Workable Accents
How International Teaching Assistants Vocally Fashion and Contest Academic Labor
Published on 10. July 2025
184 pages
979-8-7651-5535-6 (ISBN)
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.
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.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
File size
1,09 MB
ISBN-13
979-8-7651-5535-6 (9798765155356)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Vijay A. Ramjattan
Workable Accents
How International Teaching Assistants Vocally Fashion and Contest Academic Labor
Book
09/2025
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
€108.00
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Person
Vijay A. Ramjattan is Assistant Professor in the Language and Literacies Education department at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.
Content
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
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
