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Article published In: Language and Dialogue
Vol. 7:2 (2017) ► pp.137–162

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Construing negotiation

The role of voice quality features in American-Filipino business telephone conversations

 | Hong Kong Shue Yan University (China)
Published online: 27 October 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.7.2.01yau
Abstract
The call centre conversation is a telephonic exchange of voices between the customer and the customer service representative (CSR). Both lexicogrammatical and prosodic features are used to construe emotional and attitudinal recognition. Studying these features can investigate how the call centre discourse is construed, and how the interpersonal meaning takes shape through the text. The spoken data are constructed by Filipino CSRs and American English-speaking customers. The findings show that participants tend to make specific paralinguistic voice quality choices to express their emotions in dialogue. This article first discusses the voice quality framework for its semiotic features in relation to interpersonal meaning, reviews previous voice quality studies and later delineates how voice quality relates to interpersonal meaning in the calls.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Voice quality framework
    • 2.2Phonology – intonational system in SFL
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Findings and discussion
    • 4.1Voice quality feature – volume (loud/soft) in call centre conversations
    • 4.2Voice quality feature – pitch (high/low) in call centre conversations
    • 4.3Voice quality feature tension (tense/lax) in call centre conversations
    • 4.4Voice quality feature – rhythm (slow/fast) in call centre conversations
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
References (34)
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