Working beside/s words: A case study in the partiality and provinciality of language

Abstract

Part visual essay, the case study reported here considers the classist implications of over-attending to (spoken) language in the workplace. Rooted in the core principle of multimodality, the paper surfaces ways of doing/knowing which inevitably sit beside (next to) words, but which also sometimes exist besides (in spite of) words. The empirical stimulus for the paper is fieldwork conducted in Extremadura, Spain; here, in fields and factories, we find work that is highly accomplished and meticulously coordinated, but which for practical reasons is conducted almost entirely without speech – for hours on end. By privileging language work and “talk on the job”, discourse scholars not only misrecognize the complex semiotic organization of jobs but effectively sideline whole domains of working-class, manual labor. These matters thus have ethical and political ramifications as well as epistemological or methodological ones.