Chapter 9
When emergencies are not urgent
Requesting help in calls to 911 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.
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
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Cited by
Cited by 3 other publications
Fele, Giolo
2023.
When a Call Is Not an Emergency. In
Emergency Communication,
► pp. 79 ff.

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.

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.

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