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Language, migration
and the gatekeepers
Celia Roberts

Keynote address given at the NATECLA National Conference

and Exhibition, 9 July 2010

Abstract
This article looks at the linguistic penalty faced by migrants in institutional
encounters. It then considers the impact of this penalty on the language
teaching professional. Global flows of people who seek work or asylum face
a series of institutional gatekeeping processes. Their perceived competence
and trustworthiness depends upon the extent to which they can fit their
stories and versions of themselves into the institutional categories of the state
or the workplace. This article will discuss case studies of various gatekeeping
processes around the world and then will focus on the linguistic penalty that
migrants face in job selection interviews and professional licensing exams.
The language teaching professional has to pick up many of the challenges
that result from the benefits to society of cheap labour and of unsocial
jobs being filled by migrants. The profession also provides a safety net for
those countries which take in asylum seekers and allow residence but rarely
respite. These themes have implications for the role, status, positioning and
knowledge of language teachers.

Introduction
Two Scandinavian artists, Elmgreen and Dragset (2006) have created an
installation ironically called Social Mobility. It consists of a set of stairs
leading to a door with the words Administration on it. The irony lies in the
fact that all the lower steps are missing and they lie broken on the floor, thus
effectively preventing anyone getting even to the first step on the stairs.
Even if there is access to the administrators door, just at the door awaits
the gatekeeper whose task is to evaluate those on the threshold and allow
them through the gate or not. The notion of the gatekeeper and of the
gatekeeping interview (Erickson and Shultz 1982) has focussed attention on
the linguistic and cultural dimensions of the selection process in ethnically
and linguistically diverse societies. Migrants are more likely than most
groups to be subject to gatekeeping procedures and to experience their
hidden processes more acutely. The right to asylum (Maryns 2006), the
offer of a work permit (Cod 2008) and the persistent requirement to show
evidence of the legal right to apply for a job (Roberts and Campbell 2006)
all require often lengthy gatekeeping interviews. ESOL professionals are also
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disproportionately subjected to the gatekeepers in the form of those who

implement government policies which affect both them and the students in
their classes. This article asks how agency can be developed for both migrants
and language professionals in their responses to the gatekeepers.

Language and gatekeeping

The role of language in gatekeeping is paradoxical. On the one hand, language
is under-recognised and under-specified so that its powerful role in decisionmaking goes unnoticed. It is powerful because its power is masked. Its role
in producing and re-producing inequality is everywhere and to address this
power systematically would require a social revolution. For example, general
statements about command of English say nothing about the complexity of
talk or its interactional dimension but are used widely to specify entry criteria.
And judgements by gatekeepers of an applicants competency or personal
adequacy (I didnt really trust him) are based on how he or she talks, although
this is very rarely acknowledged. So migrants suffer a linguistic penalty.
On the other hand, language is over-used. It is an easy notion to call up to
rationalise gatekeeping decisions or as a clarion call around which doubts and
negativity may coalesce. In addition, non-linguistic issues are seen as linguistic
ones. The discourses on integration or on job seeking are obvious examples
where (not) speaking English is used as the lead explanation for solutions to
what is seen as a migrant problem. Both the under-recognition and over-use
of language as an explanatory phenomenon co-exist, and attempting to tackle
one can then reinforce the other. Language professionals deal with this tension
all the time. The next sections deal with the under-recognition of language.

Linguistic penalty
The idea of a linguistic penalty is drawn from two different sources: the
notion of an ethnic penalty (Heath and Cheung 2006) and Bourdieus
concept of linguistic capital. Ethnic penalty is a term used to describe the
processes in the labour market which lead to Black and Minority Ethnic (BME)
jobseekers being less likely than their white counterparts to gain employment.
A linguistic penalty is a combination of all the sources of disadvantage
which might lead a linguistic minority group to fare less well in the selection/
evaluation process generally and specifically in the labour market. This
penalty derives from the fact that selection and assessment depends crucially
on face-to-face interaction, that these interviews are constructed of language
in interaction but that what this means for linguistic minorities is almost
never analysed nor accounted for. Those who experience a linguistic penalty
are doubly disadvantaged since their minority ethnic identity may already
penalise them and the language-mediated gatekeeping interview adds to this
penalty.
The term linguistic penalty is also derived from the notion of linguistic
capital (Bourdieu 1991). Bourdieu uses the metaphor of the linguistic market
place to discuss how certain ways of speaking and interacting are invested
with power. Those who have not acquired whatever modes of speaking
are necessary for particular contexts are likely to fail. In the setting of the

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selection interview, the linguistic capital required assumes an understanding

of the purpose and design of the interview and the skills of self-presentation
that are considered appropriate to the activity. So a linguistic penalty refers to
all aspects of language and interaction, including a cultural understanding of
how to use context-specific language. With increasingly globalised societies
and workforces, the linguistic penalty operates throughout the world,
wherever language use is stratified and evaluated according to widely held
ideologies of language (Woolard and Schieffelin 1994). The following are a
few examples of how language controls and reinforces relatively powerless
positions.
In Istanbul workplaces, Kurdish speakers must be discrete in their use of
Kurdish since speaking Kurdish is seen as unprofessional (Schluter 2010). In
the Philippines there is a strong government steer to mobilise workers to work
abroad since remittances from overseas represent a significant element in
the countrys GDP. In preparation courses before working abroad, workers
are encouraged to have national mobile identities which are categorised
according to their profession/skills. Those with fewer skills are encouraged
to become supermaids and are trained in scripts of servitude. For example,
they are taught how to respond to Arabic imperatives for work in the Middle
East. This group experience a double penalty. They not only have to learn
the language of servitude but they are often expected to learn such scripts
in several languages. Professionals, on the other hand, only need English. So,
the lower a worker is in the labour market, the more they are expected to be
multilingual, albeit in a very limited and subservient register (Lorente 2010).
In Toronto, as in many western countries, migrant professionals are routinely
under-employed. They are expected to be enterprising selves accumulating
material and symbolic capital, but at the same time are subject to an index
of perceived foreignness (Han 2010). And in most of the western world and
beyond, for example in South Korea, citizenship and language tests represent
an on-going linguistic penalty. The ruling, this year, from the UK Border
Agency requiring evidence of competence in English before applicants are
considered for residence is but the latest example. The next section analyses
how the linguistic penalty is manifested in selection interviews in the UK.

Selection interviews and the linguistic penalty

Questions in selection interviews carry a large inferential load. Consider the
following three questions all taken from real selection interviews:
How does an organisation manage change?
How does illness make you feel?
How do you know what you dont know?
The first question comes from an interview for Entry level, low-paid work;
this is for a job in a delivery company where the only requirements are basic
literacy and numeracy, and yet this question is at an abstract level, requiring
an analytic answer. The second two questions were asked in selection
interviews for young doctors hoping to be accepted onto a vocational training
programme to become GPs. Again these questions are difficult to answer

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since they require the candidate to make inferences about the hidden criteria
behind these questions and the expected knowledge and codes of behaviour.
Why are these questions so difficult to answer and how do organisations come
to design such questions? I suggest there are three main reasons: the Januslike character of selection interviews, the nature of institutional bureaucracy
and issues of fairness, and the neo-liberal ideology that underpins current
thinking about the labour market. The Roman God of gates, doors and
thresholds, Janus, looks two ways simultaneously, both out to what lies
beyond and inwards to what lies inside.

Interviewers also look two ways: out to the candidate and their experiences
but also backwards to their own institutions, which are busy defending
themselves against possible accusations of unfairness and discrimination.
So the interview is designed to protect the institution as well as to evaluate
candidates. Candidates also have to look two ways: they need to present their
past but in ways that are aligned to their imagined future in the organisation.
Facing two ways simultaneously creates an interactional dilemma and sums
up the tensions and contradictions of the selection interview. Managing such
tensions and contradictions renders the talk more indirect and abstract, as the
three questions above illustrate.
The assessment interview, whether it is to select for a job or assess an
applicants rights in relation to scarce resources such as housing or benefits,
is a central mechanism of bureaucracy. The sociologist Max Weber
celebrated bureaucracy as a means to release institutions from the personal
and introduce rationality and accountability through categories and cases
against which individuals could be fairly judged (Weber 1948). Webers
arguments for objective and rational forms of work were in part designed
to cater for globalised, diverse societies, helping to create, for example, fair
and objective procedures in selection interviews. The principles of objectivity
and accountability seem fair but in order for them to operate fairly those
who bump up against them need the special reasoning and inferencing that
goes with knowing how they work. So, there is a terrible irony built into these
bureaucratic processes generally, and the selection interview in particular,
that just those procedures that are designed to be fair act against those groups
least familiar with the taken for granted knowledge that institutions have built,
as the three interview questions above illustrate.
Sitting rather uncomfortably alongside these bureaucratic principles are the
new regimes of what is generally known as neo-liberal ideology with its focus
on the market, consumerism and individual autonomy. Organisations, both
private and public sector, have been radically changed by this ideology in their

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development of internal markets and, for example, in changing students and

patients into customers and clients. Neo-liberalism is reflected in the new
managerialism and fast capitalism of the global market (Gee et al. 1996).
This market requires companies to be ready to change product lines overnight
and this, in turn, has an effect on how people are managed. Traditional,
hierarchical management has given way to a more flexible structure in
which workers are expected to be more self-managing and no longer wait
for decisions from a long command chain. As new responsibilities are pushed
down to workers and hierarchies are flattened, shopfloor staff are expected
to understand more of the organisations goals and strategies. Workers are
expected to develop an entrepreneurial self (du Gay 1996), as the research
in Toronto mentioned above suggests. Relatively low-status staff are expected
to be engaged in the organisations vision/mission, as the first of the three
questions above implies. It is, however, important to note that the rhetoric of
neo-liberal ideology outstrips the reality in many workplaces where, for all the
entrepreneurial qualities expected, routine, repetitive work is still the norm.
I have suggested three reasons as to why interviews come to be designed with
questions that are difficult to answer. The contradictions and tensions arising
from looking both ways and the potent mix of bureaucracy and neo-liberalism
which co-exist and yet seem to contradict each other lead to strategies of
communication which are more indirect and more abstract. The more
abstract and indirect talk becomes, the more it masks these contradictions.
So, for example, How does an organisation manage change? requires a lot
of inferencing to get to the individual competence of flexibility which the
new managerialism requires of its workers. There is then the question of
whether candidates can attune to this notion of flexibility and how it can be
demonstrated in their response.

Competency frameworks
Competency frameworks, which are increasingly used in selection and
assessment, combine both neo-liberal ideology and, since they can be rolled
out in a consistent way, the bureaucratic demands of the objective, structured
interview. It is commonplace for selection interviews to be designed around
a set of competences asked of each candidate in the same way. A typical list
of competences for both low-paid work and management and professional
level posts will include: team working, communications, customer focus,
adaptability/flexibility and self-management. The last two of these are
particularly significant within the new managerialism and fast capitalism of
the neo-liberal workplace discourses.
Since competency frameworks are amenable to objective, structured
interviews, it is widely claimed that they are a fair means of selection.
However, research on selection interviews for low-paid work and work in
professional settings suggests that for migrant candidates there is a linguistic
penalty. For example, among workers applying for low-paid jobs in factories,
supermarkets and service industries, while white and British minority ethnic
(BME) applicants were quite successful and fared about the same, migrant
applicants fared much less well and were more likely to fail than pass:

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Figure 1 Interviews for low-paid work: success levels of BME candidates

(Roberts and Campbell 2006)

Similarly, in two different health settings, doctors applying for membership of

medical Royal Colleges and newly graduated doctors applying for vocational
training posts, migrant applicants did much less well than British BME
applicants and very much less well than white British applicants. For example,
in the oral exam for one of the royal colleges, only 7.7% of white British
graduates failed compared with 35.9% of international medical graduates
(Wakeford 2009). In the selection of candidates for vocational training: 91%
of white British candidates were successful; 77% of UK trained black and
minority ethnic candidates trained in the UK and only 31% of BME candidates
trained abroad (Roberts and Atwell 2006). These figures show that there is a
double penalty at work with those who were educated and or trained abroad
experiencing the disadvantage of both their ethnic background and the
linguistic/cultural challenges of the interview itself.

Example from a competency-based interview

This selection interview was for a job in a large delivery company where the
interview was designed around the five competences mentioned above. A
key competency was self-management and this competency was assessed
through a question about repetitive work. Ire, who came to the UK from
Nigeria, is rated as a borderline candidate, in part because of his response to
this question:

Data Example One

I=Interviewer, C= Candidate (borderline)
1

I: right what would you tell me is the advantage of a repetitive job (1)

C: advantage of a

I: repetitive job (1)

C: er I mean the advantage of a repetitive job is that er:m it makes you it it

keeps you going (.) er it doesnt make you bored (.) you dont feel bored you

keep on going and (.) I mean I me- a (.) and also it it puts a smile on your
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face you come in it puts a smile on your face you feel happy to come to the

job the job will (trust) you

I: you dont get to know it better

10 C: sorry
11

I: you dont get to know it better

12

C: yeah we get to know the job better we I mean we learn new ideas lots of

13

new ideas as well

14

I: right what is the disadvantage of a repetitive job

15

C: well (.) disadvantage er:m (.) er disadvantages (1) you may you may f-

16 offend customers you may f- offend our customers

17

C: in there thats a disadvantage of it

18

I: you dont find it boring

19 C: yeah it could also be boring (.) to be boring and you and you (.) yet by
20 being bored you may offend the customers
21

I: how how would you offend them by being bored

22 C: by not putting a smile on your face

23 I: right
(Roberts and Campbell 2006:39)

All candidates are faced with an overarching contradiction: their responses

have to be standard enough to be fitted into the form to be filled by the
interviewer. This fitting of stories into boxes (Roberts and Campbell 2005)
is part of the institutions defensiveness and it requires conventional and
cautious responses. However, the candidate has to also be entrepreneurial,
self-managing and reflexively aware, showing more creative and individual
characteristics. With this particular question, the assumption is that repetitive
work is boring and the self-managing worker recognises this and has strategies
in place to manage boredom so that they remain motivated and work well and
efficiently. Both the success rates (see Figure 1 above) and the qualitative
analysis show that migrant candidates found this contradiction much harder
to handle than either white or BME British candidates.
The interviewer introduced the competence with the following:
I: thank you right er:m the next question is managing yourself (.) here our
job is very repetitive (.) and routine and with all repetitive and routine
jobs sometimes they get very boring (.) now tell me about a time youve
done a job that is very repetitive and tell me how you motivate yourself
on carrying on (2).
Ire then demonstrated his understanding by giving an example of how, in
a previous job, he suggested that workers should be allowed to listen to
music while making sandwiches. However, the next question What would
you tell me is the advantage of a repetitive job requires a large inferential
leap. Instead of being asked for an example of how to motivate himself
in repetitive work, Ire is asked to answer this rather analytic or academic
question. This competency question is no longer couched in the everyday
language of personal experience but in the more abstract and analytic register
of institutional discourse. Ire attempts to answer it by putting as positive a
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gloss as he can on how he could cope with such work. However, since the
conventionalised expectations that the interviewer brings to the interview are
hidden from him, he fails to give the preferred response and he is penalised
for this. The same difficulty arises when he is asked about the disadvantages
at line 15 and there is evidence in his pausing and repetition that he cannot
easily muster a suitable response. Although he does then offer a very plausible
response, it is not readily accepted by the interviewer (lines 17 and 21). In the
post-interview discussion with the interviewer she remarks that he did not
answer this question well. Like all the interviewers in this large organisation,
she has been trained to ask set questions and to follow these up in particular
ways. However, the cultural and linguistic complexity of the question is not
recognised by the designers of the interview, and candidates such as Ire who
may now fail to be offered the job experience a linguistic penalty.

Language over-used as an explanation for

lack of success
By contrast with the lack of recognition of the role of language in peoples life
chances, linguistic explanations are routinely given for what are non-linguistic
phenomenon. This section takes selection in the health setting as an illustrative
example of how language is over-used to account for and defend decisions
to fail candidates. This example is taken from a practice that is no longer
used because of this particular Royal Colleges concerns about its potential for
being unfair to certain groups of candidates. It is, however, still widely used by
other Royal Colleges. The setting is an oral exam for membership of the Royal
College and the interview consists of a serious of questions based largely
on the candidates documentation of recent consultations with patients. In
this example, the candidate is being asked about the value of doing postnatal
visits.

Data Example Two

C= candidate (unsuccessful) E= examiner
1. E:

lets go on to something (.) clinical one of your visits was a postnatal

visit [(.)] theres no need [to going into great detail about it] (.) why = =

2. C:

[uhuh] [no right okay]

3. E:

= do you do a postnatal visit

4. C:

um (.) I think one of the (.) reasons ((slightly laughing)) is because you
get paid for it (.) um [(.)] its an item uh (.) its one of your uh (.) =

5. E:

[right]

6. C:

= commitments and (.) only if you finish (the whole care of the patient)
do you get the full pay

7. E:

do you have to do the visit yourself to get paid

8. C:

er no you can delegate like (.) to the (.) registrar [(.)] or um (.) the =

9. E:

[mhm]

10. C:

= health visitor has a al obligation as well to visit [(.)] but I dont =

11. E:

[mhm]

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12. C:

= think you can delegate on her the actual postnatal (.) visits (.) [the]

13. E:

[okay] so lets move on for other reasons for doing (.) thepostnatal visit
(.) why do you go (.) why do you do it (.) whats your plan when youre
going there

14. C:

um (.) I think one would be the clinical aspect to (.) you know (.) make
sure that they have no (.) post partum haemorrhage or any other (.)
actual you know clinical (.) complication[s] uh infection of the breasts
or anything (.) uh for the more social aspects

(Sarangi and Roberts 2002: 219)

The opening question: Why do you do a postnatal visit? could be understood

in several ways. Given that the institutional mode tends to dominate, the
examiners expect an abstract, analytical answer along the lines of how
medical personnel construe the division of labour. For a doctor to make regular
postnatal visits has to be justified in terms of scarce resources. The candidate
deals with the questions in the personal and professional mode, talking from
her practical experience of being a doctor. An alternative approach that the
examiners could take would be to ask the question expecting a more personal
mode. Questions of this type are often asked although not as frequently as the
institutional mode. Differentiating between expected answers in these two
modes depends to some extent on how the you is interpreted. Why do you?
with the emphasis on you would imply a more personal response. A more
institutional mode Why do you , meaning why do doctors in general would
not have the emphasis on you. In this particular case, the degree of emphasis
on you makes it ambiguous. Later, at line 13, the examiner puts the emphasis
on you as if asking for a more personal response. He then reformulates as
Whats your plan? which is more specific and the candidate then gives a
more institutionally acceptable answer. The problem here seems to be the
lack of explicitness related to what kind of mode of discourse the candidate is
expected to answer in. As in the Ire example, the examiner appears to expect
a more abstract, analytical and institutional mode, whereas the candidate
responds in a more professional and personal one. The lack of agreement
about which mode to be in is even more evident a few moments later on:

Data Example Three

14. C:

um (.) I think one would be the clinical aspect to (.) you know (.) make
sure that they have no (.) post partum haemorrhage or any other (.)
actual you know clinical (.) complication[s] uh infection of the breasts
or anything (.) uh for the more social aspects

30. E:

[thats right] okay (.) if I said to you (.) we really dont (.) havent got
time to be doing all these things (.) were going to stop doing the
postnatal visits (.) how would you feel about that

31. C: (2.0) um (.) I think (.) I quite enjoy doing the postnatal visits um
32. E:

is it good use of your time though

(Sarangi and Roberts 2002: 221)

At turn 30, the examiner asks: How would you feel about that? He returns
to the opening question, which has still not been answered to his satisfaction,
to try to elicit her opinion on the use of her time and the division of labour
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between doctors and other primary care professionals. This question is posed
as a personal experience question in an apparently unambiguous way since he
asks her about her feelings. But the examiner expects an institutional response
since he is still probing about the question of the use of time. She responds
in the personal mode, answering the question literally by talking about her
enjoyment, rather than inferring from the question that she is expected to
answer in a more objective, institutional way. The indirectness which is
so common in gatekeeping interviews disadvantages her. She shows from
other answers that she is an experienced doctor but she is not familiar with
the hybrid gatekeeping discourses (which slip between more institutional,
personal and professional) which are, eventually, to bring her down.
The candidate is categorised as having language problems because she comes
from overseas. Her Spanish name and her very rare hesitations are enough to
fuel this categorisation. In the post-assessment discussion, the two examiners
agree that she was very hesitant and that English is not her first language,
despite the fact that she has worked for several years in Aberdeen and has a
Scottish accent. They agree that shell be a fail (Sarangi and Roberts 2003:
209). So the perceived hesitations are interpreted as a linguistically hesitant
performance. The examiners own hybrid discourses are never brought to
the surface so there is no realisation that it is these aspects of discourse that
create unnecessarily complex communicative problems for the candidate and
cause the negative judgement to be made.
It is routine for the questions in both types of selection interviews to be
formulated ambivalently and for the preferred mode of answer to be
hidden from the candidate. In both the job interview and the Royal College
examination the hybrid discourses that underpin the design of such
selection processes are unrecognised. The job interviews linguistic and
cultural complexity leads to negative comments about Ires competence and
motivation but there is no awareness of the interviews linguistic penalty. In
the medical setting, similarly, there is no recognition of the penalty but here
the fact that the candidate is a second language speaker is used to justify her
likely failure.
Having looked at how language is both under-recognised and over-used, I
will now turn to the role of ESOL professionals in helping to provide migrants
with a sense of agency to deal with the many gatekeeping contexts where
self-presentation is required.

A sense of agency
Any positive learning experience may give ESOL students a sense of agency. I
want to mention two areas in particular, stemming from the research outlined
above. The first relates to the importance of language materials based on real
data and experiences. There are still too many materials which are invented,
idealised, decontextualised and over-simplified. For example, invented
materials dealing with job interviews and other gatekeeping encounters do
little to prepare students for these real encounters (Roberts and Cooke 2009).
Related to this critique of invented materials is the argument for researchbased pedagogy and materials. For example, students who are jobseekers
need to know about the competency framework and the blend of more
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institutional and more personal talk that interviewers expect (Campbell

and Roberts 2007). Materials based on naturally-occurring video material,
carefully edited and within a pedagogic frame, give entry to the real world in a
structured way (Roberts et al. 2007). The DVD, Frequently Asked Questions is
an example of how research, in this case the job interview research discussed
above, can be turned into teaching/learning materials (Roberts et al. 2007).

<<picture of FAQs here>

More generally, the extensive research on language classrooms needs to filter

through to language professionals. Colleges and other ESOL providers can
form partnerships with local university linguistics, education and English
departments where there are students doing MA level and PhD courses.
Every MA student has to undertake a research-based thesis and a partnership
agreement could lead to students undertaking empirical research, for example,
in the type of gatekeeping interviews discussed here or related activities such
as parent-teacher meetings or lectures/seminars in higher education.

Language professionals and agency

I now turn to ESOL teachers and their sense of agency at a time when they are
buffeted by increasingly stringent and mutable regulations and restrictions.
While the majority of employers can see advantages in the superdiverse
society (Vertove 2006), ESOL professionals have to deal with many of the
challenges that result from benefits to employers of cheap labour and unsocial
jobs being filled by migrants. The profession also provides a safety net for the
UK which, like many western countries, takes in asylum seekers and allows
residence (for some) but rarely respite (for example, Hodge (2004)). Subjected
themselves to gatekeeping processes and with the struggle to safety net
migrants, ESOL professionals have to manage the tension between the underrecognition of language and its over-use as a rationale for non-linguistic
issues. This has implications for the role, status, positioning and knowledge of
ESOL professionals.
Increasingly, the profession is finding an authoritative voice which positions it
as the legitimate speaker for a range of issues that, of course, include but go
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beyond a narrow conceptualisation of language and its acquisition. This voice

is based on professional knowledge and what Goodwin calls professional
vision (Goodwin 1994). This is a way of seeing that those outside a particular
profession cannot see. For example, he takes the profession of archaeology
and describes what an archaeologist can see in what to anyone else is just
a patch of land. Similarly, the ESOL professional can see the cultural and
linguistic complexity of a benefits form while others simply extract the
information from it. This professional vision allows ESOL teachers to take
an elastic view of language, seeing the linguistic penalty in all aspects of
institutional life and engaging with it. So our task as language professionals is
to work with those institutions on what we can call the public understanding of
language, on the analogy of the movement to make science more accessible.

The public understanding of language

As this article has attempted to show, many of the small tragedies of everyday
life relate to institutional encounters and the under-recognition of language
in disadvantaging migrants or the over-use of language as an explanation
for decisions against them. We need to work on our authoritative voice as
language professionals, on a persuasive language to enable institutions to
think more professionally about language. This persuasive language can be
built from the authority that research gives us and from developing a strategic
rhetoric from the metaphorical resources of language.
While ESOL research remains patchy and under-resourced (like much of the
provision), there is research published in journals such as TESOL Quarterly,
Linguistics and Education, and Language Issues which gives authority to our
voice when dealing with institutions. For example, the ESOL Effective
Practice Project (Baynham et al. 2006) funded through the National Centre for
Research and Development in Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC) showed
that students are more likely to make significant progress in ESOL in their
first five years in the UK, that teachers with a developed professional vision
have a significant impact on learner progress and that too much heterogeneity
in the class leads to less progress. Similarly, in a forthcoming special issue
of TESOL Quarterly on adult migrants, Swedish research shows that work
placements are only successful if work placement officers can assess the
language opportunities of the workplace and/or language professionals have
the opportunity to do this (Sandwall 2010).
The ESOL network set up by James Simpson and run from Leeds University
(http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html) is an obvious site
for research exchange and has been one of the most significant means of
enhancing ESOL professionalism over the last few years. And any partnership
links with universities, as mentioned above, and ESOL forums, such as those
that run in Leeds and London (The London ESOL Research Network LERN),
can contribute to tailoring local research to local struggles with institutions.
Taking a page from the charismatic rhetoric of politicians, it is also possible to
create an authoritative voice by strategically developing and using metaphors.
Most professions develop and run with certain metaphors for a time around
which ideas coalesce and can be readily communicated. For example, within
ESOL, spiky profiles was much used and currently the long turn appears in
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many postings on the ESOL Research network. Similarly, powerful metaphors

can be developed that go beyond classroom concerns and can have an impact
on institutions and their gatekeepers. Lorenzs scripts of servitude mentioned
above, has a critical and political force and so does, I hope, linguistic penalty.
I have also used Bourdieus metaphor of a fish out of water and fish in water
who do not feel the weight of the water to persuade medical trainers and
examiners that the membership exams for Royal Colleges need to be more
aware of the contrast between migrant doctors experience of these exams
and those British middle class candidates who do not feel the weight of
the water.

Conclusion
Migrants are disproportionately subjected to gatekeeping procedures
and suffer a linguistic penalty. This is either because the powerful role that
language plays in producing inequality is unrecognised or, conversely, because
language is over-used as an explanation for decisions taken against this group.
The sense of agency that both migrant groups and ESOL professionals need
in dealing with institutional gatekeepers can be systematically developed. I
have argued that stronger links between ESOL teachers and their classrooms/
materials and the felt reality of institutional encounters is one means of doing
this, as are closer links between ESOL providers and teachers and universitybased researchers and research. Institutions that routinely deal with issues
of language and migration need to hear the authoritative voice of language
professionals as part of the more general need for the public understanding
of language.

References
Baynham, M., C. Roberts, M. Cooke, J. Simpson and K. Ananiadou (2006)
ESOL Effective Practice London: National Research and Development Centre,
Institute of Education
Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power Cambridge: Polity Press
Campbell, S. and C. Roberts (2007) Migration, ethnicity and competing
discourses in the job interview: synthesising the institutional and personal
Discourse and Society 18/3: 243271
Cod, E. (2008) Immigration and Bureaucratic Control Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter
Erickson, F. and J. Schultz (1982) The Counselor as Gatekeeper: Social
Interaction in Interviews New York: Academic Press
Elmgreen, M. and I. Dragset (2006) Social Mobility http://www.
serpentinegallery.org/images/teachers_notes_e%26d.pdf
du Gay, P. (1996) Consumption and Identity at Work London: Sage
Gee, J., G. Hull and C. Lankshear (1996) The New Work Order: behind the
Language of the New Capitalism St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin

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Goodwin, C. (1994) Professional Vision American Anthropologist 96/3:

606633
Han, H. (2010) Tell me something about yourself Paper given at the
conference Language, Migration and Labour University of Freiburg,
Switzerland 2829 January, 2010
Heath, A. and S. Y. Cheung (2006) Ethnic Penalties in the Labour Market:
Employers and Discrimination Sheffield: DWP Research Report No. 341
Hodge, R. (2004) This is not enough for ones life in C. Roberts et al. English
for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL): Case studies of provision, learners
needs and resources London: NRDC
http://www.nrdc.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_302.pdf (accessed 30
September 2010)
Lorente, B. ( 2010) Language in the making of global workers Paper given
at the conference Language, Migration and Labour University of Freiburg,
Switzerland 28 29 January, 2010.
Maryns, K. (2006) The Asylum Speaker Manchester: St Jerome
Roberts, C. and C. Atwell (2006) GP Vocational Training Selection Interviews:
a Discourse Analysis to Assess their Potential for Discrimination on the Grounds of
Ethnicity or Language London: NHS London Post-graduate Deanery
Roberts, C. and S. Campbell (2005) Fitting stories into boxes: Rhetorical and
textual constraints on candidates performances in British job interviews
Journal of Applied Linguistics 2/1: 4573
Roberts, C. and S. Campbell (2006) Talk on Trial: Job Interviews, Language
and Ethnicity DWP Report 344 http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rrs2006.
asp#talkontrial (accessed 30 September 2010)
Roberts, C., S. Campbell and J. Stenhouse (2007) Frequently Asked Questions:
Frequently Asked Questions and Quickly Found Answers. The Great British Job
Interview DVD and handbook Leicester: Job Centre Plus and London; The
Centre for Language, Discourse and Communication; Kings College London
Roberts, C. and M. Cooke (2009) Authenticity in the Adult ESOL classroom
and beyond TESOL Quarterly 43/4: 620642
Sandwall, K. (2010) I learn more at school: Ecological perspectives on
work placement for language learning T(t)o appear in Burns, A. and C.
Roberts Special Issue on adult migrant language TESOL Quarterly Oct 2010
Sarangi, S. and C. Roberts (2002) Discoursal (mis)alignments in professional
gatekeeping settings in Kramsch, C. (ed.), Language Acquisition and Language
Socialisation London: Continuum pp. 197227
Schluter, A. (2010) Language use patterns and attitudes among Kurdish
migrant workers in selected Istanbul establishments Paper given at
the conference Language, Migration and Labour University of Freiburg,
Switzerland 2829 January, 2010
Vertovec, S. (2006) The Emergence of Super-diversity in Britain Working Paper
No 25. Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford
Wakeford, R. (2009) Evaluation Report on the Clinical Skills Assessment of the
RCGP London: Royal College of General Practitioners
Language Issues Volume 21 Number 2

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Gerth, H. and C. Wright Mills (eds.) (1948) From Max Weber: Essays in
Sociology Abingdon: Routledge
Woolard, K. and B. Schieffelin (1994) Language ideology American Review of
Anthropology 23: 5582

Celia Roberts is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Kings College London

She has been working in the field of language, culture and discourse for
thirty years. Her publications in intercultural communication and second
language socialisation include: Language and Discrimination (Longman
1992 with Davies and Jupp), Achieving Understanding (Longman 1996 with
Bremer et al.); in the field of urban discourse, Talk, Work and Institutional
Order (Mouton 1999 with Sarangi); and in the field of language and cultural
learning, Language Learners as Ethnographers (Multilingual Matters 2001
with Byram et al.).
Email: celiaroberts@lineone.net

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