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In:Technology Mediated Service Encounters
Edited by Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 300] 2019
► pp. 97–120

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Chapter 4
Globalizing politeness?

Towards a globalization-sensitive framework of mediated service encounters

Published online: 10 January 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.300.04hul
Abstract
Call centres have grown exponentially since the early 1990s, effectively replacing face-to-face with telephonic and other types of mediated service provision (Holman et al. 2007; Income Data Services 2005). Drawing on observations, interviews and documentary data from offshore and onshore call centres in four national contexts, Scotland, Denmark, Hong Kong and the Philippines, this study analyses the speech style prescribed to call centre agents and finds that while there are some local adaptations, it is remarkably similar across all four locations. This appears to be the case even though the language of the service interaction varies across the locations. On the basis of these findings, it is argued that the upsurge of call centres – and more generally globalization – has led to a homogenization of service as linguistically constructed. The study argues for engagement with industry stakeholders to consider in greater depth cultural sensitivities and the extent to which this globally prescribed call centre speech style accords with local politeness conventions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Politeness in call centres
  • 3.Data and analytic methods
  • 4.Globalizing the language of service encounters: Institutional prescriptions
    • 4.1Active listening
    • 4.2Making the customer feel understood
    • 4.3Avoiding jargon
    • 4.4Signposting
    • 4.5Empathizing
    • 4.6Small talk
  • 5.Adopting and resisting globalized prescriptions: employee practices
  • 6.Conclusions
  • References
References (44)
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Orthaber, Sara
2023. Technologically Mediated Interaction. In (Im)politeness at a Slovenian Call Centre [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 43 ff. DOI logo
Orthaber, Sara
2023. On (Im)politeness. In (Im)politeness at a Slovenian Call Centre [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 11 ff. DOI logo

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