A locutorio shop front in Barcelona (Source: El Periodico)

There is now a well-established body of work exploring the language work provided by service workers in call centres and tourist businesses. By contrast, the multilingual language work provided by migrants for migrants in multiethnic service enterprises has rarely been the focus of sociolinguistic attention. A recent book by Maria Sabaté i Dalmau, Migrant Communication Enterprises published by Multilingual Matters, fills this gap with an ethnographic inquiry into the language practices in a locutorio, a call shop, in Barcelona. A locutorio offers all kinds of telecommunication services such as billed calls in booths, the sale of top-ups for mobiles, fax services, internet access and international money transfers.

The locutorio the research is based on also served as meeting point for working class Spaniards and migrants, both documented and undocumented, from a variety of countries of origin. Beyond the sale of telecommunication services, the locutorio thus provided access to information, a place to hang out and it even served as the ‘public’ toilet for homeless people in the neighbourhood, mostly undocumented men from West Africa.

The locutorio was part of a chain of similar call shops owned by a Pakistani venture capitalist whose aim was to make a profit rather than provide social services for Barcelona’s marginalized. It was his employee Naeem, who was in charge of running the locutorio, who ended up caught between more than one rock and more than one hard place. Naeem was a fellow Pakistani hired by the owner in Pakistan two years before the fieldwork began. Naeem’s position was legal as a temporary resident but in order to achieve permanent residency in Spain he needed another two years of proven work, which left him vulnerable to exploitation by the owner. He worked twelve hours per day, seven days a week, for a meagre salary of less than Euro 800 per month. Naeem’s job consisted of opening the locutorio in the morning and closing it at night. He would start with booting up the computers and getting all the equipment to run. During the day, his duties consisted of assisting and charging customers, and making various phone calls (to his boss; to call card distributors; to the money transfer agency etc.). Additionally, he was in charge of maintaining the premises, including sweeping the floors, removing garbage and cleaning the toilets.

Much of this work is obviously language work and Naeem had to operate in a complex sociolinguistic environment. In addition to a range of varieties of Spanish – from Standard Peninsular Spanish via various Latin American varieties to a range of second language varieties – this included Catalan, English, Urdu, Punjabi, and Moroccan Arabic in various spoken and written constellations and used by clients with variable levels of proficiencies, including proficiencies in the use of telecommunication services. In this highly diverse environment, communication was rigidly regimented by the meters on the machine where communication was paid for by the minute.

Unsurprisingly, misunderstandings and communication break-downs were common. On top of all that, Naeem had to deal with customers who tried to cheat him (the balance of each financial irregularity was deducted from his meagre salary) and who abused and insulted him. Working in a highly constrained yet super-diverse environment left little room for personal autonomy and, only in his late twenties, Naeem was suffering from eating disorders, compulsive smoking, chronic fatigue and anxiety attacks.

The researcher concludes that locutorio language workers constitute “a voiceless army of multilingual mediators” (p. 170) whose multilingualism is not only a site of language work but also a site of linguistic exploitation.

Migrant Communication Enterprises offers a rich migrant-centred ethnographic account of a prototypical enterprise of the 21^st century. If this blog post has piqued your interest and this is your area of research expertise, you might want to review the book for Multilingua. If so, please get in touch with a short description of your expertise.

Maria Sabaté i Dalmau (2014). Migrant Communication Enterprises: Regimentation and Resistance Multilingual Matters

Books available for review in Discourse & Society

The titles listed below are currently available for review in Discourse and Society. If you wish to volunteer to serve as a book reviewer please contact ingrid.piller with a short message at mq.edu.au. Please use ‘book review for Discourse and Society’ as subject line. Your message should include the following:

• A short outline of your expertise (ca. 100 words; don’t send your CV)
• Up to three titles you would be interested in and capable of reviewing
• Your postal address (for the review copy to be sent to)

Book reviewing is an important service to the academic community. It is also a nice little barter niche of the academic economy as you will receive a review copy of the book you are reviewing in exchange for your review.

Book reviews in Discourse and Society are usually around a 1,000 words in length and due within 3 months of receipt of the review copy. Reviews should provide an overview of the contents of the book as well as a well-argued judgment regarding its place in the field and its likely importance to the readers of Discourse and Society. If you are selected as a reviewer, you will be provided with more detailed guidelines.

Aritz, Jolanta, & Walker, Robyn C. (Eds.). (2012). Discourse perspectives on organizational communication. Lanham, Maryland: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

Barnard-Wills, David. (2012). Surveillance and identity: discourse, subjectivity and the state. Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Bayley, Paul, & Williams, Geoffrey (Eds.). (2012). European Identity: What the media say. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Block, David, Gray, John, & Holborow, Marnie. (2012). Neoliberalism and Applied Linguistics. London: Routledge.

Busse, Ulrich, & Hubler, Axel (Eds.). (2012). Investigations into the meta-communicative lexicon of English: A contribution to historical pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing.

Chen, Mel Y. (2012). Animacies: Biopolitics, racial mattering, and queer affect. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Chetcuti, Natacha, & Greco, Luca (Eds.). (2012). La face cacheé du genre: Langage et pouvoir des normes. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Chouliaraki, Lilie (Ed.). (2012). Self-Mediation: New Media, Citizenship and Civil Selves. London: Routledge.

Chow, Rey. (2012). Entanglements, or transmedial thinking about capture. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Cramer, Peter A. (2011). Controversy as news discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing.

Duchêne, A., & Heller, M. (2011). Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit: Taylor and Francis.

Dunmire, Patricia L. (2011). Projecting the future through political discourses. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing.

Dupret, Baudouin. (2012). Practices of Truth: An ethnomethodological inquiry into Arab contexts. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing.

Ensslin, Astrid. (2012). The language of gaming. London and New York: Routledge.

Entman, Robert M. (2012). Scandal and silence: Media responses to presidential misconduct. Cambridge: Polity.

Hammack, Phillip L. (2011). Narrative and the politics of identity: the cultural psychology of Israeli and Palestinian Youth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hernandez-Campoy, Juan Manuel, & Cutillas-Espinosa, Juan Antonio (Eds.). (2012). Style-shifting in public: New perspectives on stylistic variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing.

Higgins, Christina (Ed.). (2012). identity formation in globalizing contexts: language learning in the new millenium. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Kadar, Daniel Z., & Mills, Sara (Eds.). (2011). Politeness in East Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

King, Katie. (2011). Networked reenactments: Stories transdisciplinary knowledges tell. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Lampropoulou, Sofia. (2012). Direct speech, self-presentation and communities of practice. London: Continuum.

Limberg, Holger, & Locher, Miriam A. (Eds.). (2012). Advice in discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing.

Maatsch, Aleksandra. (2011). Ethnic citizenship regimes: Europeanization, post-war migration and redressing past wrongs. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Macgilchrist, Felicitas. (2011). Journalism and the political: discursive tensions in news coverage of Russia. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing.

Machin, David. (2010). Analysing popular music: image, sound, text. London: SAGE.

Machin, David, & Mayr, Andrea. (2012). how to do critical discourse analysis. London: SAGE.

Mallon, Florencia E. (Ed.). (2012). Decolonizing native histories: Collaboration, knowledge, and language in the Americas. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Manning, Paul. (2012). Semiotics of drink and drinking. London: continuum.

Mclaughlin, Kenneth. (2012). Surviving identity: vulnerability and the politics of recognition. London and New York: Routledge.

Mills, Sara. (2012). Gender matters: Feminist linguistic analysis. London: Equinox.

Nasser, Ilham, Berlin, Lawrence N., & Wong, Shelley (Eds.). (2011). Examining education, media, and dialogue under occupation: the case of Palestine and Israel. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Oropeza-Escobar, Minerva. (2011). represented discourse, resonance and stance in joking interaction in Mexican Spanish. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing.

Reber, Elisabeth. (2012). Affectivity in interaction: sound objects in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing.

Roald, Vebjorn, & Sangolt, Linda. (2012). Deliberation rhetoric and emotion in the discourse on climate change in the European Parliament. Delft: Eburon.

Sebba, Mark, Mahootian, Sharzad, & Jonsson, Carla (Eds.). (2012). Language mixing and code-switching in writing: Approaches to mixed-language written discourse. London: Routledge.

Tang, Ramona (Ed.). (2012). Academic writing in a second or foreign language: issues and challenges facing ESL/EFL academic writers in higher education contexts. London: Continuum.

Tsakona, Villy, & Popa, Diana Elena (Eds.). (2012). Studies in political humour. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing.

Van Dijk, Teun (Ed.). (2011). Discourse Studies: A multidisciplinary introduction (2nd ed.). London: SAGE.

Verschueren, Jef. (2012). Ideology in language use: pragmatic guidelines for empirical research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yildiz, Yasemin. (2012). Beyond the mother tongue: the postmonolingual condition. New York: Fordham University Press.

The whole dreary story is documented in an editorial in issue 20(4) of the journal: Dr Karin Calvo-Goller, the author of The Trial Proceedings of the International Criminal Court. ICTY and ICTR Precedents, found that her book was negatively reviewed. The review in question can be found here. Consequently, she asked the reviews editor, Professor Joseph Weiler, to remove it from the website and when he refused – the whole correspondence is set out in the editorial – she sued him for libel. The libel case will be before a French court later this year.

I know nothing about international law and so can’t comment on the merits of the book nor of the review. However, I’ve seen enough book reviews to say that if the negative things said in that review are “libelous” than that’s the end of book reviewing and book review editing! I’ve seen much more strongly worded negative book reviews; I’ve actually had much more negative reviews published under my editorship; similarly negative things have been said about my own books, and – dare I confess it? – I’ve said less pleasant things about the work of others myself in published reviews.

In his editorial, Professor Weiler includes a beautiful response letter he wrote to Dr Calvo-Goller in response to her initial request to take down the review. It says it all about the issues of academic freedom involved, the way book review editing works, and the damage that Dr Calvo-Goller is doing to her own reputation with this frontal assault on academic freedom.

I have no doubt that the French court will be wise enough to throw out the case and the assault on academic freedom it constitutes. But even so, the damage has been done. I’d hate to find myself in Professor Weiler’s shoes and to have to stand trial for publishing an average negative review. Luckily, discourse analysts and linguists are on the whole less litigiously inclined than jurists!

The editorial ends with an appeal for assistance and includes suggestions on how anyone concerned can help and I’m copying and pasting those suggestions here:

a. You may send an indication of indignation/support by email attachment to the following email address EJIL.academicfreedom@Gmail.com Kindly write, if possible, on a letterhead indicating your affiliation and attach such letters to the email. Such letters may be printed and presented eventually to the Court. Please do not write directly to Dr Calvo-Goller, or otherwise harass or interfere in any way whatsoever with her right to seek remedies available to her under French law.

b. It would be particularly helpful to have letters from other Editors and Book Review Editors of legal and non-legal academic Journals concerned by these events. Kindly pass on this Editorial to any such Editor with whom you are familiar and encourage him or her to communicate their reaction to the same email address. It would be especially helpful to receive such letters from Editors of French academic journals and from French academic authors, scholars and intellectuals.

c. Finally, it will be helpful if you can send us scanned or digital copies of book reviews (make sure to include a precise bibliographical reference) which are as critical or more so than the book review written by Professor Weigend – so as to illustrate that his review is mainstream and unexceptional. You may use the same email address EJIL.academicfreedom@Gmail.co

If anyone reading this ever had their book negatively reviewed, here is your chance to redeem yourself and to turn your humiliation into triumph over adversity! Send in that negative book review and tell the judges that while you were disappointed, hurt, upset, outraged or whatever, never for a second did it occur to you that that negative review constituted libel! It was part of a normal academic dialogue and argument and you either ignored it, responded to it in the “response to review” genre or actually learnt from it and challenged your own thinking.

Good luck to Professor Weiler and wisdom to the court that will be hearing the case!

Joseph H.H. Weiler (2010). Editorial: Book Reviewing and Academic Freedom European Journal of International Law, 20 (4), 967-976 DOI: 10.1093/ejil/chp114

Book reviews in Discourse and Society are usually around a 1,000 words in length and due within 3 months of receipt of the review copy. Reviews should provide an overview of the contents of the book as well as a well-argued judgment regarding its place in the field and its likely importance to the readers of the journal. I do not accept mere content summaries and as always it’s important to know your audience, i.e. to actually get a feel for the journal before starting to write your review.

Currently, I’ve got the books listed below available for review in Discourse and Society. If there is anything in your area of expertise, please feel free to get in touch.

Bassiouney, R. (2009). Arabic sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Clark, H. (Ed.). (2008). Depression and narrative: telling the dark. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Doerr, N. M. (2009). Meaningful inconsistencies: bicultural nationhood, the free market and schooling in Aotearoa/New Zealand. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.

Falzon, M.-A. (Ed.). (2009). Multi-Sited Ethnography: Theory, Praxis and Locality in Contemporary Research. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Galasinska, A., & Krzyzanowski, M. (Eds.). (2009). Discourse and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gardner-Chloros, P. (2009). Code-switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Garner, M., Wagner, C., & Kawulich, B. (Eds.). (2009). Teaching research methods in the social sciences. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Harden, G. B., & Carley, R. (2009). Co-opting culture: culture and power in sociology and cultural studies. lanham: Lexington Books.

Hasan, R. (2009). Semantic variation: meaning in society and in sociolinguistics. London: Equinox.

Huspek, M. (Ed.). (2009). Oppositional discourses and democracies. London: Routledge.

Hussein, L. M. (2009). the internet discourse of Arab-American groups. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.

Krinsky, C. (Ed.). (2008). Moral Panics over Contemporary Children and Youth. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Light, J. S. (2009). the nature of cities: ecological visions and the American Urban Professions, 1920-1960. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

Ramallo, F., Lorenzo Suarez, A. M., Rodriguez-Yanez, X. P., & Cap, P. (Eds.). (2009). New approaches to discourse and business communication. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Schechet, N. (2009). Disenthralling ourselves: rhetoric of revenge and reconciliation in contemporary Israel. Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

Shon, P. C. H. (2008). Language and Demeanor in Police – Citizen Encounters. Lanham et al.: University Press of America.

Simpson, P., & Mayr, A. (2009). Language and power: a resource book for students. London: Routledge.

Stommel, W. (2009). Entering an online support group on eating disorders: a discourse analysis. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Trianfafyllidou, A., Wodak, R., & Krzyzanowski, M. (Eds.). (2009). the European public sphere and the media: Europe in crisis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Vannini, P., & Williams, J. P. (Eds.). (2009). Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society. Aldershot: Ashgate.