Researching language at work in public and hidden domains. Historical time and temporal contextualization

Abstract

Research into language at work appears as timely today. Extending this contemporary strand of research to historical workplace settings provides new insights and poses methodological and theoretical challenges. While historical cases can provide valuable experiences with respect to today’s multilingual workplaces, the chapter argues that it is necessary to consider the temporality of the practices we investigate and of the associated research practices. The arising challenges are illustrated in two cases from 19th-century Northern Norway: the multilingual encounters among the workers and managers of a copper mine, which mainly took place in hidden spaces; and the trading encounters between Norwegian fishermen and Russian merchants, which often took place in public and resulted in a pidgin language called Russenorsk. The chapter discusses how the temporality of both data and research entangles with the production of scientific knowledge about blue-collar work: How are we positioned vis-à-vis the people we study? And is it, e.g. reasonable to apply the contemporary term blue-collar worker to a completely different spatial and temporal context?