Agency in Language Policy and Planning: Critical Inquiries Jeremie Bouchard and Gregory Paul Glasgow (eds) (2019) New York and London: Routledge. Pp 322 ISBN: 9780367732271 (pbk) ISBN: 9781138316188 (hbk) ISBN: 9780429455834 (eBook)
{"title":"Agency in Language Policy and Planning: Critical Inquiries Jeremie Bouchard and Gregory Paul Glasgow (eds) (2019)","authors":"Anik Nandi","doi":"10.1558/sols.21677","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.21677","url":null,"abstract":"Agency in Language Policy and Planning: Critical Inquiries Jeremie Bouchard and Gregory Paul Glasgow (eds) (2019) New York and London: Routledge. Pp 322 ISBN: 9780367732271 (pbk) ISBN: 9781138316188 (hbk) ISBN: 9780429455834 (eBook)","PeriodicalId":43912,"journal":{"name":"Sociolinguistic Studies","volume":"113 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73040889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Study Abroad. Second Language Acquisition and Interculturality Martin Howard (ed.) (2019) Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pp. 296 ISBN: 9781788924146 (hbk) ISBN: 9781788924139 (pbk) ISBN: 9781788924153 Ebook(PDF) ISBN: 9781788924160 Ebook(EPUB)
{"title":"Study Abroad. Second Language Acquisition and Interculturality Martin Howard (ed.) (2019)","authors":"I. Golubeva","doi":"10.1558/sols.26234","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.26234","url":null,"abstract":"Study Abroad. Second Language Acquisition and Interculturality Martin Howard (ed.) (2019) Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pp. 296 ISBN: 9781788924146 (hbk) ISBN: 9781788924139 (pbk) ISBN: 9781788924153 Ebook(PDF) ISBN: 9781788924160 Ebook(EPUB)","PeriodicalId":43912,"journal":{"name":"Sociolinguistic Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89706257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Call centers have been critiqued in academia and the media for widespread standardization. This paper argues that although this critique of working conditions is well-intended, it has led to unwanted stigmatization of not just call center work but also of call center agents. Much has been published on call centers, but the stigma this work entails and the effect this has on agents on and off the phone has been overlooked. This paper applies Goffman’s notion of stigma to data collected through long-term ethnography and interviews with over seventy call center agents in a London call center. I show how agents experience, manage, and resist stigma. The analysis reveals that agents attempt to hide where they work by adopting different accents and avoiding specific lexis associated with call center language. I conclude by suggesting potential avenues for reducing the stigma of working in a call center, e.g. shifting the dominant discussion in academia beyond debates surrounding standardization.
{"title":"Rethinking call centers","authors":"Johanna Tovar","doi":"10.1558/sols.42282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.42282","url":null,"abstract":"Call centers have been critiqued in academia and the media for widespread standardization. This paper argues that although this critique of working conditions is well-intended, it has led to unwanted stigmatization of not just call center work but also of call center agents. Much has been published on call centers, but the stigma this work entails and the effect this has on agents on and off the phone has been overlooked. This paper applies Goffman’s notion of stigma to data collected through long-term ethnography and interviews with over seventy call center agents in a London call center. I show how agents experience, manage, and resist stigma. The analysis reveals that agents attempt to hide where they work by adopting different accents and avoiding specific lexis associated with call center language. I conclude by suggesting potential avenues for reducing the stigma of working in a call center, e.g. shifting the dominant discussion in academia beyond debates surrounding standardization.","PeriodicalId":43912,"journal":{"name":"Sociolinguistic Studies","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77869227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Linguistic Mitigation in English and Spanish: How Speakers Attenuate Expressions Nydia Flores-Ferrán (2020) London: Routledge. New York: Taylor and Francis. Pp. 256 ISBN: 9781138584655 (hbk) ISBN: 9780429505867 (eBook)
{"title":"Linguistic Mitigation in English and Spanish: How Speakers Attenuate Expressions Nydia Flores-Ferrán (2020)","authors":"Ying Fang, Diexi Lu","doi":"10.1558/sols.18260","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.18260","url":null,"abstract":"Linguistic Mitigation in English and Spanish: How Speakers Attenuate Expressions Nydia Flores-Ferrán (2020) London: Routledge. New York: Taylor and Francis. Pp. 256 ISBN: 9781138584655 (hbk) ISBN: 9780429505867 (eBook)","PeriodicalId":43912,"journal":{"name":"Sociolinguistic Studies","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82530156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Connecting School and the Multilingual Home: Theory and Practice for Rural Educators Maria R. Coady (2019) Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Pp. 152 ISBN-13: 978-1-78892-326-2 (hbk) Multilingualism in European Language Education Cecilio Lapresta-Rey and Ángel Huguet (2019) Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Pp. xxi+219 ISBN-13: 978-1-78892-330-9 (hbk)
连接学校和多语言家庭:农村教育工作者的理论与实践Maria R. Coady(2019)布里斯托尔，英国:多语言问题。第152页ISBN-13: 978-1-78892-326-2 (hbk)欧洲语言教育中的多语言现象Cecilio Lapresta-Rey和Ángel Huguet(2019)布里斯托尔，英国:多语言问题。页xxi+219 ISBN-13: 978-1-78892-330-9 (hbk)
{"title":"Multilingualism in Migrant Contexts","authors":"Reshara Alviarez, E. Danilina, Latifa Soliman","doi":"10.1558/sols.32581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.32581","url":null,"abstract":"Connecting School and the Multilingual Home: Theory and Practice for Rural Educators Maria R. Coady (2019) Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Pp. 152 ISBN-13: 978-1-78892-326-2 (hbk) \u0000Multilingualism in European Language Education Cecilio Lapresta-Rey and Ángel Huguet (2019) Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Pp. xxi+219 ISBN-13: 978-1-78892-330-9 (hbk)","PeriodicalId":43912,"journal":{"name":"Sociolinguistic Studies","volume":"109 S4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89322901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ethnographies of Indian call centers highlight the space of the global call center and its separateness from domestic life. This separateness is manifested in a chronotope (depiction of place, time and personhood) which allows for the coordination of sociolinguistic practices between call center workers and their colleagues, both domestic and international. Learning to speak like a ‘professional’ is one reason that many people seek work in call centers. For many call center workers this register is learned on the job from colleagues, trainers and managers. Covid-19, a global pandemic which has forced many industries to take adaptive measures in the face of national lockdowns, has led to many workers suddenly working from home. On May 24th 2020, the Government of India ordered a 21-day nation-wide lockdown, limiting the movement of over a billion people and forcing call center employees to work from home. Drawing from interviews with call center employees impeded by the lockdown, along with an analysis of metalinguistic commentaries from call center trainers before the lockdown, I propose that call center timespace serves the purpose of coordination of sociolinguistic practices and the enregisterment of professional forms of personhood emblematically linked to an array of speech norms including but not limited to pronunciation, grammatical norms and the phrasing structure of customer service interactions. The newly mediatized formulations of workers in a work-from-home environment result in a clash between the chronotopes of home and office.
{"title":"Call center timespace and working from home","authors":"K. Nielsen","doi":"10.1558/sols.17750","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.17750","url":null,"abstract":"Ethnographies of Indian call centers highlight the space of the global call center and its separateness from domestic life. This separateness is manifested in a chronotope (depiction of place, time and personhood) which allows for the coordination of sociolinguistic practices between call center workers and their colleagues, both domestic and international. Learning to speak like a ‘professional’ is one reason that many people seek work in call centers. For many call center workers this register is learned on the job from colleagues, trainers and managers. Covid-19, a global pandemic which has forced many industries to take adaptive measures in the face of national lockdowns, has led to many workers suddenly working from home. On May 24th 2020, the Government of India ordered a 21-day nation-wide lockdown, limiting the movement of over a billion people and forcing call center employees to work from home. Drawing from interviews with call center employees impeded by the lockdown, along with an analysis of metalinguistic commentaries from call center trainers before the lockdown, I propose that call center timespace serves the purpose of coordination of sociolinguistic practices and the enregisterment of professional forms of personhood emblematically linked to an array of speech norms including but not limited to pronunciation, grammatical norms and the phrasing structure of customer service interactions. The newly mediatized formulations of workers in a work-from-home environment result in a clash between the chronotopes of home and office.","PeriodicalId":43912,"journal":{"name":"Sociolinguistic Studies","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81404542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the global contact centre industry, workplaces are rapidly replacing phone customer support with written webchat exchange. This means that webchat agents use their computers, phones and other mobile devices to communicate synchronously through texting, when serving customers. As with voice assessments in the previous decade, there has been an urgent need for webchat communications assessment solutions in the outsourced and offshored sites in China, India and the Philippines, where English is the second language. Such webchat assessment requirements range from recruitment benchmarking to diagnostic communications profiling of webchat agents leading to coaching solutions that enhance business performance. An assessment solution for diagnostic profiling is the specific subject of this article. Whilst some scholarly research has been carried out on webchat exchange, there is little on assessment processes. This article therefore describes a diagnostic assessment to appraise and diagnose webchat communication competency to underpin webchat coaching.
{"title":"design of a webchat assessment framework for contact centres in Asia","authors":"Jane Lockwood","doi":"10.1558/sols.42361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.42361","url":null,"abstract":"In the global contact centre industry, workplaces are rapidly replacing phone customer support with written webchat exchange. This means that webchat agents use their computers, phones and other mobile devices to communicate synchronously through texting, when serving customers. As with voice assessments in the previous decade, there has been an urgent need for webchat communications assessment solutions in the outsourced and offshored sites in China, India and the Philippines, where English is the second language. Such webchat assessment requirements range from recruitment benchmarking to diagnostic communications profiling of webchat agents leading to coaching solutions that enhance business performance. An assessment solution for diagnostic profiling is the specific subject of this article. Whilst some scholarly research has been carried out on webchat exchange, there is little on assessment processes. This article therefore describes a diagnostic assessment to appraise and diagnose webchat communication competency to underpin webchat coaching.","PeriodicalId":43912,"journal":{"name":"Sociolinguistic Studies","volume":"104 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76775060","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
All Media Are Social: Sociological Perspectives on Mass Media Andrew M. Lindner and Stephen R. Barnard (2020) New York and Oxon: Routledge. Pp. 206 ISBN: 978041574953 (hbk) ISBN: 9780415749541 (pbk) ISBN: 9781315796055 (eBook)
{"title":"All Media Are Social: Sociological Perspectives on Mass Media Andrew M. Lindner and Stephen R. Barnard (2020)","authors":"Jack Rosenberry","doi":"10.1558/sols.20285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.20285","url":null,"abstract":"All Media Are Social: Sociological Perspectives on Mass Media Andrew M. Lindner and Stephen R. Barnard (2020) New York and Oxon: Routledge. Pp. 206 ISBN: 978041574953 (hbk) ISBN: 9780415749541 (pbk) ISBN: 9781315796055 (eBook)","PeriodicalId":43912,"journal":{"name":"Sociolinguistic Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90286684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper explores caller clarification sequences in outsourced call center interactions, with the goal of categorizing distinguishable causes or reasons for their occurrence, as identified by third-party evaluators – i.e., raters who are not participants in the call. Caller clarifications are questions, requests, or follow-up statements raised by a caller after a call-taker’s turn while providing information or a procedure during call center interactions (Friginal, 2009a). These potentially unnecessary caller clarifications should have been avoidable if both speakers had been able to communicate and process simplified information effectively. Data were collected from a corpus of transactions, with 545 audio files from the same number of unique Filipino call-takers communicating with customers from the U.S. (N = 578, 511 words). Results show that there are 2.051 caller clarifications per 1,000 words in the corpus, based on a total of 1,186 raw instances of caller clarifications. Implications for agent training, the framework of analyzing and categorizing caller clarification, and understanding the nature of intercultural business communication are discussed.
{"title":"I’m sorry, my what?","authors":"Eric Friginal","doi":"10.1558/sols.42324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.42324","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores caller clarification sequences in outsourced call center interactions, with the goal of categorizing distinguishable causes or reasons for their occurrence, as identified by third-party evaluators – i.e., raters who are not participants in the call. Caller clarifications are questions, requests, or follow-up statements raised by a caller after a call-taker’s turn while providing information or a procedure during call center interactions (Friginal, 2009a). These potentially unnecessary caller clarifications should have been avoidable if both speakers had been able to communicate and process simplified information effectively. Data were collected from a corpus of transactions, with 545 audio files from the same number of unique Filipino call-takers communicating with customers from the U.S. (N = 578, 511 words). Results show that there are 2.051 caller clarifications per 1,000 words in the corpus, based on a total of 1,186 raw instances of caller clarifications. Implications for agent training, the framework of analyzing and categorizing caller clarification, and understanding the nature of intercultural business communication are discussed.","PeriodicalId":43912,"journal":{"name":"Sociolinguistic Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73611346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Applying sociolinguistic perspectives, this issue explores the most recent developments in call center research and the impact call center work has on agents. Significant issues are addressed in call center interactions, including web chat, agent stigmatization, agent resistance, agent training and the impact of Covid-19. The essays provide a forum where developments are critically reviewed and future areas of research explored, including how call center work can be improved. The first article by Nielsen addresses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in India and working from home through the notions of chronotopes. The second article in the issue by Lockwood develops a framework for the assessment of written web chats in offshore call centers. The third essay by Friginal examines how the voice assessment of Filipino agents can be improved through caller clarification sequences. Tovar’s paper, the fourth paper in this collection, focuses on the strain that working in a call center creates for agents and how they resolve this. The fifth paper by Orthaber examines resistance and passive compliance in call center interactions in a Slovenian call center using turn-by-turn micro-analysis of service conversations with a focus on silences. Despite the different angles, the papers share themes of resistance (creative compliance) and the development of a new register of call center speak, while also highlighting agency among call center workers.
{"title":"Current trends and the way forward on call center research in a post-covid world","authors":"Johanna Tovar","doi":"10.1558/sols.42444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.42444","url":null,"abstract":"Applying sociolinguistic perspectives, this issue explores the most recent developments in call center research and the impact call center work has on agents. Significant issues are addressed in call center interactions, including web chat, agent stigmatization, agent resistance, agent training and the impact of Covid-19. The essays provide a forum where developments are critically reviewed and future areas of research explored, including how call center work can be improved. The first article by Nielsen addresses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in India and working from home through the notions of chronotopes. The second article in the issue by Lockwood develops a framework for the assessment of written web chats in offshore call centers. The third essay by Friginal examines how the voice assessment of Filipino agents can be improved through caller clarification sequences. Tovar’s paper, the fourth paper in this collection, focuses on the strain that working in a call center creates for agents and how they resolve this. The fifth paper by Orthaber examines resistance and passive compliance in call center interactions in a Slovenian call center using turn-by-turn micro-analysis of service conversations with a focus on silences. Despite the different angles, the papers share themes of resistance (creative compliance) and the development of a new register of call center speak, while also highlighting agency among call center workers.","PeriodicalId":43912,"journal":{"name":"Sociolinguistic Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77239119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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