Perhaps equally important to analyzing the language of work and what that language means is also considering when working people want to talk about their work vs. when working people don’t want to talk about their work . . .
Similar to 20th-century Chicago author + radio host Studs Terkel’s book of interviews with working class Americans, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, “Working People is a podcast about working-class lives in 21st-century America. In every episode you’ll hear interviews with workers from around the country, from all walks of life. We’ll talk about their life stories, their jobs, politics, and families, their joys and hopes and frustrations. Overall, Working People aims to share and celebrate the diverse stories of working-class people, to remind ourselves that our stories matter, and to build a sense of shared struggle and solidarity between workers around the country.”
“Can the Working Class Speak” by Maximillian Alavarez(Current Affairs)
“No one wants to talk, but everyone’s got something to say. I can feel it, a shared heaviness sitting on all of us, invisibly filling the room like a gas leak. But no one really knows how to articulate it or what to do with it. We’re all just wading through that mud-like thickness from one minute to the next, from the time we wake up till the time we go to bed. Occasionally, someone cracks a joke, but no one laughs that hard. We share some stories about good, bad, and horrible assignments. That’s about it. We don’t talk about our paychecks or our families. We don’t ask if this is the only way it has to be.
I certainly don’t want to talk about it with my friends or family either. I don’t want to bother them. It’s my problem to deal with. More than that, though, deep down, I don’t want to talk about it with anyone, because talking about it means facing it, head-on; it means prying open the ominously-rattling manhole cover and staring into the pink, dripping teeth of the real. And that is, quite literally, the last thing I want to do.
What would I tell them, anyway? Where would I start? And how could I even begin to describe the smell?”