A central concern in sociolinguistic ethnographies has been how people use language to make social distinctions. This article discusses the relevance of paying closer attention to the role of machines as actants in communication and social distinction-making processes. It analyses audio and video-recorded workplace interactions between humans and machines in a metal foundry in the Dutch-German borderland. Specifically, it focuses on several cases of a breakdown of a production process, a frequently observed phenomenon in the foundry. The cases show that: (1) the production work entails many improvised human–human and human–machine interactions as opposed to Taylorised working practices; (2) the machine-actants initiate and afford (re)negotiations of situated, hierarchical workplace relations through these interactions; and (3) the question whether these interactions should be considered ‘language-centred’ or ‘language-marginal’ partly depends on an ideological, conceptual distinction between what counts as ‘language’ and what not.

中文翻译：

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分解和组合：包括蓝领工作环境的社会语言民族志中的机器行为者

社会语言民族志的一个核心问题是人们如何使用语言来进行社会区分。本文讨论了密切关注机器在交流和社会区分过程中作为行动者的作用的相关性。它分析了在荷兰-德国边境的金属铸造厂中人与机器之间的工作场所交互的音频和视频记录。具体来说，它侧重于几个生产过程故障的案例，这是铸造厂中经常观察到的现象。这些案例表明：（1）生产工作需要许多即兴的人-人和人-机交互，而不是泰勒化的工作实践；(2) 机器行动者通过这些互动发起并提供（重新）协商情境化、等级化的工作场所关系；