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The Working Class Promise: A Communicative Account Of Mobility-Based Ambivalences, Kristen Lucas
The Working Class Promise: A Communicative Account Of Mobility-Based Ambivalences, Kristen Lucas
Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications
In-depth interviews with 62 people with working class ties (blue-collar workers and adult sons and daughters of blue-collar workers) reveal a social construction of working class that imbues it with four core, positively valenced values: strong work ethic, provider orientation, the dignity of all work and workers, and humility. This constellation of values is communicated through a ubiquitous macrolevel discourse—which I coin the Working Class Promise—that elevates working class to the highest position in the social class hierarchy and fosters a strong commitment to maintain a working class value system and identity. However, this social construction is only a partial …
Blue-Collar Discourses Of Workplace Dignity: Using Outgroup Comparisons To Construct Positive Identities, Kristen Lucas
Blue-Collar Discourses Of Workplace Dignity: Using Outgroup Comparisons To Construct Positive Identities, Kristen Lucas
Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications
People generally possess a strong desire to construct positive, dignified work identities. However, this goal may be more challenging for some people, such as blue-collar workers, whose occupations may not offer qualities typically associated with workplace dignity. Interviews with 37 people from a blue-collar mining community reveal three central identity discourses about workplace dignity: All jobs are important and valuable; dignity is located in the quality of the job performed; and dignity emerges from the way people treat and are treated by others. Participants communicated these themes by backgrounding their own occupations and drawing comparisons between two outgroups, low-status, low-paid …
Socializing Messages In Blue-Collar Families: Communicative Pathways To Social Mobility And Reproduction, Kristen Lucas
Socializing Messages In Blue-Collar Families: Communicative Pathways To Social Mobility And Reproduction, Kristen Lucas
Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications
This study explicitly links processes of anticipatory socialization to social mobility and reproduction. An examination of the socializing messages exchanged between blue-collar parents (n=41) and their children (n=25) demonstrate that family-based messages about work and career seldom occur in straightforward, unambiguous ways. Instead, messages take several paths (direct, indirect, ambient, and omission). Further, the content of messages communicated along these paths often is contradictory. That is, sons and daughters receive messages that both encourage and discourage social mobility. Ultimately, these individuals must negotiate the meanings of family-based anticipatory socialization communicated to them through a mix of messages.