Date of Award
5-10-2026
Date Published
June 2026
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Communication and Rhetorical Studies
Advisor(s)
Sylvia Sierra
Keywords
Blue-collar;Community;Epistemics;Identity;Sociolinguistics;Stance
Abstract
This thesis examines how community membership is constructed in everyday conversations amongst rural blue-collar people in Upstate New York. Through a sociolinguistic approach, the data from this project was collected by recording naturally occurring conversations of rural blue-collar community over a year. These conversations were then transcribed and coded, seeking out pockets of blue-collar topics in the conversations. When doing this, blue-collar/blue-collar experiences were understood as manual work, typically not done in an office, and that does not often require a degree. Therefore, by drawing on sociolinguistic scholarship on identity, epistemics, and stance, this project argues that membership in this community can be defined as fluid, a status that comes and goes, rather than a rigid and fixed alignment. While geographic location and education level can change an individual’s interaction in the community, a shared rhetoric of thriftiness can allow that same individual alignment with the blue-collar community again. This dichotomy confirms the flux of the blue-collar in groups/out-groups, thus re-enforcing the argument that belonging in this community is fluid. Therefore, this work contributes to scholarship at the intersection of blue-collar life and sociolinguistic foundations on identity, epistemics, and stance.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Jones, Kennedy Reed, "Blue-Collar Belonging: How an Analysis of Identity, Epistemics, and Stance Reveal Fluid Community Membership in Rural Upstate New York" (2026). Theses - ALL. 1025.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/1025
