Scripts of Servitude

Beatriz P. Lorente is a Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Bern and a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Institute of Multilingualism at the University of Fribourg and the University of Teacher Education Fribourg.

• 1. Language and Transnational Domestic Workers2. The Making of 'Workers of the World': Language and the Labor Brokerage State3. Assembling the 'Supermaid': Language and Communication Skills for 'Vulnerable Occupations'4. Marketing Domestic Workers: Maid Agencies in Singapore5. The English-Speaking Other Looks Back6. Translating Selves: The Trajectories of Transnational Filipino Domestic Workers7. ConclusionAppendices References

This is simply one of the most profound and revealing studies in language, globalization and social issues I have ever read. The author and the women with whom she worked become one in this textbook example of contemporary sociolinguistic ethnography, and the issue of what counts as English in the world, and how it counts, has rarely been more delicately illustrated than in this book.