Chapter published in:
Mobilizing Others: Grammar and lexis within larger activitiesEdited by Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm, Emma Betz and Peter Golato
[Studies in Language and Social Interaction 33] 2020
► pp. 229–252
Chapter 9When emergencies are not urgent
Requesting help in calls to 911 Costa Rica
Alexa Bolaños-Carpio | 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
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.33.09bol
https://doi.org/10.1075/slsi.33.09bol
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