Dr Anne Ambler Schluter Assistant Professor

Location AG404
Phone +852 2766 7514
mail anne.schluter@polyu.edu.hk

Open Platform for University Scholars
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Research Overview As a sociolinguist, I envision communication as emergent from users’ needs in a given time and space. Setting-specific styles, genres, and registers help to shape the forms – both linguistic and extralinguistic – that communication assumes. If multiple languages serve important functions within highlighted domains, analysis of these functions provides insights into multilingual repertoires. Power relations, language policies, language attitudes, and their concomitant discourses interact at various scalar levels to inform the strategic and appropriate deployment of these repertoires. Rich sites for observing such dynamics include those that feature multilingualism as a result of migration, colonial legacy, and/or indigenous multiethnicity. Case study analyses shine light on the inner-workings of these mechanisms in small-scale settings.

My research is based on data collected from each of these types of settings. Internal migration, Turkish-only language policies, and socio-political pressures influence the language practices and ideologies of the Kurdish restaurant workers in my Istanbul-based work. The legacy of these policies informs my study of Turkey-born Kurds in an external migration context: a Kurdish diaspora currently residing in Warabi/Kawaguchi, Japan.

Migration and power relations also feature prominently in my other on-going projects. Highlighting Lusophone and Hispanophone employees’ development of accommodation abilities and multimodal communicative resources in English-dominant workplaces, one of these projects focuses on a migrant-run housecleaning company in New Jersey, USA. The dominance of English varies considerably within the post-colonial setting of Hong Kong, which is the site of a fourth project that investigates affect and communication among Filipina employees of an LGBTQ+ bar in Central Hong Kong.




Education and Academic Qualifications Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Texas at Austin
Master of Science in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Florida International University




Academic and Professional Experiences Assistant Professor, Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Aug 2017 - present)
Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Language Education, Atatürk College of Education, Marmara University (Istanbul, Turkey) (2014 - 2017)
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies, College of Education and Human Development, University of Texas at San Antonio (San Antonio, TX, USA) (2013 - 2014)




Teaching Areas Sociolinguistics
Discourse analysis
Debate and argumentation
Introduction to linguistics




Research Interests
Language and power
Language and affect
Language policy and planning
Multilingualism
Political discourse
Linguistic and semiotic landscapes
The political economy of language
Multimodal communication



Research Output

Books and book chapters
Gon?alves, Kellie & Schluter, Anne. (under contract) Domestics talk: Language use and social practices in a multilingual, migrant-run workplace. Language at Work series. Multilingual Matters: Bristol, U.K.

Schluter, Anne (in press). The historical tie that binds: Deploying Kurdish to index ownership, authenticity, collective memory, and distinction within Kawaguchi’s Kurdish metalinguistic community in Netta Avineri and Jesse Harasta (Eds.) Reconceptualizing Language Affiliation, Use, and Proficiency. Palgrave MacMillan.

Schluter, Anne. (2020). Language Practices through the Lens of the Neoliberal Imaginary in Kurdish-Owned Eating Establishments of Istanbul. In Kellie Gon?alves and Helen Kelly-Holmes (Eds.) Language, Global Mobilities, Blue-Collar Workers, and Blue-Collar Workplaces. (pp. 128-146) (Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism) Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 978

Schluter, Anne & Sansarkan, Mahmut. (2014). Language choice as a function of power and solidarity in the Istanbul workplace. In Ahmet I?duygu and Z. Gülru G?ker (Eds.) Rethinking Migration and Integration: Bottom-Up Responses to Neoliberal Global Challenges. (pp. 127-175) The Isis Press: Istanbul, Turkey. ISBN 978-975-428-526-0.

Schluter, Anne. (2014). Competing or compatible language identities in Istanbul’s Kurdish workplaces? In Kristina Kamp, Ayhan Kaya, Fuat Keyman & ?zge Onursal-Be?gül (Eds), Contemporary Turkey at a Glance. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Local and Trans-local Dynamics. (pp. 125-138) Springer: Wiesbaden, Germany. ISBN 978-3-658-04916-4, DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-04916-4.





Selected journal publications
Albury, Nathan & Schluter, Anne. (in revision). Introduction to language and the diaspora. In N. Albury and A. Schluter (SI Guest Editors) “Language and the Diaspora”. Special Issue of Lingua.

Schluter, Anne. (2020). Atatürk’s long shadow: Standard Turkish speakers as younger, more successful, and more attractive than their Kurdish-accented, regional counterparts. In Olivia Walsh (SI Guest Editor) “In the Shadow of the Standard. Standard Language Ideology and Attitudes towards Non-Standard Varieties and Usages” in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2020.1822851

Schluter, Anne Ambler. (2020). Measuring the effectiveness of theory in action: grass-roots initiatives and social justice for Japan’s Kurdish migrants. In H. Ladegaard and A. Phipps (SI Guest Editors) “Translational research: Language, intercultural communication, and social action.” Language and Intercultural Communication. DOI: 10.1080/14708477.2020.1722687

Schluter, Anne Ambler (2020). Fitting into a more appealing diaspora than my own: Positioning Ecuadorians and Hondurans within the Newark-area Portuguese-centric diaspora of New Jersey, U.S.A. In N. Albury and A. Schluter (SI Guest Editors) “Language and the Diaspora”. Lingua. DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102810

Gon?alves, Kellie & Schluter, Anne. (2020). Introduction: Language, inequality and global care work. In K. Gon?alves & A. Schluter (SI Guest Editors) “Language, inequality and global care work”. Special Issue of The International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2020 (262). 1-16. DOI: 10.1515/ijsl-2019-2067

Chatterjee, Anindita. & Schluter, Anne. (2020). Maid to maiden: The false promise of English for the daughters of domestic workers of Kolkata. In Kellie Gon?alves & Anne Schluter (SI Guest Editors) “Language, inequality and global care work”. Special issue of International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2020 (232). 67-96. DOI: 10.1515/ijsl-2019-2070

Schluter, Anne. (2019). Hybrid language practices on Turkey’s national Kurdish television station: Iconic perspectives on form. In M. Dorleijn & J. Nortier (SI Guest Editors) “Metalinguistic discourse on multilingual urban and youth speech styles and multilingual awareness of linguistic practices”. Applied Linguistics Review 10 (3). Impact Factor for 2016: 0.351. DOI 10.1515/applirev-2017-0051

Schluter, Anne. (2018). When social pressure is more powerful than the boss: workplace language policies by Kurds that restrict Kurdish. In Kellie Gon?alves (SI Guest Editor) "Managing people with language: language policy, planning and practice in multilingual 'blue-collar' workplaces: a global perspective". Language Policy 19 (2020), 339-361. DOI 10.1007/s10993-018-9505-3

Gon?alves, Kellie. and Schluter, Anne. (2017). “Please do not leave any notes for the cleaning lady, as many do not speak English fluently”: Policy, power, and language brokering in a multilingual workplace. Language Policy 16 (3). 241-265. DOI 10.1007/s10993-016-9406-2. Five-Year Impact Factor: 1.585.