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Styling the Worker: Gender and

the commodification of language in the

globalized service economy

Globalization - a set of far-reaching, transnational, economic, social and cultural changes -- has implications for patterns of language-use, linguistic variation and change.

"New work order"

= new ways of working that make new demands on the linguistic abilities of workers

•Workers must in principle develop new forms of linguistic and other agency to meet the demands of the new capitalism

•New linguistic demands on workers may, in practice, entail new (or at least, newly intensified) forms of CONTROL over their linguistic behavior, and thus, a diminution of their agency as language users.

The commodification of language in contemporary service workplaces is also in some sense the commodification of a quasi-feminine service persona.

STYLE, STYLING, STYLIZATION

‘Audience design’ (Bell 1984, 1997)

• Stylistic choices are primarily motivated by the speaker’s assessment of the effect certain ways of speaking will have on particular addressees.

• Commonly takes the form of convergence towards the addressee’s way of speaking.

Stylization is taking on a voice which is recognizably different from one’s ‘normal’ or ‘expected’ voice

Crossing – appropriating linguistic features that index an identity which is in some salient way ‘other’

combining meanings made available by linguistic variation into a distinctive way of speaking; a stylistic agent appropriates resources from a broad sociolinguistic landscape, recombining them to make a distinctive style

In Service Workplaces

•Service styles are designed by one set of people (managers on site or at head office, or –not uncommonly—outside consultants) to be enacted in speech by a different set of people (front line customer service workers).

•Typically, a third set of people (supervisors or ‘team leaders’, and sometimes, also ‘mystery shoppers’, people employed by the companies to carry out spot-checks on service while posing as genuine customers) are charged with ensuring compliance through monitoring, ‘coaching’ and appraisal of workers’ linguistic performance.

in Service Workplace

Stylistic choices’ are made by corporate style designers with ‘audience design’ in mind, namely the customers with whom service workers interact.

• The corporate style designers’ relationship to the audience is indirect, mediated by the workers who actually talk to the customers.

• These workers have dual audience: the customer and the supervisor or manager who enforces linguistic and other norms through surveillance.

• In practice, the workers prioritize the ‘in-house audience’, whose judgments on their performance had more direct and immediate consequences.

Standardizing Speech in Call Centers:

Scripting and Styling

The institutional regime of the call center exemplifies what the sociologist George Ritzer (1996) has dubbed ‘McDonaldization.’

This process has four main dimensions:

  • Efficiency – the most output for the least effort
  • Calculability – the measurement of quality in terms of quantity
  • Predictability – as little variation as possible
  • (Non-human) Control – control of worker’s activities by means of technology

McDonaldization results to an EFFICIENT, logical sequence of methods that can be completed the same way every time to produce the desired outcome. Quantity (or CALCULABILITY becomes the measurement of good performance. The outcome is PREDICTABLE. Additionally, all aspects of the process are easily CONTROLLED

Call center scripting and styling

Scripting – standardizes what is said

Styling – attempts to standardize how it is said

Minimal Responses

Asking Questions

  • elicit information
  • display interest in the customer as a person
  • make interaction more genuine dialogue
  • give customer space to speak freely and at length
  • Avoid “conducive questions”
  • Use “open questions”
  • using questions to facilitate talk-an ‘interpersonal’ rather than purely ‘informational’ use of language-is a strategy associated in particular with women speakers

"….[women] just seem to fit better, they are better at it….people who can chat to people, interact, build rapport….they’re more natural when they do it. It doesn’t sound as forced, perhaps they’re used to doing it all the time anyway…they have higher tolerance level than men."

REVALUING ‘WOMEN’S LANGUAGE’:

CUSTOMER SERVICE AS EMOTIONAL LABOUR

CUSTOMER CARE

  • To make customers feel that they’re not just being served, but individually “cared for”
  • Adopted by many organizations in our “globalized” society
  • Promotes customer loyalty to the company & enhances its competitive edge
  • Requires “emotional labour”

EMOTIONAL LABOUR

  • The “management of feelings” (Hochschild, 1983, cited by Cameron)
  • Customer service as an “expressive” language… a language of feeling & caring
  • Goal is not just to sound polite & professional, but to project positive emotions

Examples:

“Your telephone manner should sound as if you have been waiting for that particular call all day” (for every 32-sec encounter, directory assistance centre manual)

“Try to make the customer feel you are there for them” (auto insurance centre manual)

AMATEUR THERAPY

  • Customer care draws from the register of therapy & counseling
  • Manager consultant David Freemantle (1998) advises service workers to practice “amateur therapy.”
  • He prescribes a form of “emotional labour,” which involves management of both the customer’s & worker’s feelings.

“CHANGING TRENDS” IN GENDER ROLES

However, service work is performed not only by women.

increase in Service Sector + decrease in Manufacturing = Men seeking customer service jobs

WHAT THE MEN SAY

Male call centre operators in Britain did not consider their gender to be an issue.

They were more concerned with artificiality, inauthenticity, and extreme subservience of the persona imposed upon them by scripts.

In the US, a number of men perceived their jobs as “feminizing” and for that reason, problematic.

However it must be noted that these observations are anecdotal and non-conclusive.

WOMEN’S LANGUAGE

  • Men have sometimes been taken as the norm (Cameron & Coates, 1988, cited by Graddol).
  • Symbolic meaning attached to “women’s language”: powerlessness & subservience.
  • Old maxim “Customer is King” taken to new extremes
  • Higher level of politeness is generally expected of women than of men (Coulmas, 2005).
  • Some languages (e.g. Korean, Japanese) deemed as “women’s language,” because of their gender-specific politeness markers

Relevance of the study

by Deborah Cameron

  • Use words of acknowledgement: yes, OK, thank you, I understand, I see…[avoid] disruptive, disinterested or challenging use of listening acknowledgements, and using the same listening acknowledgement throughout the call.
  • Use minimal responses supportively: should not be inserted where they will disrupt interaction, connote lack of interest or disagreement.

McDonaldization is described by Ritzer as a process by which a society takes on the characteristics of a fast food restaurant. It is a process of hyper-rationalization in which it is believed that almost any task could (and should) be rationalized.

Corporate Speak

The Use of Language in Business

“... the adoption of new managerial approaches in a context of intensified global competition has sharpened awareness of language as a valuable commodity, potentially a source of competitive advantage...”

In call centers:

  • Efficiency – maximized by designing interactional routines
  • Calculability – seen through the judgment of job performance based on the number of calls handled in a given period of time; setting of targets for the time taken to process each call
  • Predictability – maximized through scripting and styling
  • Control – through automated call distribution systems, data retrieving software, hi-tech worker surveillance

‘Standard’ speech or ‘standardization’ of speech within organization

•The practice of making and enforcing rules for language-use with the intention of reducing optional variation in performance

•Tend not to target grammatical or phonological variation but is more concerned to prescribe features of interactive discourse such as prosody and voice quality, the way in which particular speech acts should be performed, the choice of address terms/salutations and the consistent use of certain politeness formulae.

•Is not prompted by the need to communicate across regional/national boundaries, but rather by the need to subordinate individuals to a corporate norm.

In effect, these ‘auditors’ and ‘overhearers’ appear capable of overriding those of the actual addressee.

linguistic consequences of globalization

Women represent majority of rank & file employees in many service workplaces,

including call centres.

  • corporate verbal hygiene practices may be part of a strategic attempt to be globally competitive
  • creative decisions are reserved to people at the top

linguistic studies of workplace talk

  • conversation analysts will have to contend with how much authorities define the kind of talk produced at work

relationship between language and gender

  • valorization of characteristics associated with women's speech
  • how truly beneficial this phenomenon is to women
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