دانلود رایگان مقاله زبان و قدرت در خدمات جدید در هند

abstract

Language is at the heart of service interactions and a crucial element influencing the relationship between service provider and customer. As a specific form of symbolic capital, language can also be used to exclude and dominate. Our research looks at the role of language in shaping the power dynamic between service providers and customers in the Indian context. This study builds from extensive fieldwork conducted in the area of “new services”, following Indian gym trainers and coffee shop baristas as they interact with elite English-speaking clients. The findings detail how English operates as an invisible boundary in service settings, by excluding Indians who do not speak it with fluency. However, when used to develop expert knowledge, language also becomes an opportunity for lower middle class Indians to resist and invert the domination of the elite.

4. Discussion

Our analysis demonstrates that service is a power struggle and that language is an especially critical dimension of that dynamic in a postcolonial context like India. More specifically, we show that: 1) language operates as a violent symbolic boundary in Indian servicescapes, in excluding and stigmatizing subjects who lack linguistic and communicative competence; 2) the power of English is hegemonic rather than coercive, subtle rather than explicit and is tied to the logic of aspiration and transformation; 3) language operates very differently across the two organizational contexts we studied, with the development of knowledge registers mitigating the symbolic violence of language.