Wanted – straight talkers: stammering and aesthetic labour

The discussion of aesthetic labour has largely been confined to ‘looking good’. However, aesthetic labour also includes ‘sounding right’, where ‘excellent communication skills’ is an almost mandatory component of job advertisements. Much success in the labour market is therefore predicated on employees possessing the right verbal characteristics. In this article empirical research with men who stammer is used to extend our understanding of the issues which surround aesthetic labour. Findings demonstrate routine discrimination – by employers and the men themselves – with reference to a perceived speech–role fit. For the men, aesthetic labour is an embodied emotional labour: representing the effort between what is said and how it is said. Their sometime inability to sound right saw the men seek to enhance their knowledge or emphasize other communication attributes, such as listening. The article highlights the difficulties for anti-discrimination policy to offset the entrenched, socio-cultural nature of what constitutes employability.