Experiencing emotional labor: an analysis of the discursive construction of emotional labor

Abstract

This study analyzes how employees at a university recreation center discursively construct their experiences of emotional labor, how they conceptualize such behavior in terms of displaying unfelt emotions and faking in good and bad faith, and what these discursive constructions reveal about their perceptions of authenticity. The findings demonstrate that workers construct emotional labor as a natural ability and as performing a role. People who construct emotional labor as a natural ability depict themselves as the controller of their workplace emotion. They display unfelt emotions in good faith when they do so to uphold another’s face, and they believe that they possess a true self. Employees who construct emotional labor as performing a role view their supervisors as controller of their workplace emotion. They fake emotions in good faith when doing so uphold their own face, and they fake in bad faith when it upholds the face of a co-worker who they feel needs to be disciplined. These people do not possess a sense of authentic self. They view themselves as multi-faceted and they say that they use social comparison to determine how to behave in particular situations. These findings reveal previously unexplored complexities in scholars’ conceptions of emotional labor and authenticity.