Cover not available
Part of
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. 121–144

Chapter 5
Navigating commercial constraints in a service call

In this chapter I examine a call from a telephone agent to a client in which the former tries to obtain a sale irrespective of the client’s interest in the product and, the latter seizes this opportunity to obtain access to a product that she is not entitled to. A central aspect of the organization of the exchange examined is, on the one hand, that it is never clear if the client is ready to proceed with the depositing of one of the products, and, on the other hand, that the agent remains ambiguous as to the rights that depositing the product in question would give the client. In view of this, the chapter explores how the conversational participants avoid explicitly stating what each will do or indeed offer before they can determine what the other party will give in exchange. The chapter thus contributes to the literature on (mediated) service encounters by shedding empirical light on how conversational participants create and maintain ambiguity to pursue different commercial agendas.
Keywords: ambiguity, camouflage, explicitness, preliminaries
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research on service calls
  • 3.Background and methodological preliminaries
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Creating and maintaining ambiguity
    • 4.2Exploring an alternative sales route
    • 4.3Encountering a persistent client
    • 4.4Presenting oneself as knowledgeable
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • Glossary
Published online: 10 January 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.300.05mar
References (46)
References
Archer, Dawn, and Piotr Jagodzinski. 2015. “Call Centre Interaction: A Case of Sanctioned Face-Attack?” Journal of Pragmatics 76: 46–66 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Budach, Gabriele, Sylvie Roy, and Monica Heller. 2013. “Community and Commodity in French Ontario.” Language in Society 32: 603–27.Google Scholar
Button, Graham. 1987. “Moving out of Closings.” In Talk and Social Organisation, ed. by G. Button and J. Lee, 101–151. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah. 2000. Good to Talk? Living and Working in a Communication Culture. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Chevalier, Fabienne. 2011. “Managing Impartially in French Tourist Offices: Responses to Recommendation-Seeking Questions.” Discourse Studies 13: 139–161.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Danby, Susan, Colin Baker, and Michael Emmison. 2005. “Four Observations on Openings in Calls to Kids Help Line.” In Calling for help. Language and Social Interaction in Telephone Helplines, ed. by Carolyn Baker, Michael Emmison, and Alan Firth, 133–151. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duchêne, Alexandre. 2009. “Marketing, Management and Performance: Multilingualism as Commodity in a Tourism Call Centre.” Language Policy 8: 27–50.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Economidou-Kogetsidis, Maria. 2005. “‘Yes, Tell Me Please, What Time Is the Midday Flight from Athens Arriving?’: Telephone Service Encounters and Politeness.” Intercultural Pragmatics 2: 253–273.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Emmison, Michael, and Susan Danby. 2007. “Troubles Announcements and Reasons for Calling: Initial Actions in Opening Sequences in Calls to a National Children’s Helpline.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 40: 63–87.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Forey, Gail, and Janet Lockwood. 2007. “‘I’d Love to Put Someone in Jail for This’: An Initial Investigation of English in the Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) Industry.” English for Specific Purposes 26: 308–326.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Friginal, Eric. 2009. “Threats to the Sustainability of the Outsourced Call Center Industry in the Philippines: Implications for Language Policy.” Language Policy 8: 51–68.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1981. “Footing”. In Forms of Talk, ed. by Erving Goffman, 124–159. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 1988. “Oh-Prefaced Responses to Inquiry.” Language in Society 27: 291–334.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John and Marja-Leena Sorjonen. 1994. “Constituting and Maintaining Activities across Sequences: And-Prefacing as a Feature of Question Design.” Language in Society 23: 1–29.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hultgren, Anna Kristina. 2011. “Building Rapport with Customers across the World: The Global Diffusion of a Call Centre Speech Style.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 15: 36–64.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. “Vocatives as Rationalized Politeness: Theoretical Insights from Emerging Norms in Call Centre Service Encounters.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 21: 90–111.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kevoe-Feldman, Heidi. 2015a. “What can you do for me?: Customer led communication practices to personalize the service encounter.” Communication Monographs 82: 510–534.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Landqvist, Håkan. 2005. “Constructing and Negotiating Advice in Calls to a Poison Information Center.” In Calling for Help. Language and Social Interaction in Telephone Helplines, ed. by Carolyn Baker, Michael Emmison, and Alan Firth, 207–234. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Seung-Hee Lee. 2009. “Extended Requesting: Interaction and Collaboration in the Production and Specification of Requests.” Journal of Pragmatics 41:1248–1271.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2008. “Intra-cultural Variation: Explanations in Service Calls to Two Montevidean Service Providers.” Journal of Politeness Research 4: 1–29.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006 “Interactional Closeness in Service Calls to Montevidean Care Service Company.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 39: 7–39.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2005. “Complaint Calls to a Caregiver Service Company: The Case of Desahogo.” Intercultural Pragmatics 2: 481–513.Google Scholar
. 2011. Mediated Business Interactions: Intercultural Communication between speakers Spanish. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Márquez Reiter, Rosina, and Patricia Bou-Franch. 2017. “(Im)politeness in Service Encounters: Cultural Practices in Transformation.” In Handbook of Linguistic Impoliteness, ed. by Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh, and Daniel Kádár, 661–687. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan.Google Scholar
Meehan, Albert. 1989. “Assessing the “Policeworthiness” of Citizen Complaints to the Police.” In The Interactional Order: New Directions in the Study of Social Order, ed. by David T. Helm, W. Anderson, Albert Meehan, and A. Rawls, 16–20. New York: Irvington.Google Scholar
Ohmae, Kenichi. 1999. The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Orthaber, Sara, and Rosina Márquez Reiter. 2011. “‘Talk to the Hand.’ Complaints to a Transport Service Company.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 3860–3876.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. “When Routine Calls for Information Become Interpersonally Sensitive.” Pragmatics and Society 7: 638–663.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pomerantz, Anita. 1984. “Pursuing a Response.” In Structures of Social Action, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 152–164. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey. 2004. “Prompting Action: The Stand-Alone ‘So’ in Ordinary Conversation.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 37: 185–218.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Raymond, Geoffrey and Don Zimmerman. 2007. “Rights and Responsibilities in Calls for Help: The Case of Mountain Glide Fire.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 40: 33–61.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation, Volume 1. ed. by Gail Jefferson. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel. 1990. “On the Organization of Sequences as a Source of ‘Coherence’ in Talk-In-Interaction.” In Conversational Organization and its Development, ed. by Bruce Dorval, 51–77. Norwood, NJ.: Ablex Publishing.Google Scholar
. 2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction. A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stokoe, Elizabeth, Rein Sikveland, and B. Huma. (2017). “Entering the Customer’s Domestic Domain: Categorial Systematics and the Identification of ‘Parties to a Sale’.” Journal of Pragmatics. 118, 64–80Google Scholar
Varcasia, Cecilia. 2013. Business and Service Telephone Conversations. An Investigation of British English, German and Italian Encounters. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan. The Economist. “Call Centres: The end of the line.” 6th February 2016.Google Scholar
Tracy, Karen. 1997. “Interactional Trouble in Emergency Service Requests: A Problem of Frames.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 30: 315–43.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traci Curl and Paul Drew (2008) “Contingency and Action: A Comparison Of Two Forms Of Requesting.” Research on Language and Social Interaction, 41:129–153iGoogle Scholar
Wakin, Michele, and Don Zimmerman. 1999. “Reduction and Specialization in Emergency and Directory Assistance Calls.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 32: 409–437.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whalen, Marilyn, and Don Zimmerman. 1987. “Sequential and Institutional Contexts in Calls for Help.” Social Psychology Quarterly 50: 172–185.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Woydack, Johanna, and Ben Rampton. 2015. “Text Trajectories in a Multilingual Call Centre: The Linguistic Ethnography of a Calling Script.” Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies. [URL].
Zimmerman, Don. 1984. “Talk and its Occasion: The Case of Calling the Police.” In Meaning, Form, Use in Context: Linguistic Applications, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, 210–228. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
. 1992. “The interactional organization of calls for emergency assistance.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew and John Heritage, 359–469. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zorraquino, María Antonia, and José Portolés Lázaro. 1999. “Los marcadores del discurso.” In Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque and Violeta Demonte, 4051–4213. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Márquez Reiter, Rosina & Mandie Iveson
2024. The establishment and breakdown of trust in human-bot marketing calls. Discourse & Communication DOI logo
Mugford, Gerrard
2023. Positive Emotions and Pragmatic Choice: Politeness Practices in the Mexican Context. In Advancing (Im)politeness Studies [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
Orthaber, Sara
2023. Introduction. In (Im)politeness at a Slovenian Call Centre [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.