The Language of Outsourced Call Centers
A corpus-based study of cross-cultural interaction
| Georgia State University
The Language of Outsourced Call Centers is the first book to explore a large-scale corpus representing the typical kinds of interactions and communicative tasks in outsourced call centers located in the Philippines and serving American customers. The specific goals of this book are to conduct a corpus-based register comparison between outsourced call center interactions, face-to-face American conversations, and spontaneous telephone exchanges; and to study the dynamics of cross-cultural communication between Filipino call center agents and American callers, as well as other demographic groups of participants in outsourced call center transactions, e.g., gender of speakers, agents’ experience and performance, and types of transactional tasks. The research design relies on a number of analytical approaches, including corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, and combines quantitative and qualitative examination of linguistic data in the investigation of the frequency distribution and functional characteristics of a range of lexico/syntactic features of outsourced call center discourse.
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 34] 2009. xxii, 319 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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List of tables
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xiii–xvii
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List of figures
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xiv–xvii
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Acknowledgements
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xix
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Acknowledgements
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xix
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Chapter 1 Introduction
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1–13
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Chapter 2 Outsourced call centers in the Philippines
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15–38
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Chapter 3 Corpora and description of speaker groups in the call center corpus
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39–73
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Chapter 4 Multi-dimensional analysis
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75–103
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Chapter 5 Lexico/syntactic features
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105–143
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Chapter 6 Grammatical expression of stance
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145–167
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Chapter 7 Politeness and respect markers
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169–189
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Chapter 8 Inserts
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191–225
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Chapter 9 Dysfluencies
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227–254
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Chapter 10 Communication breakdown: Caller clarifications
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255–271
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Chapter 11 Synthesis and directions for future research
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273–297
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Appendix
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299–305
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References
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307–315
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Index
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317–319
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“The Language of Outsourced Call Centers is a well-designed study with a clear methodology and detailed analysis of both quantitative and qualitative findings.”
Shelley Staples, Northern Arizona University, in International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 15(4): 549-556
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Subjects
Linguistics
BIC Subject: CFG – Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number: 2008050996