Date: 23-Apr-2008 From: Julia Ulrich <julia.ulrichdegruyter.com> Subject: Immigration and Bureaucratic Control: Codó E-mail this message to a friend
Title: Immigration and Bureaucratic Control
Subtitle: Language Practices in Public Administration
Series Title: Language, Power and Social Process [LPSP] 20
Published: 2008
Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter
http://www.mouton-publishers.com
Author: Eva Codó
Hardback: ISBN: 9783110195897 Pages: 254 Price: Europe EURO 98.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9783110195897 Pages: 254 Price: U.S. $ 125.00 Comment: For orders placed in North America only
Abstract:
This original study looks at language practices in a government agency responsible for granting or denying legal status to transnational migrants in Spain. Drawing on a unique corpus of naturally-occurring verbal interactions between state officials and migrant petitioners as well as ethnographic materials and interviews, it provides a fascinating insight into the relationship between language, social heterogeneity, and practices of exclusion.
The book investigates how a national agency with homogenizing views of citizenship copes with the fundamental contradiction resulting from the state's commitment to the values of pluralism, justice, and equality, and its function as the regulator of access to socioeconomic resources. By focusing on information provision, the book explores how much room there is for individual agency in institutional contexts; and shows that what happens in front-line talk has very little to do with allowing immigrants access to crucial information but rather revolves around the regimentation of language and behavior, and the enactment of social control. This publication will be welcomed by students and researchers in the fields of sociolinguistics, language and immigration, institutional talk, and multilingualism.
Linguistic Field(s):
Applied Linguistics
Pragmatics
Sociolinguistics
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