American Anthropological Association Conference

1
American Anthropological Association Conference

• Becoming Cosmetologists Language Socialization
  in an African American Beauty College
• Lanita Jacobs-Huey
• Anthropology and American Studies Ethnicity
• University of Southern California
• November 19, 2003

2
Why Study Hair?

• Cultural Significance of Place
• Beauty Salon/Kitchen as Quintessential Black
  Womens Space
• Cultural Significance of Practice
• Hair Care Practice as Cultural and Highly
  Gendered events
• Practices and Places of Hair Care are, likewise,
  Important Sites of Language and Identity
  Socialization
• Cultural Significance of Hair
• Socio-Political Semiotics of Hair
• Cultural Discourse(s) around both Hair and Hair
  Care

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Cultural Sites of Black Hair Care

• Home Hair Care (Oakland, CA)
• Beauty Salons (Oakland, CA, Los Angeles, CA)
• Regional International Hair Expos (Los Angeles,
  CA, Columbia, SC, Atlanta, GA, London, England)
• Hair Educational Seminars (Los Angeles and
  Beverly Hills, CA, Charleston and Columbia, SC,
  Atlanta, GA, London, England)
• Christian Cosmetology Association (Los Angeles,
  CA)
• Electronic/Listserv Communities (Cyberspace)
• Cosmetology School (Charleston, SC)
•  200 Hours of Recorded Data

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From the Kitchen to the Parlor Language
Becoming in Black Womens Hair Care

• 6-year, multi-sited ethnographic study
• Explored womens talk in beauty salons, hair
  seminars, cosmetology schools, bible study
  meetings, and, more recently, black standup
  comedy
• Issues of representation often at heart of my
  observations and discoveries

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The Cosmetology Institute Learning from Mistakes

• Breaches (Garfinkel 1967) or breaks in frames
  (Goffman 1981) happen when clients or stylists
  act out of line or in other ways contest or
  subvert their respective role expectations as
  hair novices and hair experts
• Clients can break implicit frames governing
  client-stylist negotiations by asking too many
  questions (Jacobs-Huey 1996a) or actively
  monitoring the progression of their hairstyle

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Learning from Mistakes

• Stylist, too, can disrupt implicit institutional
  scripts (Schank Abelson 1977) governing
  client-stylist negotiations
• Publicly or indirectly criticizing colleagues
  work
• Lexical breaches (saying curling iron versus
  curler) can mitigate the professional nature of
  cosmetological practice
• Breaches often compel speakers to bracket or
  animate what went wrong or was supposed to happen
  in interaction (Schieffelin 1990)

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Learning from Mistakes

• Ethnographic discourse analys-es of breach
  episodes reveal
• How clients, stylists, and students bracket
  specific linguistic exchanges
• Implicit linguistic ideologies about the
  communicative roles that distinguish service
  providers from service recipients in hair care
• Ideas about communicative stances deemed
  suitable for students and their clients during
  hair care
• The voices (e.g., cultural, professional)
  employed by clients, students, stylists in the
  execution and/or resolution of a breach
• Speakers mental states and intentions in the
  perpetration of a breach

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Linguistic Breaches in the Field

• Lanita Mrs. Collins do you plan on
  washing your hair today?
• Mrs. Collins Do you mean shampoo? Because you
  wash dogs not hair.

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Linguistic Breaches beyond the Field

• The Essay Like Combing through My Kitchen with
  a Fine-Toothed Comb
• The Ultimate Breach Calling My Mother Out of
  Her Name
• The Reprimand I am not a hairdresser! I dont
  dress the hair. I cultivate the hair.

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Insights from the Breach

• Language a means of constructing expert identity
• Professional talk as a means of socializing
  novices into proper discourse knowledge and roles

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Reverberations across the Data

• Language Socialization in Cosmetology School
• Language Socialization in Advanced Hair Care
  Seminars
• Contending with Vulnerability Exposing the
  Breach

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Reverberations across the Data

• Language Socialization in Cosmetology School
• Language Socialization in Advanced Hair Care
  Seminars
• Contending with Vulnerability Exposing the
  Breach

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Becoming Cosmetologists

• Learning the Science of Hair Learning the
  Professional Language of Cosmetology
• Students learn to abandon Cultural/Kitchen
  Terminology for Scientific Terminology
• Students learn the symbolic power of word choice
  and correction as a rhetorical display of ones
  expertise

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Client-Stylist Negotiation at TCI

• Client Hi, I want to get something for this
  bad hair day heh heh
• Ms. Smith What do you want?
• Client A perm
• Ms. Smith A relaxer?
• Client A relaxer
• Ms. Smith Okay, that will be 20

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Client-Stylist Negotiation at TCI

• Client Hi, I want to get something for this bad
  hair day heh heh
• Ms. Smith What do you want?
• Client A perm
• Ms. Smith A relaxer?
• Client A relaxer
• Ms. Smith Okay, that will be 20

Ms. Smiths rising intonation marks her reply as
a question an explicit repair
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Client-Stylist Negotiation at TCI

• Client Hi, I want to get something for this
  bad hair day heh heh
• Ms. Smith What do you want?
• Client A perm
• Ms. Smith A relaxer?
• Client A relaxer
• Ms. Smith Okay, that
  will be 20

Ms. Smiths rising intonation marks her reply as
a question an explicit repair
Only when client provides right answer is her
request legitimized before all
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The Work of Correction

• Linguistic means of displaying expertise and
  socializing novices
• Ms. Smiths correction establishes her expertise
  as a stylist/teacher
• Ms. Smiths repair also socializes the client to
  respect her knowledge and use proper salon
  communication when making a hairstyle request
• The clients subsequent visit proves this
  socialization to be a success
• Breaches in preferred courses of discursive
  action can be actively or tacitly used to provoke
  repairs and, as such, act as mediators of
  language and cultural socialization (Mertz 1992)

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Reverberations across the Data

• Language Socialization in Cosmetology School
• Language Socialization in Advanced Hair Care
  Seminars
• Contending with Vulnerability Exposing the
  Breach

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Language Socialization in Advanced Hair Care
Seminars

• We are like Doctors Transcript 1

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We are Like Doctors

• Language as a Mediator of Professional Identity
• Meta-pragmatic Ideology of Language
• Language as a resource in the socialization of
  professional beings
• Whats at stake?

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Whats at Stake?

• Clients as Potential Competitors Transcript 2

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Clients as Potential Competitors

• Dilemma Hairstylists skill and knowledge must
  be constructed and is oft-contested
• Because clients are not dependent on stylists
  to the same degree as patients are on doctors,
  Khalif stresses the importance of obscuring
  clients lay knowledge and hair care skill
• Stylists rely on the register of medical
  discourse and an ideological alignment with
  doctors to represent themselves as experts

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Whats at Stake?

• Clients as Potential Competitors
• Cosmetologists expertise is subject to
  contestation, resistance, and ridicule

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Whats at Stake? Social Face

• Expositions on the Difficult Client
• She client steady struggling to see. I turn
  her chair this way, she turning against me
  (Deirdre, TCI Student)
• After Lynn (TCI student) completes a clients
  hair, the client picks up Lynns curling iron and
  proceeds to curl her hair. After the client
  leaves, another sympathetic client observes, You
  have to be patient, huh? Lynn responds, Yeah,
  I have to be in my profes-sion. The client
  adds, Yeah, I do too but that client tried to
  curl her hair with your curler! Lynn replies,
  Yeah, but I took it away from her.

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Whats at Stake?

• Clients as Potential Competitors
• Cosmetologists expertise is subject to
  contestation, resistance, and ridicule

26
Whats at Stake?

• Hairstylists? You know yall aint sh! right?
  Comedy Clip

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Black Humor as a Marker of Local Knowledge

• Black/urban standup comedy as a communal forum
• Black comedy exposes in-group/cultural knowledge
  and secrets
• Black comedy as counterhegemonic narrative
• Black comedy speaks truth to power
• Jokes about black stylists and black hair salons,
  as well as audiences laughter, reveal local
  knowledge

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Reverberations across the Data

• Language Socialization in Cosmetology School
• Language Socialization in Advanced Hair Care
  Seminars
• Contending with Vulnerability Exposing the
  Breach

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Contending with Vulnerability

• Cosmetology Students Vulnerable Subjects
• Clients challenges can assaults on students
  professional face
• Resolution of linguistic breaches further reveal
  what is at stake in language and
  representa-tion for student and licensed stylists

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The Case of Multiple Breaches

• Notes from the Field (See Handout, Pg. 3)

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The Case of Multiple Breaches

• Notes from the Field (See Handout, Pg. 3)
• Clients distinction between cut and trim and
  reference to her 46 years of hair care service
  situate her as co-expert
• Ms. Collins must empathize with the client, while
  preserving her own professional face - even as
  the client threatens to subvert it
• High-stakes engagement before attentive audience
  of vulnerable and impressionable bystanders
  (e.g., clients and students)

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The Case of Multiple Breaches

• Notes from the Field (See Handout, Pg. 3)
• Deirdre, an unratified partici-pant, signifies
  on the perceived inappropriateness of the
  clients verbal and nonverbal behavior Acting
  like she the stylist No she didnt!
• The client recognizes herself to be the intended
  target and, in turn, exposes and critiques
  Deirdres interference
• Mrs. Collins also attempts to silence Deirdre
• Mrs. Collins failure to align with Deirdre is
  viewed by students as a stance of disloyalty

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The Case of Multiple Breaches

• What counts as a linguistic breach?
• Who is responsible for the breach (i.e., client,
  student, teacher)?
• These questions become the focus of a subsequent
  lesson on Salon Management (Transcripts 3-4)

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Wheres the Breach?

• Transcript 3 (See Handout, Pg. 4)

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Wheres the Breach?

• Transcript 3 (See Handout, Pg. 4)
• Mrs. Collins comments seem apropos to the
  earlier exchange involving her, Deirdre, and the
  disgruntled client (lines 16-20)
• Deirdre contests the relevance of the textbook
  script to interactions at the school she feels
  clients unfairly exploit student labor and treat
  them poorly (line 21)

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Wheres the Breach?

• Transcript 4 (See Handout, Pg. 5-6)

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Wheres the Breach?

• Transcript 4 (See Handout, Pg. 5-6)
• Deirdre invokes the case of multiple breaches
  and again critiques the clients perceived breach
  of stylists professional face (lines 41-43)
• Deirdre acknowledges her veiled critique of
  client (line 42)
• Mrs. Collins explicitly problematizes Deirdres
  involvement (lines 44, 46)

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Wheres the Breach?

• Transcript 4 (See Handout, Pg. 5-6)
• In particular, Mrs. Collins suggests that a
  client-stylist negotiation is a personal affair
  and Deirdre breached this implicit contract
  (lines 55, 57, 60, 66, 72, 75)
• Deirdre disavows her veiled critique of the
  client (lines 56, 58)
• Deirdre problematizes clients expert stance
  (lines 71, 73-74)

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Wheres the Breach?

• Transcript 4 (See Handout, Pg. 5-6)
• Deirdre perceives Mrs. Collins to be complicit in
  breaching implicit linguistic protocols governing
  stylists conduct by occasionally obliging
  clients hair care requests for a seasoned
  cosmetologist (lines 49, 67-69, 76-91)
• While Deirdre and Mrs. Collins disagree on the
  exact nature and person(s) responsible for the
  breach, they broach a consensus on clients need
  to understand the fact that students are (still)
  learning (lines 93-95)

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Final Remarks

• Language is an important mediator of stylists
  professional identity
• Lexical Choices
• Linguistic Ideology
• Language socialization is a principal means
  through which cosmetology students become
  cosmetologists and stylists affirm their
  membership in a shared (and ever vulnerable)
  community of practice
• Correction is but one of many means of
  socializing novices to respect stylists
  authority and knowledge

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Learning from the Breach

• Breaches reveal the linguistic ideologies and
  strategies which comprise stylists face-work
  (Goffman 1967)
• Students are socialized through and to
  professional identity and language use even in
  the violation and subsequent reconstitution of
  communal and institutional meta-scripts.
• The professional and cultural discourse
  strategies student and licensed stylists employ
  to mitigate threats to their individual and
  collective social face reveal implicit linguistic
  contracts governing their service-related
  encounters.

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Learning from the Breach

• Whether enacted by clients or stylists,
  unwittingly or intentionally breaches are prime
  occasions in which to investigate TCI students
  acquisition and use of professional literacies

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References

• Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in
  Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
  Prentice-Hill, Inc.
• Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk.
  Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self
  in Everyday Life. New York Doubleday
• Jacobs-Huey, Lanita. 1996a. Negotiating Price
  in an African American Beauty Salon. Issues in
  Applied Linguistics, (June) Vol. 7, No. 1 45-59.
• Jacobs-Huey, Lanita. 1996b. Negotiating Social
  Identity in an African American Beauty Salon.
  Forthcoming in the Proceedings of the Berkeley
  Women and Language Group Conference (April)
  Berkeley, CA.
• Mertz, Elizabeth. 1992. Linguistic ideology and
  praxis in U.S. law school classrooms.
  Pragmatics, Vol.2., No. 3 325-334.
  (September).
• Schank, Roger and Robert Abelson. 1977.
  Scripts, Plans and Knowledge. In P.
  Johnson-Laird and P. Wason (Eds.) Thinking
  Readings in Cognitive Science. Cambridge
  Cambridge University Press.
• Schieffelin, Bambi. 1986. Teasing and Shaming
  in Kaluli Childrens Interactions. In B.B.
  Schieffelin and E. Ochs (Eds.) Language
  Socialization Across Cultures (165-181).
  Cambridge University Press.