A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working-Class Bar (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics)

A Place to Stand: Politics and Persuasion in a Working-Class Bar (Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics) by Lindquist, Julie. Paperback edition. ISBN: 9780195140385.

Linguists have become increasingly interested in examining how class culture is socially constructed and maintained through spoken language. Julie Lindquists examination of the linguistic ethnography of a working-class bar in Chicago is an important and original contribution to the field. She examines how regular patrons argue about political issues in order to create a group identity centered around political ideology. She also shows how their political arguments are actually a rhetorical genre, one which creates a delicate balance between group solidarity and individual identity, as well as a tenuous and ambivalent sense of class identity.