A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working-Class Bar

Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics

by Julie Lindquist

Linguists have become increasingly interested in examining how class culture is socially constructed and maintained through spoken language. Julie Lindquist's examination of the linguistic ethnography of a working-class bar in Chicago is an important and original contribution to the field. She examines how regular patrons argue about political issues in order to create a group identity centered around political ideology. She also shows how their political arguments are actually a rhetorical genre, one which creates a delicate balance between group solidarity and individual identity, as well as a tenuous and ambivalent sense of class identity.

Genres: Nonfiction

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[CTEP]

A Place to Stand by Julie Lindquist is an exploration of the social relationships and interactions of regular customers at a working class bar in the suburbs of Chicago. Lindquist does her participant observation of these interactions by going to work at the bar and observing the language used as the customers speak to each other and speak to her as an educated while woman. This leads her to draw conclusions about how the identity of the working class reinforces itself through language, and how discussions of politics between customers become rhetorical work.



This relates to my work at Wilder because of the situation it presents. I am situated as a middle class white woman with a college degree, and the clients that I work with at wilder are situated in a very different way. I work with low income individuals and therefore it is important for me to realize how I may be perceived, or how I may be passing certain judgments without knowing onto the clients that I work with. Although the rhetoric she analyzes linguistically may differ in a group of working class men, the “talk” of another population as well as its implications can be transferred onto the groups of people I work with. The way the students in my classes choose to speak to each other reinforce themselves and the way I speak in class reinforces how situated I am, and it is necessary to be sensitive to that, because we will react to one another.



I would recommend this book to those interested in the study of language and how language affects culture and everyday life. At times it could be quite long, as she is analyzing linguistics, so chunks of actual dialogue, but the conclusions she draws are relevant and interesting enough to make up for it. It is mostly interesting to see how she from one class interacts with people outside her element from another class and how they respond to her.

[Sarah Keuper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book just before starting a qualitative research class, and it helped a lot with understanding what that sort of research looks like, since I had previously been more familiar with quantitative research concepts.