Individuals employ general, cognitively grounded categorization processes to form expectations for interactions with members of other social groups. Such categorizations sometimes surface in the form of racial, ethnic, or other stereotypes. But although much literature describes and/or tests the cognitive nature of stereotyping and categorization, less investigates how stereotypes and categories are formed in casual interaction, through casual discourse. This article analyzes data from 15 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with restaurant servers to investigate how they categorize customers by drawing on racial stereotypes and stereotypes related to class and/or cultural capital to produce two types of discriminatory discourse: ‘racetalk’ and what we term ‘regiontalk’. Our analyses suggest potential differences in the servers’ processes of categorization according to patron type, which we interpret with regard to the larger context of racism and classism in contemporary U.S. society.
Bonfiglio, T.P. (2002) Race and the Rise of Standard American. Berlin: de Gruyter .
2.
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2001) White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Boulder, CO: Rienner .
3.
Bonilla-Silva, E. and Doane, A.W. (2003) White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism. New York: Routledge .
4.
Bonilla-Silva, E. and Forman, T.A. (2000) ‘“I Am Not a Racist But...”: Mapping White College Students’ Racial Ideology in the USA’ , Discourse & Society11(1): 50–85 .
5.
Brewster, Z.W. (2002) ‘Alienation and Exploitation Among Restaurant Servers: A Qualitative Analysis’, Master's thesis, Western Kentucky University, USA.
6.
Brewster, Z.W. (2003) ‘Restaurant Servers: Status Differentiation and Their Struggle to Gain Occupational Power’ , Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society: New Orleans, LA, USA.
7.
Browne, I. and Kennelly, I. (1999) ‘Stereotypes and Realities: Images of Black Women in the Labor Market’, in I. Browne (ed.) Latinas and African American Women at Work, pp. 302–326. New York: Russell Sage Foundation .
8.
Butler, S. and Skipper, J.K. , Jr. (1980) ‘Waitressing, Vulnerability, and Job Autonomy: The Case of the Risky Tip’ , Sociology of Work and Occupations7(4): 487–502 .
9.
Cameron, D. (1995) Verbal Hygiene. New York: Routledge .
10.
DeCecco, J. , ed. (1995) Homophobia: An Overview, New York: Haworth Press .
11.
Dirks, D. and Rice, S. (2004a) ‘Dining While Black: Racial Rituals and the Black American Restaurant Experience’, in R. Coates (ed.) Race and Ethnicity – Across Time, Space, and Discipline, pp. 255–277. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill .
12.
Dirks, D. and Rice, S. (2004b) ‘Dining While Black: Tipping as Social Artifact’ , Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly45(1): 30–47 .
13.
Eckert, P. (2004) ‘Variation and a Sense of Place’, in C. Fought (ed.) Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections, pp. 107–118. New York: Oxford University Press .
14.
Elan, E. (2001) ‘Workers Want Respect – Just A Little Bit, Just A Little Bit’ , Nation's Restaurant News35(12): 98–99 .
15.
Fairclough, N. (1992) Critical Language Awareness. London: Longman .
16.
Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman .
17.
Foschi, M. , Lai, L. and Sigerson, K. (1994) ‘Gender and Double Standards in the Assessment of Job Applicants’ , Social Psychological Quarterly57: 326–339 .
18.
Frankenberg, R. (1993) White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. London: Routledge .
19.
Goodwin, M.H. (1991) He-Said-She-Said: Talk As Social Organization Among Black Children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press .
20.
Handler, J.F. and Hasenfeld, Y. (1991) The Moral Construction of Poverty. Newbury Park, CA: Sage .
21.
Hartigan, J. , Jr. (2003) ‘Who Are These White People?: ‘Rednecks,’ ‘Hillbillies,’ and ‘White Trash’ as Marked Racial Subjects’, in A.W. Doane and E. Bonilla-Silva (eds) White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism, pp. 95–111. New York: Routledge .
22.
Hays, S. (2003) Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform. Oxford: Oxford University Press .
23.
Herman, D. (forthcoming) ‘May the Circle Be Unbroken: Language Prejudice as Hermeneutic Pathology’, in A. Schiller and T. LaVopa (eds) Contextualizing Ethnicity: Conversations among Disciplines.
24.
Hewitt, J.P. and Stokes, R. (1975) ‘Disclaimers’ , American Sociological Review40(1): 1–11 .
25.
Irvine, J. and Gal, S. (2000) ‘Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation’, in P. Kroskrity (ed.) Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, pp. 35–84. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press .
26.
Kirschenman, J. and Neckerman, K.M. (1991) ‘’We’d Love to Hire Them, But...’: The Meaning of Race for Employers’, in C. Jencks and P. Petersen (eds) The Urban Underclass, pp. 203–232. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute .
27.
Kroskrity, P.V. (ed.) (2000) Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research .
28.
Kroskrity, P.V. (2004) ‘Language Ideologies’, in A. Duranti (ed.) A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, pp. 496–517. Oxford: Blackwell .
29.
Labov, W. (1972) Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press .
30.
Lamont, M. (1992) Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and American Upper-Middle Class. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
31.
Lamont, M. (2000) The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and The Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation .
32.
Lamont, M. and Molnár, V. (2002) ‘The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences’ , Annual Review of Sociology28: 167–195 .
33.
Leidner, R. (1993) Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press .
34.
Lippi-Green, R. (1997) English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States, New York: Routledge .
35.
Lynn, M. (2004a) ‘Black-White Differences in Tipping of Various Services Providers’ , Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34(11): 2261–2271 .
36.
Lynn, M. (2004b) ‘Ethnic Differences in Tipping: A Matter of Familiarity with Tipping Norms’ , Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly45(1): 12–22 .
37.
Lynn, M. and Thomas-Haysbert, C. (2003) ‘Ethnic Differences in Tipping: Evidence, Explanations, and Implications’ , Journal of Applied Social Psychology33: 1747–1772 .
38.
McCammon, H.J. and Griffin, L.J. (2000) ‘Workers and Their Customers and Clients’ , Work and Occupations27: 278–293 .
39.
Milroy, J. and L. Milroy (1999) Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English, 3rd ed.London: Routledge .
40.
Milroy, L. (2004) ‘Language Ideologies and Linguistic Change’, in C. Fought (ed.) Sociolinguistic Variation: Critical Reflections, pp. 161–177. New York: Oxford University Press .
41.
Moss, P. and Tilly, C. (2001) Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill, and Hiring in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation .
42.
Noll, E. D. and Arnold, S. (2004) ‘Racial Differences in Restaurant Tipping: Evidence from the Field’ , Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly45(1): 23–29 .
43.
Paules, G.F. (1991) Dishing it Out: Power and Resistance among Waitresses in a New Jersey Restaurant. Philadelphia: Temple University Press .
44.
Preston, D. (1982) ‘Perceptual Dialectology: Mental Maps of United States Dialects from a Hawaiian Perspective’ , Working Papers in Linguistics14(2): 5–49 .
45.
Preston, D. (1993) ‘Folk Dialectology’, in D. Preston (ed.) American Dialect Research, pp. 333–388. Philadelphia: John Benjamins .
46.
Reed, J.S. (1986) Southern Folk Plain and Fancy: Native White Social Types. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press .
47.
Ridgeway, C. (1997) ‘Interaction and the Conservation of Gender Inequality: Considering Employment’ , American Sociological Review62: 218–235 .
48.
Roediger, D.R. (1991) The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. London: Verso .
49.
Roediger, D.R. (1994) ‘Whiteness and Ethnicity in the History of “White Ethnics” in the United States’, in D.R. Roediger (ed.) Towards the Abolition of Whiteness, pp. 181–198. New York: Verso .
50.
Schieffelin, B. , W oolard, K. and Kroskrity, P.V. , eds (1998) Language Ideologies, Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press .
51.
Sherwood, J. (2004) ‘Talk about Country Clubs: Ideology and the Reproduction of Privilege’, PhD Dissertation, North Carolina State University, Raleigh.
52.
Silverstein, M. (1998) ‘Contemporary Transformations of Local Linguistic Communities’ , Annual Review of Anthropology27: 401–426 .
53.
Smitherman-Donaldson, G. and van Dijk, T.A. eds (1988) Discourse and Discrimination. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press .
54.
Tilly, C. (1998) Durable Inequality. Berkeley: University of California Press .
55.
Van Dijk, T.A. (1984) Prejudice in Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins .
56.
Van Dijk, T.A. (1987) Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk. Newbury Park, CA: Sage .
57.
Van Dijk, T.A. (1991) Racism and the Press. London: Routledge .
58.
Van Dijk, T.A. (1993a) ‘Critical and Descriptive Goals in Discourse Analysis’ , Journal of Pragmatics9: 793–763 .
59.
Van Dijk, T.A. (1993b) Elite Discourse and Racism. Newbury Park, CA: Sage .
60.
Van Dijk, T.A. (1993c) ‘Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis’ , Discourse & Society4: 249–283 .
61.
Van Dijk, T.A. (1996) Discourse, Racism, and Ideology. La Laguna: RCEI Ediciones .
62.
Van Dijk, T.A. (2000) ‘Discourse and the Denial of Racism’, in A. Jaworski and N. Coupland (eds) The Discourse Reader, pp. 541–558. New York: Routledge .
63.
Waldinger, R. (1997) ‘Black/Immigrant Competition Reassessed: New Evidence from Los Angeles’ , Sociological Perspectives40: 365–386 .
64.
Waldinger, R. and Lichter, M.I. (2003) How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press .
65.
Wetherell, M. and Potter, J. (1992) Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf .
66.
Wodak, R. (1995) ‘Critical Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis’, in J. Verschueren , J.O. Östman and J. Blommaert (eds) Handbook of Pragmatics, pp. 204–210. Amsterdam: John Benjamins .
67.
Wodak, R. (1997a) ‘Critical Discourse Analysis and the Study of Doctor–Patient Interaction’, in B.L. Gunnarsson , P. Linell and B. Nordberg (eds) The Construction of Professional Discourse, pp. 173–200. London: Longman .
68.
Wodak, R. (1997b) ‘Das Ausland and Anti-Semitic Discourses: The Discursive Construction of the Other’, in S. Riggins (ed.) The Language of Politics and Exclusion, pp. 65–87. London: Sage .
69.
Wolfram, W. , Adger, C.T. and Christian, D. (1999) Dialects in Schools and Communities. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum .
70.
Wright, E.R. , Gronfein, W.P. and Owens, T.J. (2000) ‘Deinstitutionalization, Social Rejection, and the Self-Esteem of Former Mental Patients’ , Journal of Health and Social Behavior41(1): 68–90 .
71.
Zentella, A.C. (1997) Growing up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York. Malden, MA: Blackwell .
