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Text trajectories in a multilingual call centre: The linguistic ethnography of a calling script

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2016

Johanna Woydack  and
Ben Rampton
Johanna Woydack*
Affiliation:
Vienna University of Economics & Business
Ben Rampton
Affiliation:
King's College London
*
Address for correspondence: Johanna Woydack Vienna University of Economics & BusinessDepartment of Foreign Language Business CommunicationBuilding D2, Entrance D, Welthandelsplatz1020 Vienna, Austriajohanna.woydack@wu.ac.at
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Abstract

Call centres have been widely criticised as standardised workplaces, and the imposition of calling scripts is often characterised as dehumanising and deskilling. But these accounts lack close analysis of how scripts are actually produced, taken up, and used by call-centre workers, and they are generally locked into dualistic analyses of control and resistance. In contrast, this article combines long-term ethnography with transcontextual analysis of the production, circulation and uptake of calling scripts. This reveals a good deal of collective and individual agency in processes of text-adaptation, and produces a rather more nuanced picture of work in a call centre. (Call centres, text trajectories, linguistic ethnography, standardisation)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 45 , Issue 5 , November 2016 , pp. 709 - 732
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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