Overview

Shortlisted for the 2022 BAAL Book Prize Shortlisted for the American Association of Applied Linguistics 2024 Book Prize Linguistic Penalties and the Job Interview looks at a relatively untapped area of language and social life: the role of language and interaction in constructing the job interview and how this role produces disadvantage in the linguistically diverse communities of the western world. It relates the specific activity of the job interview to the wider field of institutional discourse and discusses relevant social theories in the light of the data. The volume considers job interviews as key 'gatekeeping' encounters within the workplace from two main perspectives: interviews as extreme examples of social evaluation, showing how inferential processes of moment to moment talk in interaction can lead to the 'small tragedies' of everyday life; and interviews as a window into social inequality more generally. It illustrates interactional sociolinguistic and linguistic ethnography methodology through the job interview and workplace data and argues for the importance of practical relevance applying sociolinguistic analysis to educational interventions.

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9781845537692

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Reviews

This book will be invaluable to scholars and students interested in areas such as cross-cultural communication, institutional discourse, language and identity, and applying (socio)linguistics to social inequalities. Roberts’ book demonstrates a qualitative, contextual linguistics that effectively brings to the surface problematic (though often well-intentioned) practices in the job interview, as well as the discourses that motivate them. The book offers an eye-opening and fresh look at the role of language in perpetuating a gatekeeping injustice from the perspective of a scholar who is uniquely positioned to honor foundational work in sociolinguistics while providing new layers of understanding. TESOL Quarterly

Author Information

Celia Roberts is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at King's College, London.

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