Full Description
An in-depth exploration of how international teaching assistants (ITAs) make their accents workable to fulfill their duties as academic laborers.
In this book, "workable" refers not only to manipulating an accent, but also to ensuring that an accent achieves certain objectives such as being perceived as an intelligible speaker, an expert educator, and an acceptable worker. Drawing on commentaries from ITAs working in Canadian universities, Vijay A. Ramjattan highlights how crafting a workable accent is not an apolitical endeavor, but rather a practice that works within and against the various communicative affordances of neoliberal academia. Just as it can involve fashioning one's voice to satisfy oppressive communication norms, a workable accent can also contest these norms to varying degrees. Ramjattan ultimately demonstrates that (academic) institutions must do a better job at addressing how vocally marginalized workers are heard at work.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Theorizing Workable Accents
Chapter 2: Achieving and Expanding Intelligibility
Chapter 3: Displaying and Creating Expertise
Chapter 4: Being Acceptable to Others and Oneself
Chapter 5: Workable Accents and (International Teaching Assistant) Work
Conclusion
References
Index
About the Author
