Chapter published 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

Chapter 4
Globalizing politeness?

Towards a globalization-sensitive framework of mediated service encounters

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.
Keywords: call centre, globalization, politeness
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
Published online: 10 January 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.300.04hul
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