Text trajectories in a multilingual call centre

The linguistic ethnography of a calling script

Bibliographic Data

ID2882871
AuthorsJohanna Woydack (Vienna University of Economics and Business, corresponding author), Ben Rampton (0000-0002-2437-1944, King's College London)
Year2016
Volume45
Issue5
Pages709-732
Publication date2016-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage in Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047404516000610
OpenAlexW2526491770
LanguageEN
Citations received29
References cited41

Call centres have been widely criticised as standardised workplaces, and the imposition of calling scripts is often characterised as dehumanising and deskilling. But these accounts lack close analysis of how scripts are actually produced, taken up, and used by call-centre workers, and they are generally locked into dualistic analyses of control and resistance. In contrast, this article combines long-term ethnography with transcontextual analysis of the production, circulation and uptake of calling scripts. This reveals a good deal of collective and individual agency in processes of text-adaptation, and produces a rather more nuanced picture of work in a call centre. (Call centres, text trajectories, linguistic ethnography, standardisation

Adaptation (eye) · Agency (philosophy) · Call centre · Deskilling · Ethnography · Linguistics · Scripting language · Social science · Sociology · Work (physics) · Anthropology · Computer Science · Emotional Labor in Professions · Labor Movements and Unions · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Psychology

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