The workplace as a panoptic machine: linguistic surveillance and migrants in Australia

Abstract This study examines linguistic surveillance as experienced by migrants in their workplace in Australia. Through the Foucauldian lens of surveillance and panopticism, it describes migrant employees’ reports on how their use of languages other than English is hierarchically observed and morally judged by their managers and co-workers. This linguistic surveillance operates within a mechanism of power, through which the surveiller (i.e. monitor) – in their role as a power actor – applies different techniques of surveillance to position the surveilled (i.e. monitored) as the linguicised subject or the linguistic Other. In either or both the surveiller’s and the surveilled’s logic of rationality, the idea of “English-here” functions as a pragmatic code of conduct to prevent misunderstandings, dissension, distraction, or unproductiveness in the workplace. Being aware of their linguicised subjectivity, the participants engage in self-surveillance in orienting themselves to the image of a ‘normal’ speaker or, alternatively, in expressing resistance to unfair practices in favour of English. The belief that having only English in workplace exchanges can reinforce collegiality, legitimacy and productivity may instead just be a kind of institutional myth. Thus, linguistic surveillance associated with the “English-here” imperative may be related more to discrimination than to business or work necessity.