Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-17T16:00:30.070Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

New perspectives on language and gender: Linguistic prescription and compliance in call centres

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2017

Anna Kristina Hultgren*
Affiliation:
The Open University, UK
*
Address for correspondence: Dr. Anna Kristina Hultgren The Open UniversitySchool of Languages and Applied Linguistics Walton Hall Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UKkristina.hultgren@open.ac.uk

Abstract

Despite a shift to service-based economies, male-dominated, high-status workplaces have been the predominant focus of research into language and gender in the workplace. This study redresses this shortcoming by considering one female-dominated, low-status, highly regimented workplace that is emblematic of the globalized service economy: call centres. Drawing on 187 call centre service interactions, institutional documents, interviews, and observations from call centres in two national contexts, the study employs an innovative combination of quantitative and qualitative discourse-analytic techniques to compare rule compliance of male and female workers. Female agents in both national contexts are found to comply more with the linguistic prescriptions despite managers and agents emphatically denying the relevance of gender. The study offers a new perspective on language and gender, pointing to the need to expand the methodologies and theories currently favoured to understand how language perpetuates occupational segregation in twenty-first-century workplaces. (Call centres, language and gender, new perspectives, male/female differences, globalized service economy)*

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This manuscript has benefited significantly from comments from Deborah Cameron, Jenny Cheshire, Theresa Lillis, Karen Littleton, Joan Swann, and anonymous reviewers. I also wish to acknowledge the participating call centres and funding from the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. Any errors are my own.

References

Acker, Joan (1990). Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender & Society 4(2):139–58.Google Scholar
Alarcón, Amado, & McC. Heyman, Josiah (2013). Bilingual call centers at the US-Mexico border: Location and linguistic markers of exploitability. Language in Society 42:122.Google Scholar
Angouri, Jo (2011). ‘We are in a masculine profession…’: Constructing gender identities in a consortium of two multinational engineering companies. Gender & Language 5(2):373403.Google Scholar
Archer, Dawn, & Jagodziński, Piotr (2015). Call centre interaction: A case of sanctioned face attack? Journal of Pragmatics 76:4666.Google Scholar
Baxter, Judith (ed.) (2006). Speaking out: The female voice in public contexts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Belt, Vicki (2002). Capitalising on femininity: Gender and the utilisation of social skills in telephone call centres. In Holtgrewe, Uusula, Kerst, Christian, & Shire, Karen (eds.), Re-organising service work: Call centres in Germany and Britain, 123–45. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Belt, Vicki; Richardson, Ranald; & Webster, Juliet (2002). Women, social skill and interactive service work in telephone call centres. New Technology, Work and Employment 17(1):2031.Google Scholar
Bergvall, Victoria (1999). Toward a comprehensive theory of language and gender. Language in Society 28(2):273–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolton, Kinglsey (2010). ‘Thank you for calling’: Asian Englishes and ‘native-like’ performance in Asian call centres. In Kirkpatrick, Andy (ed.), The Routledge handbook of world Englishes, 550–64. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah (1996). The language-gender interface: Challenging co-optation. In Bergvall, Victoria L., Bing, Janet M., & Freed, Alice F. (eds.), Rethinking language and gender research: Theory and practice, 3153. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah (2000). Styling the worker: Gender and the commodification of language in the globalized service economy. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(3):323–47.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah (2008). Talk from the top down. Language & Communication 28(2):143–55.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah; McAlinden, Fiona; & O'Leary, Kathy (1988). Lakoff in context: The social and linguistic functions of tag questions. In Coates, Jennifer & Cameron, Deborah (eds.), Women in their speech communities: New perspectives on language and sex, 7493. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Cheshire, Jenny (2002). Sex and gender in variationist research. In Chambers, J. K., Trudgill, Peter, & Schilling-Estes, Natalie (eds.), Handbook of language variation and chang, 423–43. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cowie, Claire (2007). The accents of outsourcing: The meanings of ‘neutral’ in the Indian call centre industry. World Englishes 26(3):316–30.Google Scholar
Dimension Data (2015). Global contact centre benchmark comparison portal. Online: http://www.ccma.org.uk/benchmarking/benchmarking-reports/; accessed 22 July 2017.Google Scholar
Durbin, Sue (2006). Gender, skills and careers in UK call centres. In Burgess, John & Connell, Julia (eds.), Developments in the call centre industry, 117–35. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope (2000). Linguistic variation as social practice. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope (2016). Variation, meaning and social change. In Coupland, Nikolas (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical debates, 6885. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope, & McConnell-Ginet, Sally (1999). New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research. Language in Society 28(2):185201.Google Scholar
Eden, Christine (2017). Gender, education and work: Inequalities and intersectionality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ehrlich, Susan, & Meyerhoff, Miriam (2014). Introduction: Language, gender, and sexuality. In Ehrlich, Susan, Meyerhoff, Miriam, & Holmes, Janet (eds.), The handbook of language, gender and sexuality, 2nd edn., 120. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Evetts, Julia (2000). Analysing change in women's careers: Culture, structure and action dimensions. Gender, Work and Organisations 7(1):5767.Google Scholar
Fernie, Sue, & Metcalf, David (1998). (Not) hanging on the telephone: Payment systems in the new sweatshops. Discussion Paper No. 390. London: Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science.Google Scholar
Forey, Gail (2013). The impact of call centre employment on women in India. World Englishes 32(4):503–20.Google Scholar
Forey, Gail, & Lockwood, Jane (2007). ‘I'd love to put someone in jail for this’: An initial investigation of English needs in the business processing outsourcing (BPO) industry. English for Specific Purposes 26:308–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forey, Gail, & Lockwood, Jane (eds.) (2010). Globalisation, communication and the workplace. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Freed, Alice, & Greenwood, Alice (1996). Women, men, and type of talk: What makes the difference? Language in Society 25(1):126.Google Scholar
Freeman, Carla (2000). High tech and high heels in the global economy: Women, work and pink collar identities in the Caribbean. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Friginal, Eric (2009). The language of outsourced call centers: A corpus-based study of cross-cultural interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie H., & Kyratzis, Amy (2014). Language and gender in peer interactions among children and youth. In Ehrlich, Susan, Meyerhoff, Miriam, & Holmes, Janet (eds.), The handbook of language, gender, and sexuality, 509–28. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Heller, Monica (2007). Gender and bilingualism in the new economy. In McElhinny, 287304.Google Scholar
Heller, Monica (2010). The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology 39:101–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie R. (2012). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. (3rd edn. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Holman, David; Batt, Rosemary; & Holtgrewe, Ursula (2007). The global call center report: International perspectives on management and employment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Digital Commons. Online: http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=reports.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet (2006). Gendered talk at work: Constructing gender identity through workplace discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet, & Marra, Meredith (2011). Leadership discourse in a Māori workplace: Negotiating gender, ethnicity and leadership at work. Gender & Language 5(2):316–42.Google Scholar
Holmes, Janet, & Stubbe, Maria (2003). ‘Feminine’ workplaces: Stereotype and reality. In Holmes, Janet & Meyerhoff, Miriam (eds.), The handbook of language and gender, 573–99. Maiden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hultgren, Anna Kristina (2008). Linguistic regulation and interactional reality: A sociolinguistics study of call centre service transactions. Oxford: University of Oxford dissertation.Google 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(1):3664.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hultgren, Anna Kristina (2017). Vocatives as rationalized politeness: Theoretical insights from emerging norms in call centre service encounters. Journal of Sociolinguistics 21(1):90111.Google Scholar
Jones, Susan, & Myhilla, Debra (2004). ‘Troublesome boys’ and ‘compliant girls’: Gender identity and perceptions of achievement and underachievement. British Journal of Sociology of Education 25(5):547–61.Google Scholar
Ladegaard, Hans J. (2011). ‘Doing power’ at work: Responding to male and female management styles in a global business corporation. Journal of Pragmatics 43(1):419.Google Scholar
Litosseliti, Lia, & Leadbeater, Claire (2011). Gendered discourses in speech and language therapy. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice 8(3):295314.Google Scholar
Maccoby, Eleanor E. (1998). The two sexes: Growing up apart, coming together. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
McDowell, Joanne (2015). Talk in feminised occupations: Exploring male nurses’ linguistic behaviour. Gender & Language 9(3):365–89.Google Scholar
McElhinny, Bonnie (ed.) (2007). Words, worlds, material girls: Language and gender in a global economy. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Mills, Sara (2003.) Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mirchandani, Kiran (2005). Gender eclipsed? Racial hierarchies in transnational call center work. Social Justice 32(4):105–19.Google Scholar
Mullany, Louise (2010). Gendered discourse in the professional workplace. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Ochs, Elinor (1992). Indexing gender. In Duranti, Alessandro & Goodwin, Charles (eds.), Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon, 335–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Paechter, Carrie (2007). Being boys, being girls. Maidenhead: Open University Press/McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Pichler, Heike (2010). Methods in discourse analysis: Reflections on the way forward. Journal of Sociolinguistics 14(5):581608.Google Scholar
Pichler, Pia, & Eppler, Eva (eds.) (2009). Gender and spoken interaction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Richardson, Ranald; Belt, Vicki; & Marshall, Neill (2000). Taking calls to Newcastle: The regional implications of the growth in call centres. Regional Studies 34(4):357–69.Google Scholar
Rod, Michel, & Ashill, Nicholas J. (2013). The impact of call centre stressors on inbound and outbound call-centre agent burnout. Managing Service Quality: An International Journal 23(3):245–64.Google Scholar
Russell, Bob (2008). Call centres: A decade of research. International Journal of Management Reviews 10(3):195219.Google Scholar
Scholarios, Dora, & Taylor, Philip (2011). Beneath the glass ceiling: Explaining gendered role segmentation in call centres. Human Relations 64(10):12911319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sczesny, Sabine, & Stahlberg, Dagmar (2000). Sexual harassment over the telephone: Occupational risk at call centres. Work and Stress 14(2):121–36.Google Scholar
Shaw, Sylvia (2006). Governed by the rules? The female voice in parliamentary debates. In Baxter, Judith (ed.), Speaking out: The female voice in public contexts, 81102. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael (2003). Indexical order and the dialects of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23(3–4):193229.Google Scholar
Sunderland, Jane, & Litosseliti, Lia (2002). Gender identity and discourse analysis: Theoretical and empirical considerations. In Litosseliti, Lia & Sunderland, Jane (eds.), Gender identity and discourse analysis, 139. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Swann, Joan (2002). ‘Yes, but is it gender?’. In Litosseliti, Lia & Sunderland, Jane (eds.), Gender identity and discourse analysis, 4367. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tannen, Deborah (2001). Talking from 9–5: Women and men at work. New York: Harper Collins. [Reprint edn.]Google Scholar
Philip, Taylor; Hyman, Jeff; Mulvey, Gareth; & Bain, Peter (2002). Work organization, control, and the experience of work in call centres. Work, Employment and Society 16(1):133–50Google Scholar
Waber, Ben (2014). What data analytics says about gender inequality in the workplace. Bloomberg Businessweek. Online: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-30/gender-inequality-in-the-workplace-what-data-analytics-says#p1; accessed 22 July 2017.Google Scholar
Williams, Christine L.; Muller;, Chandra & Kilanski, Kristine (2012). Gendered organizations in the new economy. Gender & Society 26(4):549–73.Google Scholar
Woydack, Johanna, & Rampton, Ben (2016). Text trajectories in a multilingual call centre: The linguistic ethnography of a calling script. Language in Society 45(5):709–32.Google Scholar