Language Management/Labor

Abstract

How language is conceptualized as labor is a function of the economy within which profits are made and businesses are structured. Under capitalist regimes, language practices have been conceptualized as apart from labor, as part of the means of production, and as the product. Under neoliberal regimes and conditions of globalization, and depending on the language worker's job description and status as managed or managing, ethnicity/race, gender, and affiliation with national or nonnational language practices are conceptualized as skills subject to Taylorization, as natural abilities for employers' occasional use, or as indexes of authenticity. What ties all this together is how language workers are imagined in relation to the organizations for which they work, a key element being the degree to which language labor represents an internalization of the organization. In this way, language labor is conceptualized in relation to agency as a technology of self.