Bundled otherwise

Skills, social mobility, and raciolinguistic ideologies in the Canadian labour market

Bibliographic Data

ID2849609
AuthorsMargaretl Mclaughlin (0000-0002-0298-1397, University of Ottawa, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume54
Issue4
Pages661-681
Publication date2025-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage in Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047404524000575
OpenAlexW4402841822
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited34

Showcasing how understandings of social mobility encoded raciolinguistic ideologies of the ideal upwardly mobile speaker, I investigate blue- and white-collar orientation to language, race, and social mobility in the Canadian labor market. I analyze these two subject positionalities and the way bundles of skills are 'bundled otherwise' when ideologies of race and language are invoked as relevant to a class experience. While the acquisition of standard languages remains understood as a gateway to upward mobility, the increased commodification of language made the acquisition of standard registers of French and English a skill amongst others, on par with any other. If this shift challenges an implicit 'linguistic' bias embedded in emic and scientific understandings of class, raciolinguistic ideologies continue to organize worker's orientations to language and work, be it to imagine themselves as cosmopolitan workers or to defend the positions of ethnic, national, and racialized groups in the economy. (Social class, raciolinguistics, work, language ideologies, francophone Canada, bilingualism

Economic geography · Economics · Ideology · Labour economics · Occupational mobility · Political science · Politics · Social mobility · Social science · Sociology · Canadian Identity and History · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy

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Open DOIOpen Access