventing and reconstituting languages, 1–41. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Mills, Suzanne (2011). The difficulty with diversity: White and aboriginal women workers' representations of diversity management in forest processing mills. Labour/Le Travail 62:45–76.Google Scholar
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul (2008). Two processes of reproducing monolingualism in South Korea. Sociolinguistic Studies 2(3):331–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul (2009). The local construction of a global language: Ideologies of English in South Korea. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul (2010). Naturalization of competence and the neoliberal subject: Success stories of English language learning in the Korean conservative press. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20(1):22–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Joseph Sung-Yul, & Lo, Adrienne (2012). Transnational South Korea as a site for a sociolinguistics of globalization: Markets, timescales, neoliberalism. Journal of Sociolinguistics 16(2):147–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piller, Ingrid (2011). Intercultural communication: A critical introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, Celia; Campbell, Sarah; & Robinson, Yvonne (2008). Talking like a manager: Promotion interviews, language and ethnicity. Department of Work and Pensions Research Report No 510. Online: http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2007-2008/rrep510.pdf; accessed 19 May 2012.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas (1990). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private self. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas (1996). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power, and personhood. London: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urciuoli, Bonnie (2008). Skills and selves in the new workplace. American Ethnologist 35(2):211–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wee, Lionel (2012). Migrant workers and language competencies: Focus on organizations. Paper presented at the Workshop on Language Practices, Migration and Labour: Ethnographing Economies in Urban Diversities. University of the Western Cape, Cape Town.Google Scholar
Yan, Hairong (2003). Neoliberal governmentality and neohumanism: Organizing suzhi/value flow through labor recruitment networks. Cultural Anthropology 18:493–523.Google Scholar