Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. This book weaves together two distinctive, but in some ways interconnected, approaches to the study of language and its relation to the social world: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Critical Rhetoric (CR). It establishes the two main prongs that constitute the denial of labor: overt denial and repressed denial. The book concerns one of the most dramatic stories to take place in the American university in the last twenty years: the unionization efforts of graduate student employees (GSEs) used by universities to teach and perform other kinds of labor. It concludes with some observations on the role of the university in constructing our understanding of cognitive labor and the more general degradation of labor that has been remaking the lives of contemporary workers.