Furtive Tongues: Language Politics in the Indian Call Centre

DPhil Dissertation, University of Oxford

This thesis aims to contribute to the study of workplace talk, language and gender, and the sociolinguistics of globalization by exploring the phenomenon of ‘linguistic regulation’ in call centres. ‘Linguistic regulation’ refers to the practice, now widespread in the globalized service economy, of codifying and enforcing rules for employees’ use of language in service interactions with customers. Drawing on authentic service interactions from call centres in the UK and Denmark, and interviews and communication material from both those countries as well as Hong Kong and the Philippines, this study shows that linguistic regulation exerts a significant influence on the language used by call centre agents, and suggests that this has implications for all three areas of inquiry. In relation to the study of workplace talk, the findings raise questions about the degree of local management and individual speaker agency that has often been asserted in previous work. In the area of language and gender studies, the finding that female speakers in both countries show a higher degree of compliance with linguistic regulation than male ones is related to ongoing debates about the local variability of gender. It is argued that the field may benefit from supplementing the currently favoured locally-based methods with one which seeks to link linguistic behaviour with supra-local systems of inequality. Finally, in relation to the sociolinguistics of globalization, this thesis documents the existence of a distinct, globally prescribed, call centre style which is culturally marked as North-American. In practice, this style is locally inflected, with British agents exhibiting greater conformity to the prescriptions than their Danish counterparts. It is argued that this may be because the prescribed style conflicts with the Danish cultural preference for ‘getting to the point’. These findings highlight the importance of considering language in the context of a global system. The thesis concludes by considering what the research it is based on may contribute, not only to academic debates in sociolinguistics and the sociology of work, but also to professional discussions within the call centre industry.

Call centres (or telephone ‘contact centres’) of various kinds have become an increasing fact of life for many people in Europe, North America and other developed economies. Although telephone contact centres may be dated back to the 1960s and 1970s in the US, their intrusion into the lives of British and US consumers has grown exponentially since the 1980s. Since the early 2000s, however, a significant number of call centre operations have been outsourced to such destinations as India and the Philippines, thereby raising a number of issues relating to language and globalisation and the politics of English as an international language.

2008

This thesis aims to contribute to the study of workplace talk, language and gender, and the sociolinguistics of globalization by exploring the phenomenon of ‘linguistic regulation’ in call centres. ‘Linguistic regulation’ refers to the practice, now widespread in the globalized service economy, of codifying and enforcing rules for employees’ use of language in service interactions with customers. Drawing on authentic service interactions from call centres in the UK and Denmark, and interviews and communication material from both those countries as well as Hong Kong and the Philippines, this study shows that linguistic regulation exerts a significant influence on the language used by call centre agents, and suggests that this has implications for all three areas of inquiry. In relation to the study of workplace talk, the findings raise questions about the degree of local management and individual speaker agency that has often been asserted in previous work. In the area of language an...

Language Policy, 2009

This paper offers a dialogic discussion about several issues concerning call centers, including globalizing surges, modernity tropes and educational practices. Based on a critical discourse analysis of a document offering to train west-based entrepreneurs to assume managerial positions in call centers in India, the paper explores ways in which Indian culture and businesses get cast into ''manageable'' items for sale. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the outsourcing phenomenon on language-in-education policies in India, particularly in respect to class and caste differentiation articulated with access to privileged varieties of English through schooling.

Language in Society, 2009

This article relates the language ideologies of Pakistan in general, and its call centers in particular, with the language policies and practices of the latter. The specifi c policy focused upon is the commodifi cation of English with a near-native (American or British) accent as linguistic capital. These accents are indexed to the desired foreign identities which the workers of call centers perform in telephonic interaction with clients as part of their sales strategy. This crossing over to native-speaker linguistic identities is not always successful. When successful, however, some workers in the call centers pass as native speakers in certain contexts and for certain purposes. Such practices and the policies upon which they are contingent are consequences of language ideologies that entail language discrimination against the workers of the call centers by the Pakistani English-using elite, and vice versa. (English, commodifi cation of language, accent, linguistic capital, language policy, identity, passing, crossing, call centers, Pakistan)

2015

Call centres have been widely criticised as standardized workplaces, and the imposition of calling scripts is often characterised as dehumanizing 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 paper combines long-term ethnography with trans-contextual 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.

International Journal of Communication, 2019

2014

This paper is an attempt to gather insights from the stakeholders at the call centers in South Punjab of Pakistan with reference to communicative abilities of the call centers’ employees during their exchanges with the customers of native speakers’ countries. The case study is focused on three call centers established in the city of Multan, a hub of South Punjab in terms of socio-economic and cultural activities. These call centers were closed down shortly after their establishment, and no further call center has been established in Multan after the failure of these call centers. Data collection tool was an interview. The subjects were former stakeholders of these call centers. Subjects were of three types: 1) former call center representatives; communicating with native speakers mostly, 2) former call centers’ managers, and 3) former call centers’ owners. Data was analyzed qualitatively. The findings revealed that that the major cause of failure of this business has been linguistic...

New Technology, Work and Employment, 2020

The article shows how linguistic criteria have become central when defining job categories in the outsourced call centre sector in Spain. Language occupies a central role in the production processes of informational capitalism: in call centres, language functions as the raw material, scripts as tools and conversations as a product. Yet the ways in which linguistic production affects key elements of job categories have received little attention. Drawing on in-depth interviews in the call centre sector, the analysis of scripts and collective agreements, this article shows how trade unions and workers are pushing to adapt Fordist arguments based on job autonomy to informational production, arguing that job categories may depend on linguistic autonomy from the scripts during the labour process.

English for specific purposes in theory and practice, 2009

This article looks at the English language communication problems that US companies are experiencing when off-shoring their call centres operations to non-English speaking destinations such as India and the Philippines. Specifically we explore the use of the quality assurance (QA) "scorecard" measurement by outsourcing companies of Customer Service Representative (CSR) English language communication skills when talking to native speaker customers in the US. Whilst companies claim great success with this scorecard at home in America, they are now complaining that it does not appear to work in countries where English is not the mother tongue. Specifically companies report that despite high scores achieved on the scorecard by offshore outsourced CSRs, there are many complaints from US customers related to language communication breakdown on the phones from these outsourced destinations. This article first investigates the language and content of a typical scorecard. In the paper we outline an analysis of lexico-grammatical features found in the scorecard and compare these items used for assessment in QA procedures with what sometimes happens in reality. We draw on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday and Mattiesshen 2004) and communicative competency framework (Savignon 2005;Canale and Swain 1983) as well as current approaches to communicative language assessment practice (Bachmann 1990; Douglas 2000). In doing so, the authors try to account for scorecard problems by arguing that in a workplace environment when the CSR is operating in a second language that this scorecard measurement suffers from an incomplete set of criteria for English language communicative competence. In other words, the QA measures which are in operation need to be developed through research based tools, drawing on the field of applied linguistics. The article also builds on current research (Forey and Lockwood 2007) that describes the systemic functional features of a typical call centre transaction in a NNS context and where communicative competence breaks down. This approach has been useful in being able to track the 'discourse flow' of the call centre transaction and isolate where the communication flow becomes problematic. This article calls for an interdisciplinary approach to English language communication QA measurement in call centres s operating in NNS outsourced destinations by using existing frameworks and research in applied linguistics that are directly relevant to this problem. Finally the article outlines areas for further research and application.

English for Specific Purposes, 2020

Ensuring newly arrived migrants gain fluency in the language of their host country has challenged governments worldwide. Whilst many governments provide settlement and language programs for migrants, a critical site for language development and cultural integration is the workplace itself. However very few studies have explored how different worksites and job types in the new globalised economy may facilitate migrants' acquisition of the language of a target community with which they need to communicate. Drawing on a long-term ethnographic study and sets of interviews, this research explores how a multilingual call centre based in London facilitates such language acquisition. This site uses English as well as a number of other European languages to market mostly IT products into Europe and beyond and we discuss how the training and provision of scripts contributes to agents being able to develop their language skills. This study revealed a number of facilitators for language acquisition including the spatial layout of the worksite where communication, both socially and professionally, takes place; but perhaps most surprisingly, we learned that the way in which the agents use scripts to scaffold their exchanges on phones plays a significant role in language acquisition.

The Qualitative Report, 2017

The Call Center Industry in the Philippines has been attracting employees from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Such industry requires employees to have a strong command of the English language. More specifically, American English serves as the model for English language requirements. The problem is that these requirements may have a negative impact on linguistic and cultural identity of Filipino employees. This study explored the Filipino English language trainers’ integration with the American culture and language and whether this has any influence on the way they teach the language. It also investigated whether the Call Center Industry training has any impact on the language and cultural identity of employees. Methodologically, this study was a critical ethnography that was conducted by an experienced customer service representative. The results of the study can be useful to socio-linguists, school administrators, psychologists, families and educators, the Philippin...

Drawing on long-term ethnography and interviews, this paper investigates language work and language management in the context of a multilingual call center. It looks at how language issues are managed on a day-today basis, specifically in three areas that have been previously overlooked: i) the recruitment process for multilingual agents, ii) how agents are trained in language management, and iii) how their performance on the phone in multiple languages is evaluated and monitored. The paper reexamines the value of scripts, particularly in relation to knowledge management, challenging the idea that working language fluency on the phone is the principal skill required. Rather, the paper demonstrates that successful agents utilize a variety of skills which are learned with the help of scripts, concluding that 'interactive professional' rather than 'language worker' better describes the skill set required by agents for this work.

Despite a shift to service-based economies, male-dominated, high-status workplaces have been the predominant focus of research into language and gender in the workplace. This study redresses this shortcoming by considering one female-dominated, low-status, highly regimented workplace that is emblematic of the globalized service economy: call centres. Drawing on 187 call centre service interactions, institutional documents, interviews, and observations from call centres in two national contexts, the study employs an innovative combination of quantitative and qualitative discourse analytic