Cover not available
Part of
Mobilizing Others: Grammar and lexis within larger activities
Edited by Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm, Emma Betz and Peter Golato
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 33] 2020
► pp. 229–252

Chapter 9
When emergencies are not urgent

Requesting help in calls to 911 Costa Rica

| Universidad de Costa Rica

This study examines the activity of requesting help in emergency calls, using 911 Costa Rica as a case study. Focusing on the notions of contingency-entitlement, benefactors and beneficiaries, and the urgency of the incident, the findings show that the design of the request for non-life-threatening incidents can encode the caller’s low entitlement to the request via the phrase para ver si ‘to see if.’ When using this phrase in conjunction with other linguistic forms (such as modal periphrasis), the caller’s entitlement to the request is further downgraded. Regardless of the type of incident and the linguistic forms used in the request for help, call-takers’ next relevant action is asking the location of the incident or verifying the caller’s information.

Keywords: emergency calls, request for help, entitlement, contingency, benefactors, beneficiaries, animator, Spanish
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Prior research on requests in 911 calls and other settings
  • Data and methods
  • Background information about 911 Costa Rica
  • Explicit requests: “Need”-constructions
  • The phrase para ver si ‘to see if’
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.33.09bol
References
Alba de Diego, Vidal
1994 “La cortesía en las peticiones [Politeness in requests].” In Actas del IV Congreso Internacional ASELE, ed. by Jesús Sánchez-Lobato, and Isabel Santos-Gallardo, 413–425. Madrid: Centro Virtual Cervantes.Google Scholar
1995 “La cortesía en la petición de permiso [Politeness in requests for permission].” DICENDA 3: 13–24.Google Scholar
Bolaños-Carpio, Alexa
2017 “Interactions in Calls to the 9-1-1 Emergency System in Costa Rica.” Doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University.Google Scholar
Clayman, Steven E., and John Heritage
2014 “Benefactor and Beneficiaries.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 55–86. Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard, Martin Haspelmath, and Balthasar Bickel
2015 “Leipzig Glossing Rules.” Leipizg: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Linguistics. [URL]
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth
2014 “What Does Grammar Tell Us about Action?” Pragmatics 24 (3): 623–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Craven, Alexandra, and Jonathan Potter
2010 “Directives: Entitlement and Contingency in Action.” Discourse Studies 12 (4): 419–42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curl, Traci S., and Paul Drew
2008 “Contingency and Action: A Comparison of Two Forms of Requesting.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 41 (2): 129–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf
2018 “Instruction Practices in German Driving Lessons: Differential Uses of Declaratives and Imperatives.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics 28 (2): 265–282. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drew, Paul, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
2014a “Requesting -from Speech Act to Recruitment.” In Requesting in Social Interaction, ed. by Paul Drew, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, 1–34. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
(eds.) 2014b Requesting in Social Interaction. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Drew, Paul, and John Heritage
1992 “Talk at work: An introduction.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 3–65. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Drew, Paul, and Traci Walker
2010 “Citizen’s Emergency Calls to Police: Requesting Assistance in Calls to the Police.” In Handbook of Forensic Linguistic, ed. by Malcom Coulthard, and Alison Johnson, 95–110. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Félix-Brasdefer, J. César
2005 “Indirectness and Politeness in Mexican Requests.” In Selected Proceedings of the 7th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by David Eddington, 66–78. Somerville: Cascadilla.Google Scholar
2010 “Intra-lingual Pragmatic Variation in Mexico City and San José, Costa Rica: A Focus on Regional Differences in Female Requests.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2992–3011. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
García, Angela Cora
2017 “What Went Right: Interactional Strategies for Managing Crisis Negotiations during an Emergency Service Call.” The Sociological Quarterly 58 (3): 495–518. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1981 Forms of Talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles
1996 “Transparent vision.” In Interaction and Grammar, ed. by Emanuel A. Schegloff, Elinor Ochs, and Sandra A. Thompson, 370–404. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heinemann, Trine
2006 “ ‘Will you or can’t you?’: Displaying Entitlement in Interrogative Requests.” Journal of Pragmatics 38: 1081–1104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hepburn, Alexa, and Galina B. Bolden
2013 “The Conversation Analytic Approach to Transcription.” In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, ed. by Jack Sidnell, and Tanya Stivers, 57–76. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Heritage, John, and Steven E. Clayman
2010 Talk in Action: Interactions, Identities and Institutions. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail
2004 “Glossary of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction.” In Conversation Analysis: Studies from the first generation, ed. by Gene Lerner, 13–31. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kendrick, Kobin H., and Paul Drew
2016 “Recruitment: Offers, Requests, and the Organization of Assistance in Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1): 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Larsen, Tine
2013 “Dispatching Emergency Assistance: Callers’ Claims of Entitlement and Call Takers’ Decisions.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 46 (3): 205–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Okada, Misao
2018 “Imperative Actions in Boxing Sparring Sessions.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 51 (1): 67–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Raymond, Chase Wesley
2014 “Negotiating Entitlement to Language: Calling 911 without English.” Language in Society 43 (1): 33–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 “Questions and Responses in Spanish Monolingual and Spanish-English Bilingual Conversation.” Language & Communication 42: 50–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Real Academia Española
2009 Nueva gramática de la lengua española [New grammar of the Spanish language] (Vol. I y II). Madrid: Espasa Libros, S.L.U.Google Scholar
2010 “Ocupar.” Diccionario de americanismos. [URL] (accessed June 25, 2018).
Reyes, Fabiola
2008 “Grados de cortesía y peticiones en el aula de clases [Politeness levels and requests in the classrooms].” Entre lenguas 13: 57–70.Google Scholar
Riou, Marine, Stephen Ball, Kay L. O’Halloran, Austin Whiteside, Teresa A. Williams, and Judith Finn
2018 “Hijacking the Dispatch Protocol: When Callers Pre-empt their Reason-for-the-Call in Emergency Calls about Cardiac Arrest.” Discourse Studies 20 (5): 666–687. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robinson, Jeffrey D.
2004 “The Sequential Organization of “Explicit” Apologies in Naturally Occurring English.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 37 (3): 291–330. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rossi, Giovanni
2012 “Bilateral and Unilateral Requests: The Use of Imperatives and Mi X? Interrogatives in Italian.” Discourse Processes 49: 426–458. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson
1974 “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation.” Language 50: 696–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.
2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction. A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sidnell, Jack, and Tanya Stivers
(eds.) 2013 The Handbook of Conversation Analysis. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Solé-Planas, María Rosa, and Olga Soler-Vilageliu
2005 “Las peticiones directas e indirectas en el habla infantil.” Infancia y Aprendizaje 28 (2): 159–178. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sorjonen, Marja-Leena, Lissa Raevaara, and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen
(eds.) 2017 Imperative Turns at Talk. The Design of Directives in Action. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whalen, Marilyn R., and Don H. Zimmerman
1987 “Sequential and Institutional Contexts in Calls for Help.” Social Psychology Quarterly 50 (2): 172–85. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, Don H.
1984 “Talk and Its Occasions: The Case of Calling the Police.” In Meaning, Form, and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications. Georgetown University Roundtable on Language and Linguistics, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, 210–28. Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
1992a “The Interactional Organization of Calls for Emergency Assistance.” In Talk at Work: Social Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 418–69. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1992b “Achieving Context: Openings in Emergency Calls.” In Text in Context. Contributions to Ethnomethodology, ed. by Graham Watson and Robert M. Seiler, 35–51. Newbury Park: Sage.Google Scholar
Zinken, Jörg, and Eva Ogiermann
2013 “Responsibility and Action: Invariants and Diversity in Requests for Objects in British English and Polish Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 46 (3): 256–276. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zinken, Jörg, and Giovanni Rossi
2016 “Assistance and Other Forms of Cooperative Engagement.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1): 20–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Fele, Giolo
2023. When a Call Is Not an Emergency. In Emergency Communication, ► pp. 79 ff. DOI logo
Penverne, Y., H. Delelis-Fanien, L. Robert, F. Berthier, J. Jenvrin & E. Montassier
2021. Le numéro commun santé : enjeux et impacts. Annales françaises de médecine d’urgence 11:5 ► pp. 303 ff. DOI logo
Stokoe, Elizabeth & Emma Richardson
2023. Asking for help without asking for help: How victims request and police offer assistance in cases of domestic violence when perpetrators are potentially co-present. Discourse Studies 25:3 ► pp. 383 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 may 2023. 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.