Languages of Labour

John Belchem (Author) ,  Neville Kirk (Author)

• Contents: Introduction, John Belchem and Neville Kirk; Part One: Theory: Postmodernism as theory and history, Richard Price; Language and contestation: the case of ’the People’, 1832 to the present, Eileen Janes Yeo; Part Two: Gender: Fractured universality: the language of British socialism before the First World War, Karen Hunt; ’A bit of mellifluous phraseology’: the 1922 railroad shopcraft strike and the living wage, Susan Levine; Part Three: Community and workplace: ’An accent exceedingly rare’: scouse and the inflexion of class, John Belchem; Workplace gossip: management myths in further education, Melanie Tebbutt; Part Four: Labour movements: A new language for labour? W. Jett Lauck and the American version of social democracy, Leon Fink; Political identities in the West Virginia and South Wales coalfields, 1900-1922, Roger Fagge; Index.

'This book is an interesting addition to a growing volume of literature which provides a salutary rebuttal of postmodernist academic imperialism.' Labour History Review, Vol. 64, No. 1 '...this collection demonstrates that labour history should not be seen as trapped in a time warp of ’old fashioned’ concerns...the authors...build on a long-standing interest in language and identity, pioneered by historians such as E. P. Thompson, and to develop this further by re-thinking the complex relationship between discourse, culture, political identities and socio-economic structures...Urban economic and social historians, as well as labour historians, should find plenty to interest them in this book....' Urban History, Vol. 26, No. 2