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

TY - JOUR

T1 - Text trajectories in a multilingual call centre

T2 - The linguistic ethnography of a calling script

AU - Woydack, Johanna

AU - Rampton, Ben

PY - 2016/12/6

Y1 - 2016/12/6

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84988709899&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1017/S0047404516000610

DO - 10.1017/S0047404516000610

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84988709899

SN - 0047-4045

VL - 45

SP - 709

EP - 732

JO - Language in Society

JF - Language in Society

IS - 5

ER -