Julie Lindquist, A place to stand: Politics and persuasion in a working-class bar. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. viii, 199. Pb $29.95.

Extract

In her preface to A place to stand, Julie Lindquist writes, “The experience of class in America is impossible to explain, difficult to render, and dangerous to address.” In spite of these caveats, she has combined her experience as a bartender with her graduate training in theoretical linguistics to render and address, if not to explain, rhetorical performance among the regulars in a working class-bar she calls the Smokehouse.