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Dr Anne Schluter
PolyU Scholars Hub

Dr Anne Ambler Schluter

Associate Professor

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 other forms of multi-ethnic contact. 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 also represents an important theme within the post-colonial setting of Hong Kong, which is the site of two additional projects. One examines language proficiency, agency, and Filipina domestic workers’ discursive constructions of overseas workers as heroes. A second project focuses on trans-gender identities and social practices from a chronotopic perspective.

Finally, a newly established Hong Kong-based project takes a deep dive into the affective and multimodal forms of communication that help partnerships emerge between acupuncture practitioners and their patients.

Education and Academic Qualifications

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

Academic and Professional Experience

  • Associate Professor, Department of English and Communication, Faculty of Humanities, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (July 2023 - present)
  • Assistant Professor, Department of English and Communication, Faculty of Humanities, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Aug 2017 - July 2023)
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Language Education, Atatürk Faculty of Education, Marmara University (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

  • Phonetics and phonology

  • Second language acquisition

Research Interests

  • Language and power
  • Language and affect
  • Mutlimodality and semiotics
  • Language policy and planning
  • Multilingualism
  • Political discourse
  • Linguistic and semiotic landscapes
  • The political economy of language

Research Output

  1. Gonçalves, Kellie & Schluter, Anne. (December, 2023). Domestics talk: Language use and social practices in a multilingual, migrant-run workplace. Multilingual Matters: Bristol, U.K.
  2. Schluter, Anne A. (accepted). Articulating Kurdish identity through Kurdish: Roots, outcomes, and possibilities for unification. In J. Sheyholislami, G. Haig, H. Khezri, S. Akin, & E. Öpengin. Oxford Handbook of Kurdish Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  3. Schluter, Anne Ambler. (accepted). From the peripheral to the pluricentric: The empowering intersection of identity, ideology, and capital at a peripherally located kebab shop of Istanbul. In Y. Matsumoto and J.-O. Östman (Eds.), Identity perspectives from the periphery. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  4. Schluter, Anne (2021). 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 (pp. 225-248). London: Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76900-0
  5. Schluter, Anne. (2021). Language Practices through the Lens of the Neoliberal Imaginary in Kurdish-Owned Eating Establishments of Istanbul. In Kellie Gonçalves 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 9780367279004
  6. Schluter, Anne & Sansarkan, Mahmut. (2014). Language choice as a function of power and solidarity in the Istanbul workplace. In Ahmet Içduygu and Z. Gülru Göker (Eds.) Rethinking Migration and Integration: Bottom-Up Responses to Neoliberal Global Challenges (pp. 127-175). Istanbul: The Isis Press. ISBN 978-975-428-526-0.
  7. Schluter, Anne. (2014). Competing or compatible language identities in Istanbul’s Kurdish workplaces? In Kristina Kamp, Ayhan Kaya, Fuat Keyman & Özge Onursal-Beşgül (Eds), Contemporary Turkey at a Glance. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Local and Trans-local Dynamics. (pp. 125-138) Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer. ISBN 978-3-658-04916-4, DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-04916-4.
  1. Schluter, Anne Ambler. (2023). Investment and the inaudible mother tongue: Carving out a space for Kurdish in the soundscape of an Istanbul kebab restaurant. Language in Society, 1-24. doi:10.1017/S0047404523000611
  2. Albury, Nathan & Schluter, Anne Ambler. (2021). Reimagining language and belonging in the diaspora. In N. Albury and A. Schluter (SI Guest Editors) “Language and the Diaspora”. Special Issue of Lingua 263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2021.103157
  3. Schluter, Anne. (2021). Atatürk’s long shadow: Standard Turkish speakers as younger, more successful, and more attractive than their Kurdish-accented, regional counterparts. In O. 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 42 (9), 840-853. DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2020.1822851
  4. Schluter, Anne Ambler (2021). 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 263. DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102810
  5. Schluter, Anne Ambler (2021). The discursive framing of Turkey's pro-government town square movement. In A. Bhatia (SI Guest Editor) “World Englishes and critical discourse analysis”. World Englishes 39 (4), 594-608. https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12503
  6. 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 20 (2), 167-180. DOI: 10.1080/14708477.2020.1722687
  7. Gonçalves, Kellie & Schluter, Anne (2020). Introduction: Language, inequality and global care work. In K. Gonçalves & 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
  8. Chatterjee, Anindita & Schluter, Anne (2020). Maid to maiden: The false promise of English for the daughters of domestic workers of Kolkata. In Kellie Gonçalves & 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
  9. 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), 417-442. DOI 10.1515/applirev-2017-0051
  10. Schluter, Anne (2018). When social pressure is more powerful than the boss: workplace language policies by Kurds that restrict Kurdish. In Kellie Gonçalves (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
  11. Gonçalves, Kellie & 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. 

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