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108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA.
Journal of Sociolinguistics 4/3, 2000: 323±347
Styling the worker: Gender and the
commodi®cation of language in the
globalized service economy1
Deborah Cameron
Institute of Education, London
This paper discusses some sociolinguistic characteristics of the speech style
prescribed to workers for interacting with customers in service contexts,
focusing in particular on the linguistic and vocal `styling' prescribed for
operators in telephone call centres in the U.K. Attention is drawn to the
similarities between the preferred style of speech and what is popularly
thought of as `women's language'. The intensive regulation of service workers'
speech and the valorization of `feminine' communication styles are
analysed in relation to changes occurring as a consequence of economic
globalization.
KEYWORDS: Language and gender, globalization, institutional talk,
call centres
INTRODUCTION
Sociolinguists are increasingly recognizing that the phenomenon of globalization,
a set of far-reaching, transnational, economic, social and cultural changes,
has implications for patterns of language-use, linguistic variation and change
(Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Fairclough 1992; Heller 1999). One aspect of
globalization on which a number of researchers have focused is the `new
work order' (Gee, Hull and Lankshear 1996) in which new (`post-Fordist') ways
of working make new demands on the linguistic abilities of workers. Commentators
on this subject (e.g. many contributors to Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Gee,
Hull and Lankshear 1996; Gee 2000) place emphasis on the new forms of
linguistic and other agency that workers must in principle develop to meet the
demands of the new capitalism. There is also an argument, however, that new
linguistic demands on workers may in practice entail new (or at least, newly
intensi®ed) forms of control over their linguistic behaviour, and thus a
diminution of their agency as language-users.
The question of control is raised explicitly in the literature of business and
management. In her book Corporate Speak: The Use of Language in Business, for
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instance, Fiona Czerniawska (1998) explains that the adoption of new managerial
approaches in a context of intensi®ed global competition has sharpened
awareness of language as a valuable commodity, potentially a source of
`competitive advantage', which therefore needs to be `managed' rather than
simply left to take care of itself. Particularly in the service sector of the economy,
whose growth is one feature of globalization, one may observe an increasing
tendency for employers to regulate even quite trivial details of workers' talk
(Cameron 2000; du Gay 1996).
Here I examine the imposition on one group of English-speaking customer
service workers (telephone call centre operators)2
of a particular speech style as
the norm or `standard' for interaction on the job. As well as discussing the
means used by organizations seeking to exert control over the speech of their
employees, I will discuss some of the sociolinguistic characteristics of the speech
style that is prescribed as a `standard'. I will argue that its most salient features
are not markers of class, region, or nationality/ethnicity, but symbolic markers
of feminine gender (though they are not presented explicitly as gendered, and
they are prescribed to workers of both sexes). The commodi®cation of language
in contemporary service workplaces is also in some sense the commodi®cation
of a quasi-feminine service persona.
Before I proceed, my use of certain terms requires clari®cation. When I talk
about the imposition of a standard or about the standardization of speech within
an organization, this is not intended to mean `the imposition of the lexicogrammatical
norms of a standard (national/international) language', but more
abstractly, the practice of making and enforcing rules for language-use with the
intention of reducing optional variation in performance (Milroy and Milroy
1998). As will be seen in more detail below, the rules in question tend not to
target grammatical or phonological variation (these being the prototypical
targets for language standardization in the less abstract sense). They are
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. In this instance standardization is not prompted by the
need to communicate across regional/national boundaries (though in the case
of multinational companies it may operate across them), but rather by the need
to subordinate individuals to a corporate norm. Employees' verbal behaviour,
along with other aspects of their self-presentation such as bodily appearance
and dress (cf. Witz, Warhurst, Nickson and Cullen 1998), is treated as a
commodity ± part of what organizations are selling to their customers, an
element of their `branding' and corporate image. The signi®cance organizations
accord to the prescribed style of speaking is evident from the degree of e€ort they
put into its production via training, regulation and surveillance of employees'
speech.
Above I used the phrase `prescribed style of speaking', and throughout this
paper I will refer to the object/product of linguistic regulation as a `style'. At this
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point it is helpful to clarify what I mean by the term style and how the
phenomena discussed below ®t into ongoing discussions of style in socio-
linguistics.
STYLE, STYLING, STYLIZATION
Classically in the variationist paradigm of sociolinguistics, `styles' were de®ned
along an axis of formality: an increase in the formality of the situation leads to
increased self-monitoring by the speaker and therefore, in the typical case, to
rising frequencies of prestige variants in that speaker's output (cf. Labov 1972).
Over time, however, there has been a tendency to adopt a less monodimensional
view of style and of the meanings or e€ects produced by stylistic variation. An
example of the more multidimensional approach is Allan Bell's in¯uential
theory of style as `audience design' (Bell 1984, 1997) in which it is argued
that stylistic choices are primarily motivated by the speaker's assessment of the
e€ect certain ways of speaking will have on particular addressees. Bell's account
is informed by accommodation theory (e.g. Giles and Powesland 1975):
audience design commonly takes the form of convergence towards the addressee's
way of speaking (for empirical examples see Bell 1984; Coupland
1984). However, Bell also notes the existence of what he calls `initiative' (as
opposed to `responsive') styleshift, and of cases in which `the individual speaker
makes creative use of language resources often from beyond the immediate
speech community' (Bell 1997: 248). An instance which has attracted
attention in recent sociolinguistic research is the phenomenon of `crossing'
(Rampton 1995) ± appropriating linguistic features that index an identity
which is in some salient way `other' (as with the use of variants marked as
Black by speakers who are themselves white; see Bucholtz 1999; Cutler 1999).
Crossing is rarely a case of convergence towards the immediate addressee (more
usually it reproduces features associated with an absent reference group ± not
uncommonly one whose speech lacks prestige by mainstream de®nitions). Allan
Bell, following the literary theorist Bakhtin, puts this under the heading of
`stylization' ± taking on a voice which is recognizably di€erent from one's
`normal' or `expected' voice (Bell 1997: 248).
The creative deployment of varied linguistic resources may also be manifested
in linguistic behaviour that is not crossing, but rather involves some mixing of
elements from di€erent sources. Penelope Eckert suggests: `The construction of a
style is a process of bricolage: a stylistic agent appropriates resources from a
broad sociolinguistic landscape, recombining them to make a distinctive style'
(1996: 3). `Style' in Eckert's usage can be a verb as well as a noun: the `stylistic
agent' who draws on the meanings made available by linguistic variation and
combines these into a distinctive way of speaking can be seen as `styling' her/
himself. Eckert's particular interest is in the self-styling undertaken by adolescents
and pre-adolescents as they experiment with various possible positionings
within their newly signi®cant peer groups and social networks.
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My own use of the term style is broadly in the spirit of the post-Labovian work
cited above, but there are some signi®cant (and interesting) di€erences between
the styling practices I am interested in and those studied by Bell, Rampton or
Eckert. Their work focuses on practices of self-styling, where the speaker is also
what Eckert calls the `stylistic agent', the person who makes choices about her
or his own linguistic performance. In the service workplaces investigated here,
by contrast, the roles of speaker and stylistic agent are separated to a signi®cant
extent. It is of course true that any actual linguistic performance must, in the
®nal analysis, be produced by the speaker her or himself. It is also true that some
stylistic choices remain the prerogative of individual speakers, because they
involve variables that have not become objects of institutional regulatory zeal
(in the call centre case for example, accent is not normally a target for
institutional regulation).3
In general, however, service styles are designed by
one set of people (managers on site or at head oce, or ± not uncommonly ±
outside consultants) to be enacted in speech by a di€erent set of people (frontline
customer-service workers). Typically a third set of people (supervisors or
`team leaders', and sometimes also `mystery shoppers', people employed by
companies to carry out spot-checks on service while posing as genuine
customers) are charged with ensuring compliance through monitoring, `coaching'
(the ongoing provision of critical feedback) and appraisal of workers'
linguistic performance.
A further di€erence takes us back to the question of `audience design'.
Corporate style designers do, of course, make stylistic choices with an audience
in mind, namely the customers with whom service workers interact. In this they
resemble the radio presenters discussed by Bell (1984) in his article on style as
audience design, who are obliged to imagine their target addressees as a
collectivity, and to make guesses about the preferences of those addressees.
But whereas the radio presenters do their own speaking, the corporate style
designers' relationship to the audience is indirect, mediated by the workers who
actually talk to customers. These workers e€ectively have a dual audience: they
speak to the customer, but at the same time they are also using the prescribed
style for the bene®t of the supervisor or manager who enforces linguistic and
other norms through surveillance. Some workers I interviewed, though clear
that in theory their job was to serve the customer, not their supervisor, reported
that in practice they prioritized the requirements of the `in-house' audience,
whose judgements on their performance had more direct and immediate
consequences. This is an intriguing case where the demands of what Bell
(1997: 246±247) refers to as `auditors' and `overhearers' appear capable of
overriding those of the actual addressee.
In sum, `styling' in contemporary service workplaces is less a community
practice, generated from the bottom up, than a prescriptive or `verbal hygiene'
practice (Cameron 1995), imposed from the top down. For this reason, and
despite some points of resemblance, it is not wholly comparable either to the selfstyling
practices of adolescents (Cutler 1999; Eckert 1996; Rampton 1995) or to
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the stylistic behaviour of workers modifying their speech (whether consciously
or unconsciously) to advance their own interests in business transactions
(Coupland 1984; Hall 1995; Johnstone 1999). It might be considered a case
of `stylization', since it involves speakers giving a performance, the `script' for
which has been written by someone else (literally in some instances, as will be
discussed further below). Yet it lacks what might be seen as a de®ning feature of
stylized utterance, namely the quality of calling attention to itself (however
subtly) as a performance, of pointing to some kind of separation between the
speaker's self and her/his speech at that moment. Though they may vary in their
ability to bring it o€, service workers performing standard routines are typically
instructed to aim for a `natural' and `authentic' performance.
Workplace styling, then, is a distinctive phenomenon, and as such it prompts
various questions, not all of which can be addressed in the space of a single
article. The main question I set out to address here concerns the actual choices
made by corporate style designers: what are they, and what is the motivation for
them? What social meanings do the designers intend to index when they instruct
service workers to adopt a particular style of speaking? Of course, one might also
want to ask questions about the extent to which workers actually comply with
the instructions they are given, and the meanings actually attributed to their
speech by those on the receiving end, i.e. customers. These are important issues,
but they are beyond the scope of the present paper. What follows, then, is a
description and analysis of a stylistic ideal, or in corporate language the `brand':
a normative construct which shapes, even if it cannot wholly determine, the
behaviour of those language-users to whom it is prescribed.4
THE DATA
My data were collected for a larger project (Cameron 2000) which looked at
some range of service workplaces, but for the purposes of this article I
concentrate on a single type of workplace, namely the `call centre', an institution
in which people are employed to make or take telephone calls. (The `make
or take' distinction is captured in the industry terms `outbound' and `inbound'
to refer to call centres where employees either initiate or receive calls. The
centres I looked at were exclusively `inbound', i.e. calls were initiated by
customers. Outbound call centres typically have sales rather than service as
their prime function, whereas I was most interested in the provision of customer
services.)
I chose to study call centres, in particular, for two reasons. First, they provide
a prototypical example of a `new' service workplace: the vast majority have
existed for less than ten years, and their institutional culture has always
incorporated the disciplines of globalized capitalism. Call centres as we now
know them came into existence when it was recognized that advances in
telephony and computing enabled customer service functions traditionally
performed locally (e.g. in each branch of a bank or travel agency) to be
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concentrated in a single `remote' location with access to a central computer
database. Companies can cut costs by routing all customer enquiries to one
point, and since its physical location is irrelevant ± customers do not have to go
there ± it can be put where rents and labour costs are low. In addition, since call
centre operators, unlike more traditional clerical workers, perform only one
function, the work itself can be organized to maximize productivity. Again, this
goal is pursued with the aid of technology. Many centres use an Automated Call
Distribution (ACD) system which ensures that incoming calls are passed to
operators as soon as they become available, meaning that at busy times
operators handle calls continuously, with no more than seconds in between.
The work of call centre operators is notoriously stressful, being both extremely
repetitive and subject to demanding performance targets, and this is re¯ected in
high rates of employee turnover in the industry (Carter 1998; Reardon 1996).
Media coverage of call centres has been both copious and generally critical,
often suggesting that they are the sweatshops of the 21st
century (Wazir 1999).
Second, language has a special signi®cance in call centre work. The
operator's job consists of little else but language-using ± talking to customers
on the phone and inputting/retrieving data using a computer ± and her/his
professional persona must be created entirely through speech. Typically, the
speech of call centre operators is subject to intensive regulation and constant
surveillance. Supervisors can covertly listen in on any call (known in the
industry as `silent listening'), while in some centres every call is recorded and
may become the subject of `counselling' (a worker and a supervisor or manager
listen together to examples of the worker's performance and engage in critical
assessment).5
Call centres, then, are a good example of service work as language
work, and as such they are also a particularly rich source of insight into the
commodi®cation and regulation of language on the job.
I collected data relating to seven centres located in various parts of the U.K.
(central Scotland, the north of England and London). The service functions
performed in these centres were: providing directory assistance to telephone
subscribers, logging faults in telecommunications equipment, dealing with auto
insurance claims, processing personal banking transactions, authorizing credit
requests, booking rail tickets and handling enquiries for a utility (gas) company.
The data at my disposal take the form of notes on observations, tapes/transcripts
of interviews, and copies of written materials including employee manuals,
training packs, appraisal forms and lists of criteria for assessing performance,
scripts and prompt sheets for standard work routines, and memos discussing
linguistic issues.
The analysis in this article draws most heavily on the last-mentioned of these
data-types, namely the textual materials. These provide the clearest and most
detailed picture of what linguistic ideal a call centre `ocially' wants its
operators to aim for, what it prescribes and what it proscribes. However, it
should be noted here that I was able to obtain a suitable quantity and quality of
texts from only four of the seven centres in my sample; these four therefore
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dominate the analysis presented below (it will be obvious which they are from
my attribution of extracts). Of the other three centres, one did not as yet produce
detailed written speci®cations for linguistic performance; in the remaining two
cases I was not able to procure copies of the speci®cations from the sources
available to me (see further below).
Some supplementary information comes from a set of interviews conducted
between May and December 1998 (the main purpose of interviewing was to
elicit insiders' perceptions of call centre work; since that is not the focus of the
present article, the use made of interview data here is limited). I interviewed four
call centre managers, two supervisors and six operators, employed in ®ve
di€erent centres located in central Scotland, northern England and London
(these are a subset of the seven mentioned above). All interviews were
conducted individually, in most cases face to face but in two cases on the
phone. (All but two took place `o€-site', for reasons explained below.) Interviews
were `semi-structured' ± I had a schedule of questions, but I encouraged
informants to respond at length where they had more to say, and to introduce
additional concerns. Each interview lasted at least 30 minutes.
It will be evident from the details just given that di€erent centres I had
dealings with provided di€erent kinds and quantities of information. This
re¯ects some problems associated with researching commercial enterprises in
general and call centres in particular.6
In cases where I undertook observation
in a call centre I did so with the co-operation of the management, but there were
often restrictive conditions attached. Because of the critical media coverage I
have already mentioned, I found many managers concerned about negative
publicity, which led some to want to control what I saw, heard and ultimately
wrote in ways that could not be acceptable to an academic researcher. Others
refused certain requests (e.g. to record on-site, see also note 4) to protect the
privacy of their customers. More unexpectedly, documents such as training
manuals and assessment criteria were commonly de®ned as con®dential and
not to be reproduced, on the grounds that such texts constitute commercial
assets from which competitors might bene®t if they were in the public domain.
In addition it proved dicult to interview employees in their workplaces, both
because their work routines left little time for it and because of reticence
engendered by the culture of surveillance.
When I became aware of these problems I resorted to approaching employees
of centres where I had not secured any ocial co-operation, and speaking to
them outside their workplaces, without the knowledge of their employers. This
approach precluded on-site observations in the centres concerned, but it gave
me access to more textual material (employees were generally not troubled by
the commercial implications of letting me see their manuals) as well as more
extensive and candid interview data. Even so, many of my subjects feared
disciplinary sanctions if it were discovered that they had spoken to me and
passed on internal documents. I have therefore left them anonymous and used
generic labels (e.g. `directory assistance centre') for the centres they work in.
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STANDARDIZING SPEECH IN CALL CENTRES: SCRIPTING AND STYLING
The institutional regime of the call centre exempli®es the hyper-rationalizing
tendency that the sociologist George Ritzer (1996) has dubbed `McDonaldization'.
For Ritzer this tendency is de®ned by its drive to maximize four things:
eciency (the most output for the least e€ort), calculability (the measurement of
quality in terms of quantity), predictability (as little variation as possible) and
control (of workers' activities by means of technology). Since explaining how
these notions apply to the speci®c case of the call centre is also a useful way of
describing the workings of call centres to readers who may not be familiar with
them, I will examine them brie¯y in turn.
Eciency is maximized in call centres by designing interactional routines so
that they consist of the fewest moves needed to complete a given transaction
successfully. For example, in the directory assistance centre, the standard
routine for processing a request for a phone number has the `core' moves
`which name please', `which town', `which address'. This re¯ects the fact that
the software used to retrieve phone numbers needs all and only the answers to
these questions (preferably in the order just given) to trigger a search. It is also
speci®ed in the manual that operators must repeat back to the customer the
answer s/he gives to each `core' question. This might appear inecient, since it
doubles the number of moves made by the operator, but it is intended to reduce
the risk of incorrect details being input and preventing the successful completion
of the call.
Calculability is maximized by setting targets for the time taken to process calls,
and judging the quality of employees' work in terms of the number of calls
handled in a given period (though as we will see, this is not the only measure of
their performance). Operators in the directory assistance centre, for instance,
are expected to process standard enquiries in 32 seconds or less. Operators in
the rail reservation centre are given a target of four minutes per transaction.
The use of standardized scripts for common routines enhances calculability as
well as eciency, since the duration of a pre-scripted routine can be estimated
more accurately than if there is no script. Though the customer's moves are not
scripted, it has been suggested that customers dealing with employees who
follow scripts are apt to `routinize' their own behaviour in response (Leidner
1993).
Not all call centre regimes use scripting proper (`scripting' being de®ned here
as the provision of a full speci®cation for every word uttered by the operator.)
An alternative is to provide a `prompt sheet', which speci®es what interactional
moves the operator should make in what order, but does not prescribe a
standard form of words. Some centres do not even go that far, providing only
general guidelines for the `staging' of a transaction, leaving the exact number of
moves in each stage to the operator's discretion. Others use some mixture of the
strategies just described. These options exemplify di€ering degrees of emphasis
placed on the predictability of call centre interaction. Scripting maximizes
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predictability, and during my ®eldwork I saw indications that call centres are
moving increasingly in this direction, mainly because it is thought to produce
eciency gains. For instance, one centre in my sample was in the process of
introducing what it called a `standard telephone speech' (a script). While
operators were informed that the intention was to improve the quality of
service, a memo addressed to supervisors expressed the hope and belief that
standardization would reduce call-handling times. It should not be assumed,
however, that the only motive for maximizing predictability is to improve
eciency. Predictability is often presented as a virtue in itself. Thus a section
of the directory assistance centre's manual asks, `why have salutations?'.
(`Salutations' is this company's term for all the polite, interpersonally-oriented
formulae that operators are required to insert at various points in the standard
routine, such as `thank you', `sorry to keep you waiting' and `just searching for
you'.) The answer given is that the use of standard formulae meets customers'
expectations of `professional' service by giving them an experience which is
`consistent every time they call'.7
Finally, technological control over human operators is seen in various aspects
of the call centre regime. Automated call distribution systems dictate the pace of
work, while the software used for functions like retrieving telephone numbers,
bank account details and rail timetables shapes the sequence and content of
many routines. Perhaps the most striking instance of technological control in
call centres, however, is hi-tech surveillance. Supervisors can see at the click of
a mouse how all members of their team are occupied (in some centres operators
who propose to visit the bathroom must key a special code in on their computers
so their supervisor can assess whether the time they spend there is reasonable),
and they can constantly monitor performance statistics (e.g. how many calls a
given operator has taken during a shift and what their average duration has
been). In addition, as I noted earlier, the phone system is typically set up to
permit `silent listening' by supervisors to calls in progress, and taping of calls for
retrospective assessment. These surveillance practices focus more speci®cally on
the operator's handling of the interactional task, rather than simply on her/his
performance as measured by statistics. If a script is in use, for example, silent
listening and taping will be used to monitor operators' compliance with the
prescribed wording. But even when there is no script, surveillance is used to
monitor various aspects of operators' verbal behaviour. Whether call-handling
routines are fully scripted, partially scripted or unscripted, their performance is
usually subject to detailed speci®cations of the manner or style in which the
operator should interact with callers. This is the approach that I refer to as
`styling'.
Styling is used ± either on its own or in combination with scripting ± because
specifying a standard form of words does not on its own ensure the kind and
degree of standardization many service organizations, including many call
centres, are trying to achieve. Scripting standardizes what is said, but styling
is an attempt to standardize how it is said, addressing the many aspects of
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spoken interaction that are not readily represented in a written script. Consider,
for example, the following remark made by a supervisor at an airline reservations
centre to the sociologist Steve Taylor (she is discussing the use of taped
calls for the purpose of `counselling' operators):
A lot of the time it isn't what they say, it's the tone in which they say it . . . I will play
something and I'll just stop it and go, `shall we listen to that again?', rewind it and then
they'll go, `I didn't know I said it like that'. It makes them analyse themselves and
really wake up to their mistakes (Taylor 1998: 93, emphasis in original).
The object of concern here ± tone of voice ± lies beyond the reach of scripting,
but it is nevertheless assumed by the supervisor to be susceptible to judgements
of correctness (cf. her use of the word mistakes). Both scripting and styling are
intended to ensure that workers speak `correctly' from the company's point of
view; one takes over where the other leaves o€.
From a linguist's point of view the concerns embodied in styling rules fall
into two main categories. Firstly, as in the above example, attention is given
to the operator's use of her/his voice, with a particular focus on suprasegmental
phenomena such as voice quality and intonation. Secondly, emphasis
is placed on various aspects of the management of interactive spoken
discourse. Operators may be reminded for instance to avoid gap and overlap
in turn transitions, to use minimal responses frequently, to ask `open'
questions and to pause so that callers can assimilate important information.
Some of these considerations (e.g. the phrasing of questions) can be
incorporated into a pre-written script, but many cannot (e.g. the placement
of minimal responses and turn transitions, which depends on the behaviour of
the caller).
Probably the most important instruments of styling are the checklists used in
many centres for purposes of assessment by supervisors, managers and `mystery
callers' (that is, outsiders employed to perform `spot checks' by posing as real
callers and then logging their assessment of the operator's performance). Here,
for example, is a selection of the contents of a 12±point checklist used in the
assessment of operators at the credit authorization centre in my sample (a
centre, incidentally, which also scripts call routines exhaustively):
. Smiling. Does the member of sta€ answer the phone with a smile?
. Pitch. The depth of pitch in the sta€'s voice will determine the degree of sincerity
and con®dence associated with the message that they are giving the caller.
. Volume. Ensure sta€ are not shouting or hardly audible.
. Pace. Ensure the member of sta€ is not dragging out the sentences nor speeding
through it [sic].
. Acknowledge. Sta€ can let the caller know they have understood them by making
simple acknowledgement sounds, if the caller is not acknowledged in this way they
will presume they have not been understood and repeat themselves.
This is hardly a sophisticated instrument of assessment (it is unclear for example
what `depth of pitch' the assessor is meant to be looking for, even if one
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understands what `depth of pitch' refers to), but it does at least specify which
aspects of performance operators and assessors are expected to be attentive to.
(Lists like this one are typically used in both formal appraisal and more informal
regular coaching of individual operators by their supervisors. They also inform
the preliminary training of operators.)
Having established what I mean by `styling' and how it is embedded in the
call centre regime, I now turn to a more detailed examination of the linguistic
characteristics of the preferred style. I will seek to show that the style is gendered,
produced through a consistent and deliberate preference for ways of speaking
that are symbolically coded as `feminine' (and that in some cases are also
empirically associated with women speakers).
CALL CENTRE STYLE AND `WOMEN'S LANGUAGE'
As is well known, 25 years ago Robin Lako€ (1975) elaborated a notion of
`women's language' (WL), a register or, in Eckert's sense, a `style' characterized
by linguistic features such as the use of `weak' expletives and lexical items like
charming, divine, rising intonation on declaratives, tag-questions in contexts
where the speaker is not checking information, etc. Subsequent empirical
investigations of the `Lako€ hypothesis' produced a copious literature, the
import of which is perhaps most succinctly summarized by saying that not all
women use WL and not all WL-users are women. This however did not deter
scholars from advancing alternative proposals about women's style of speaking
and how it di€ers, on average, from men's. For example, one general claim
widely canvassed in the 1980s and 1990s was that women are more cooperative
conversationalists and more sensitive to the face-wants of others
(Coates 1996; Holmes 1995; Tannen 1990). This di€erence has been invoked
to explain women's use of an array of discourse features such as supportive
simultaneous speech, precision-timed minimal responses and questions whose
function is to show interest in or engage the participation of others, hedging and
indirectness used to mitigate face-threat, and so on.
This brief excursion into the history of language and gender studies is
relevant here, because it is evident that the products of the research tradition
inaugurated by Lako€ have ®ltered steadily, though selectively, into popular
consciousness. This process has produced a lay notion of `women's language'
that is an amalgam of long-established folk-beliefs, elements of the early Lako€
hypothesis, popularized accounts of more recent ®ndings, and new, or at least
reworked, stereotypes disseminated via popular psychology and self-help texts.
However inaccurate it may be as an empirical description of the way women
`really' speak, and however unsatisfactory it may appear from the perspective of
academic scholarship, this notion of `women's language' provides a powerful
symbolic `meaning resource' for `stylistic agents' to draw on. In the following
discussion I will seek to show in more detail how various elements of the
symbolic construct `women's language' are appropriated and recombined in the
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call centre context to produce a particular service style. The discussion is based
on materials (e.g. training manuals and appraisal criteria) I collected from four
call centres in my sample, and it focuses on concerns that recur across those
materials.
One concern that is highlighted in all the materials I collected is with the
styling of the operator's voice. Two instructions on vocal performance are
invariably given: that operators should smile ± even though, obviously, they
are invisible to their interlocutors ± and that they should use an `expressive'
intonation. What the instruction to smile actually means is that the routine (or
sometimes just part of it, e.g. the opening) should be performed with the lips in a
smile posture. `Expressive' intonation means emotionally expressive, and is
explicitly contrasted to intonation which will be heard as monotonous or
uninvolved.
Smiling
Does the member of sta€ answer the phone with a smile?
(credit authorization centre appraisal checklist)
Remember, smiling can be heard as well as seen
(directory assistance centre employee manual)
Have a smile in your voice and avoid sounding abrupt
(performance guidelines, auto insurance centre)
`Expressive' intonation projecting attitudes/emotional states
Our commitment is to give the caller an impression of excitement, friendliness,
helpfulness and courtesy. Your telephone manner should sound as if you have been
waiting for that particular call all day. You must never sound bored on a call
(directory assistance centre employee manual)
The objective at the beginning of a call is to demonstrate sincerity and warmth. Try to
make the caller feel you are there for them . . . [avoid] a disinterested, monotonous
tone to voice
(performance guidelines, auto insurance centre)
It has been argued that both smiling and using expressive intonation are
symbolically feminine behaviours. In the case of smiling, nonverbal communication
researchers point out that it is not simply a spontaneous expression of
pleasure but often functions, especially with non-intimates, to signal deference
or appeasement. In the words of Nancy Henley, the smile is `understood as a
gesture o€ered upward in the status hierarchy' (1986: 171). This analysis of
what smiling means has in turn been linked with ®ndings suggesting that
women smile more than men and that they are more likely to return smiles
than men (Henley 1986: 175±178). It has also been linked with the observation
that women are routinely expected to smile, and sometimes publicly
castigated by complete strangers if they do not smile. Shulamith Firestone
(1970: 90) once proposed a `smile boycott' as a form of feminist political action;
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in 1999 female ¯ight attendants employed by Cathay Paci®c airlines threatened
to take industrial action in a dispute on pay and conditions by refusing to smile
at passengers for one hour of every ¯ight. Such actions are meaningful precisely
because of the existence of strong symbolic links between smiling, femininity
and subordinate status.8
As for expressive intonation, it is both a stereotype and in some cases an
empirical ®nding that female speakers exploit a broader pitch range, in other
words tend less to monotony. This characteristic has been used in the past to
label women as over-emotional and lacking in authority, tempting women like
Margaret Thatcher to deliberately reduce the pitch range they use. The fact that
vocal expressiveness is valued in service-work might suggest that authority is
not among the qualities workers are expected to display.
If we consider the sorts of emotional or attitudinal states operators are
instructed to project through their intonation, we see references in the above
examples to warmth, sincerity, excitement, friendliness, helpfulness, con®dence.
These are not inherently gendered qualities, but overall they produce a style
of service which is strongly a€ective ± that is, not just neutrally polite and
ecient, but based on the expression of positive feelings towards the customer.
Again, it has been argued that overt displays of positive a€ect, or of any emotion
other than anger, are culturally coded as `feminine' rather than `masculine'
(Gervasio and Crawford 1989).
Other recurrent styling concerns are to do with the management of
interpersonal relationships through strategic choices at the level of discourse.
One common instruction, for example, is to create rapport with callers, while
another is to display empathy with them. In this example these (related)
concerns are combined in the following, quite lengthy recommendation:
Rapport/empathy
Creating a rapport and showing empathy is about adding the human touch to a
business call relationship . . . This means treating the caller as a person, recognising
their situation and building a genuine conversation to re¯ect this. . . . Use language
which conveys understanding of and empathy for the caller's individual situation, e.g.
`are you OK?' `was anyone hurt?' `that must have been very distressing for you'
(performance guidelines, auto insurance centre)
Here, two main discourse strategies are suggested. One is asking questions to
show concern for the caller and encourage her/him to air her/his feelings about
the incident that prompted the call (in this context, a trac accident). The other
is the technique known to communication trainers as `mirroring', which means
trying to demonstrate awareness of the interlocutor's mood and re¯ect it back to
her/him in your own verbal and nonverbal behaviour. It is, of course, a
common stereotype that women are better than men at inferring others' feelings
from their outward behaviour, which is a precondition for successfully displaying
empathy. The association of rapport-building with women's talk appears in
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many sources, notably Deborah Tannen's (1990) aphorism that men do `report
talk' and women do `rapport talk'.
Another issue that is often addressed in call centre styling materials is the use
of minimal responses. Concern about this aspect of interaction might seem to be
motivated primarily by the need to make operators aware of speci®c constraints
a€ecting telephone talk ± that is, since there are no visual cues, verbal backchannelling
is necessary to reassure the caller that the operator is still present
and listening actively. However, the following example shows that the writer
realizes there is more to the use of minimal responses than simply keeping the
channel of communication open.
Minimal responses
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
(performance guidelines, auto insurance centre)
This is a recommendation to use minimal responses supportively: they should
not be inserted where they will disrupt interaction, connote lack of interest or
disagreement. It may be recalled here that some researchers (Fishman 1983;
Reid 1995) have found women not only using more minimal responses than
men, but also timing them more precisely, to coincide with or immediately
follow the completion of the point they are responding to. The use of delayed
minimal responses, which may suggest inattention, lack of interest or disagreement,
has been associated more with male speakers. Once again, what is
being recommended here would seem to be gendered, matching what is
believed and what in some cases has been found to be women's rather than
men's behaviour.
It is not surprising that service workers should receive instructions on the
subject of asking questions, since question-answer routines are characteristic of
institutional talk (Drew and Heritage 1992). What is more interesting, however,
is the stress placed on using questions not merely to elicit information (the
function that makes questioning so central to institutional discourse), but to
display interest in the customer as a person, to make the interaction a more
`genuine' dialogue, and to give the customer `space' to speak freely and at
length. This concern (facilitating extended talk) is observable in advice on the
kinds of questions workers are told they should prefer. Typically they are advised
to avoid what linguists would call `conducive' questions, those which strongly
favour a predetermined answer, and select instead the kinds of questions that
encourage extended talk by the addressee. (In training materials these are
usually called `open questions' and usually equated with WH-syntax, though
some materials do distinguish `how' and `why' questions from the rest.)
According to gender researchers like Pamela Fishman (1983) and Janet
Holmes (1984), using questions to facilitate talk ± an `interpersonal' rather
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than purely `informational' use of language ± is a strategy associated in
particular with women speakers.
Asking questions
Ask questions ± don't demand information!
(guidance for operators, utility company centre)
Sta€ must give the caller space . . . by . . . asking questions
(credit authorization appraisal checklist)
Varying the type of questions gives a rounded and interesting communication
(performance guidelines, auto insurance centre)
With the foregoing examples I hope I have shown that the ways of interacting
recommended in training and appraisal materials for call centre operators bear
a striking resemblance to ways of speaking that are associated, in the popular
imagination and also in some instances by empirical research, with women
speakers rather than men. This might prompt the question: do the style
designers themselves make the connection?
In my view, the answer to this question is `yes and no'. On one hand, there is
evidence that many call centre managers regard young women, in particular,
as `naturally' suited to the work (Reardon 1996). That the preference for
women is based at least partly on a perception of them as `better' at certain
kinds of interpersonal communication is illustrated by the following remarks,
quoted by Melissa Tyler and Steve Taylor from an interview with a manager at
an airline reservation call centre:
The vast, vast majority of the agents we select are women . . . it's not as if we don't get
men applying for the job, up here [in north east England, an area of high unemployment ±
DC] you tend to get applications from everybody for everything . . . [women] just seem
to ®t better, they're better at it . . . we are looking for people who can chat to people,
interact, build rapport. What we ®nd is that women can do this more, they're
de®nitely more natural when they do it anyway. It doesn't sound as forced, perhaps
they're used to doing it all the time anyway . . . women are naturally good at that sort
of thing. I think they have a higher tolerance level than men . . . I suppose we do, yes,
if we're honest about it, select women sometimes because they are women rather
than because of something they've particularly shown in the interview. (Tyler and
Taylor 1997: 10)
On the other hand, organizations do not present the ideal speech style explicitly
as a gendered style: women may be considered `naturally good at that sort of
thing', but the `thing' in question is not just (tautologically) `being women', and
the same style is also expected of men. What the preferred style of communication
overtly signi®es is not `femininity' but `good customer service'. This
raises the question: why should performing `good customer service' involve so
many of the same linguistic strategies as performing `femininity'? What is the
nature of the connection between the two?
To answer this question it is necessary to consider the question of symbolic
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meaning. In an in¯uential paper, Elinor Ochs (1992) argued that the linguistic
indexing of gender is not usually direct ± in other words, there are few verbal
markers whose exclusive and unambiguous meaning is `this speaker is a
woman/a man'. More commonly gender is indexed by using language that
signi®es a role (e.g. `mother') or a quality (e.g. `modesty') which is linked in turn
by cultural convention to femininity or masculinity. In a similar vein, one might
suggest that the practice of styling in call centres recruits a linguistic style
already conventionally coded as `feminine' to index the meaning `good customer
service'. What enables this connection to be made is not simply the
common-sense belief `customer service is a woman's role' (that would just beg
the original question of why serving customers is regarded as a woman's role),
but rather the congruence between the meanings and values attached to
`femininity' and those attached to `good service'.
Some degree of congruence between the two sets of meanings may well have
existed for a long time, but the connection has become more compelling as a
result of recent developments in the culture of business. What is entailed by
`customer service' has been rede®ned as part of organizations' response to
globalization. A particular philosophy of service has come to dominate organizational
thinking and practice, and it is this, I will argue, that has given the
meanings attached to `women's language' new relevance and value for the
service sector.
REVALUING `WOMEN'S LANGUAGE': CUSTOMER SERVICE AS
EMOTIONAL LABOUR
It is frequently noted that globalization involves a shift away from industrial
production. In his in¯uential book The Work of Nations, former U.S. Labour
secretary Robert Reich (1992) popularized the notion of two major categories of
post-industrial workers, `symbolic analysts' (a knowledge-producing elite) and
`in-person servers' (a larger and less privileged group servicing the needs of
others). Of this second group, which includes call centre operators, Gee, Hull
and Lankshear (1996: 46±47) observe that their work `tends to call primarily
for reliability, loyalty . . . the capacity to take direction and . . . ``a pleasant
demeanour'''. And indeed, the issue of service workers' `demeanour' has
become increasingly salient as large numbers of organizations have adopted
the philosophy known as `customer care'. The idea is to make customers feel
they are not merely being served but actively and individually `cared for': it is
believed that this close attention to each customer's needs and feelings promotes
loyalty to the company and thus enhances its `competitive advantage' in the
market.
For service workers the upshot of all this is that they ®nd themselves
performing more and more of what sociologists of work call `emotional
labour' (Hochschild 1983) ± the management of feelings. This has consequences
for the language of customer service, which becomes a more
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`expressive' language, a language of feeling and a language of caring. The
ability, not merely to sound polite and professional but to project positive
emotions towards customers using the resources of language and voice, is
highly valued. Recall the instruction in the directory assistance centre's
manual for employees, quoted above: `your telephone manner should sound
as if you have been waiting for that particular call all day' (this in relation to
a service encounter lasting 32 seconds or less); or the auto insurance centre's
exhortation about beginning a call, `try to make the customer feel you are
there for them'.
It is neither unusual nor coincidental that the quasi-therapeutic phrase `to
be there for someone' appears in this instruction: customer care training
materials and management books about customer relations draw extensively
on the register of therapy and counselling. In some instances, routine service
work is portrayed as if it were a caring profession in its own right. Management
consultant David Freemantle, for example, in a book titled What
Customers Like About You: Adding Emotional Value for Service Excellence and
Competitive Advantage, advises service workers (e.g. shop assistants) to practise
what amounts to amateur therapy on their customers (Freemantle 1998:
109):
. If a customer comes across as cold and dident, convince yourself that beneath the
surface is a warm, caring, loving human being. Try to reach that suppressed
warmth by injecting emotional warmth into your own words.
. If a customer comes across as being overpowering and e€usive, convince yourself
that beneath the surface is someone who is desperate for recognition and
admiration. Therefore in responding to the customer, try to underline your
words with a tone of emotional approval.
. If a customer comes across as being kind and caring then respond in the same way,
ensuring that your voice is soft, rounded and undulates smoothly to re¯ect your
own feelings of compassion.
By drawing on your feelings and emotions to ®ne-tune the way you use your voice,
you will be much better able to connect emotionally with customers and become
someone they really like.
Freemantle in this passage is clearly describing a form of `emotional labour',
involving the management of both the customer's feelings and the worker's
own. (The section from which I take the quotation is titled `The Emotional
Voice'.) The point has often been made that emotion in general is discursively
constructed (certainly in anglophone cultures) as a `feminine' domain (Lutz
1990); both `emotional expressiveness' and `caring' are salient symbolic meanings
of `women's language'. If, as I have suggested, these are also key values in
new regimes of customer care, that provides a rationale for making a `feminine'
or feminized linguistic style the norm in service contexts.
It should not be overlooked, though, that emotional labour, and indeed
service work in general, is not performed only by women. Women still represent
the majority of rank-and-®le employees in many service workplaces (including
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most call centres), but the relentless rise of the service sector and the concurrent
decline of manufacturing industry mean that increasingly, men are also ®nding
employment in routine customer service positions. Talk of `changing gender
roles at work' may conjure up the familiar icon of Rosie the Riveter, but in
today's reality it is more likely to mean Charlie the checkout clerk and Kevin the
call centre operator. Charlie and Kevin are subject to exactly the same
communicational demands and linguistic styling practices as their female
colleagues; it is of interest to ask how they negotiate the expectation that
they will interact with customers in what is, covertly if not overtly, a `feminine'
linguistic persona.
The male call centre operators I interviewed in the course of my research in
Britain did not consider their gender to be an issue. Where they were critical of
the call centre regime, the main issue, for them as for female operators, was the
arti®ciality, inauthenticity, and in some cases extreme subservience, of the
persona imposed on them by scripts and styling rules.9
These informants
seemed to orient more to the overt meaning of the preferred style ± `good
service' ± than to its covertly gendered meaning. (Of course, I cannot claim that
my own small group of male informants constitute a representative sample for
the country as a whole.) In the U.S.A., on the other hand, although I did no
systematic ®eldwork, I did meet men, and hear stories about men, who
perceived the behaviour they were required to produce in customer service
contexts (such as shops, restaurants and call centres) as `feminizing' and for
that reason problematic. For instance, one woman told me a story about her
son's experience working for a chain of Mexican restaurants. Employees were
required to send diners on their way with a scripted farewell sequence that
included a cheery wave. No one liked performing this embarrassingly phony
routine, but the men found the wave especially problematic, since they regarded
the gesture as `e€eminate'. Eventually they solved the problem by rendering it
as a quasi-salute.10
Although the evidence given above is anecdotal, it does suggest that some of
the risks involved in adopting a prescribed service style may be di€erent for
women and men. At least some men ®nd aspects of the style threatening to their
gender and/or sexual identity. For women on the other hand a recurrent
complaint concerns the risk of being exposed to sexual harassment. Here the
evidence is not just anecdotal. In 1998, a group of female Safeway supermarket
workers in California complained at a union conference about the company's
`superior service' programme. The friendliness, personal interest and eagerness
to please that employees had to display were treated by many male customers,
the workers claimed, as signs of `romantic interest' and invitations to `lewd
behaviour' (Grimsley 1998). If one accepts the feminist argument that sexual
harassment is a way of asserting power over the target rather than simply a
display of erotic interest in her (sex may be the means but domination is the
end), this might well remind us of another symbolic meaning attached to
`women's language': powerlessness or subservience. In the culture of customer
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care, the old maxim `the customer is king' is taken to new extremes; this too
may be a factor in the appropriation of WL as the preferred style for customer
service.
CONCLUSION
In this paper I have explored some issues relating to the regulation of spoken
language used by workers in contemporary service environments. I will
conclude by trying to gather the main threads of the argument, brie¯y
taking up a few outstanding questions, and suggesting reasons why the
phenomena discussed here should be of interest to students of language and
society.
One theme of the analysis presented above is the linguistic consequences of
globalization. I have suggested that present-day corporate verbal hygiene
practices may be analysed as part of a strategic attempt by organizations to
maximize their advantages in a hyper-competitive globalized economy which
is increasingly dominated by the provision of services. Yet it might well be
asked whether current practices have precedents in the pre-globalization era. I
certainly would not wish to argue that until the late 1980s (the moment of
®nancial deregulation which is generally taken to have inaugurated the shift
to today's global economy) workers spoke exactly as they liked, without
norms or constraints. Clearly, for as long as `work' has been a distinct domain
of social practice, people have developed ways of acting and speaking peculiar
to that domain, undergoing within particular workplaces processes of linguistic
and other acculturation. It is also evident that what I have described
here can be related to much older practices such as the scripting of sales
encounters (Leidner 1993) and ± an example with particular relevance to the
call centre case ± the regulation of telephone operators' speech in the period
before direct dialling.11
However, I would argue that there has been signi®cant intensi®cation, both
of the desire of organizations to control employees' language-use and of their
ability to do it with some degree of e€ectiveness (in the case of call centres, by
using hi-tech surveillance). Linguistic regulation is part of the general trend that
George Ritzer (1996) has dubbed `McDonaldization', and about which he has
observed that its goal is to pre-empt any choice of means to ends by the people
actually engaged in a given activity. Instead, decisions on what to do, how and
when are reserved to people at the top of the organizational hierarchy. That, of
course, is the very opposite of what is usually claimed about the new global
economy, which is frequently said to require highly skilled, self-motivating
decision-makers and problem-solvers. Research like that reported here might
suggest, however, that accounts such as Ritzer's, and Gee, Hull and Lankshear's
description of `in-person servers' (quoted above) are closer to the reality of much
contemporary service work.
Another ®eld of scholarship to which the analysis of service styling is relevant
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is the study of institutional, and more particularly workplace, talk. The spread of
`McDonaldizing' practices in what might seem the rather unlikely domain of
language-use arguably poses a challenge to what is perhaps the best-established
approach to the study of talk at work, that of conversation analysis (e.g. Boden
1994; Drew and Heritage 1992). Ian Hutchby summarises the orthodox
conversation analyst's position: `Institutions do not de®ne the kind of talk
produced within them: rather participants' ways of designing their talk actually
constructs the ``institutionality'' of such settings' (Hutchby 1999: 41). `Interaction',
say Drew and Heritage, `is institutional insofar as participants' institutional
or professional identities are somehow made relevant to the work
activities in which they are engaged' (1992: 4). But while anything that goes
on in talk has in the ®nal analysis to be accomplished by the participants, in my
view these formulations fail to capture the extent to which institutions like the
ones discussed in this article (or more exactly, agents with authority in those
institutions) do increasingly de®ne the kind of talk produced in institutional
contexts. Practices of scripting, styling and surveillance cannot entirely override
the necessity for interaction to be locally managed, but they can and do place
constraints on the freedom of participants to `design their talk' or to choose how
they will make their institutional identities `relevant'. True, the practices
discussed above were still marginal in the early 1990s when Drew and Heritage
were writing, and they still have little purchase on the high-status professionals
(e.g. doctors) whose interactions have always featured heavily in the literature
on institutional talk. They are nevertheless increasingly common realities,
which the study of talk at work must have something to say about in future.
Finally, the verbal hygiene practices which are the subject of this article are of
interest for what they tell us about the relationship between language and
gender. I have argued that the regulation and commodi®cation of language in
service workplaces has resulted in the valorization of a speech style whose
characteristics include expressiveness, caring, empathy and sincerity ± characteristics
popularly associated with the speech of women (if anyone doubts
this, let them consult any example of the `Mars and Venus' genre originated by
Gray 1992, whose tenets have subsequently pervaded popular culture (cf.
Cameron 1999; Talbot 2000)). However, I hope it will be obvious that I do not
regard the value attached to `women's language' in service work as a cause for
feminist celebration. Whether it bene®ts women in any way whatever is open to
question; the advantage they currently enjoy over men in terms of numbers
employed in the service sector may arise in part from discrimination in their
favour, but it also re¯ects the continuing disdain of many men for service work.
Though commentators have been warning for a decade that this contempt is a
luxury men cannot a€ord ± globalization is destroying alternative sources of
employment for low-skilled workers ± resistance is still pronounced among
school-age boys, especially those from the white working class (Mahony 1998).
In time, it is possible that men will serve in equal numbers alongside women.
If that happens, it raises the intriguing question whether the linguistic style I
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have described will become `de-gendered', associated in the popular imagination
less with the supposed dispositions of a particular social group (women), and
more with a social domain in which individuals play a particular social role
(customer service). I do not of course suggest that the de-gendering of a
particular style would put an end to the linguistic construction of gender in
any form. For as long as gender remains a salient social category, linguistic
behaviour will doubtless continue to be one site for its production and
reproduction. But the meaning of `gender' is not ®xed for all time, and there
is no reason either to suppose that its linguistic instantiations must remain
forever the same.
Globalization is changing, or has the potential to change, many of the social
realities that preoccupy social scientists, among them `class', `ethnicity',
`nation', `gender', `work' and indeed `language'. These developments are as
signi®cant for sociolinguistics as for any other social science discipline, and
sociolinguists should be prepared to follow them wherever they may lead.
NOTES
1. I am indebted to the editors of the Journal of Sociolinguistics and two anonymous
reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, and to audiences
at the 1999 ILA and NWAVE conferences who commented on oral presentations of
the material. I am grateful also to Sylvie Roy, Steve Taylor, Jack Whalen and Anne
Witz for making unpublished work available to me. Last but not least, I thank the
call centre operators, supervisors and managers (their names withheld at their own
request) who provided me with the information and many of the insights on which
this article is based.
2. This article deals only with call centres whose working language is (British) English.
In the context of globalization, however, it is worth asking how far the same
regulatory practices and interactional norms are being di€used across language
communities. On this point, some suggestive observations are made by Sylvie Roy
(1999), who ®nds evidence in a bilingual centre in Ontario of the same concern to
regulate and standardize French usage, and the codi®cation of French formulas
which parallel established English ones (e.g. `merci d'avoir appele [la compagnie].
C'est [votre nom] aÁ l'appareil. Comment puis-je vous aider?').
3. The issue of accent in service work is complicated and would bear further scrutiny.
The perception of various local accents is often mentioned as a factor companies
consider when choosing locations for call centres. For instance, the publicity
materials produced by Scottish local authorities as part of their e€orts to attract
call centres to the region trade heavily on the positive connotations of a Scottish
accent, such as friendliness, sincerity and reliability (see e.g. Louden 1999).
However, I do not think this rhetoric can be taken at face value: the reasons why
many call centres are concentrated in central Scotland have more to do with the
availability and cost of labour, the supply of reasonably priced commercial property,
the local telecommunications infrastructure, etc. Also, one might suspect (though I
was unable to gather ®rm evidence on this point) that some Scottish speakers are
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judged too `broad' to be acceptable and are weeded out during the selection process
for that reason. Since call centre work, like other occupations, tends to draw recruits
with a certain kind of class and educational background, the most nonstandard
speakers are likely to be excluded a priori.
4. One reason why I o€er no observations on how far the actual performance of service
routines matches the norms laid down for that performance is that the call centres to
which I gained access would not permit me to use audio-recordings of routine
transactions. This might seem curious given that many call centres record such
transactions themselves for purposes of training and appraisal. In Britain, however,
recording of calls is subject to conditions laid down by the telecommunications
regulator Oftel, and in some cases also to agreements with trades unions about the
use of recorded data. My own and others' observations (e.g. Tyler and Taylor 1997)
suggest that compliance with style rules is variable, but workers are likely to display
a higher degree of compliance when they assume they are being monitored ± this
being in most cases the default or `safe' assumption.
5. Not all centres call this `counselling': alternative labels include `audit' and
`appraisal'. There are also variations in precisely what is involved (e.g. how
formal the assessment is, how often it takes place): the details depend on the
particular culture of the centre concerned, but six of the seven centres in my sample
had some variant of the practice.
6. Other researchers have solved some of the problems I encountered either by
developing a relationship with one particular centre over time (cf. Roy 1999;
Tyler and Taylor 1997) or by acting as paid consultants to the management (cf.
Whalen and Vinkhuysen in press). These alternatives have both advantages and
disadvantages (a point discussed in more detail in the appendix to Cameron 2000).
7. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence supporting the assertion that customers want
the routine to be `consistent every time they call', at least if `consistency' is taken to
imply no variation at all in the words used by di€erent operators on di€erent
occasions. Conversely, surveys have found customers dislike dealing with someone
who is obviously reading from a script ± though it is unclear whether their
dissatisfaction is with scripting itself or just with inept delivery.
8. The Cathay Paci®c action was reported in The Scotsman (7 January 1999). The
report quoted a company spokesman who described attendants' smiles as `sincere',
`genuine' and an expression of the `warmth and superior service' for which Asian
carriers are renowned. The racial stereotyping here is overt, but covertly there is also
gender stereotyping. `Superior service' in the past and present advertising of several
Asian airlines (e.g. Singapore as well as Cathay Paci®c) is invariably personi®ed by a
smiling Asian woman. A smiling Asian man would be a much less `natural' and
more problematic image with which to convey the desired meaning.
9. An anonymous reviewer commented that the reference to `inauthenticity' in this
sentence raises important issues. Limitations of space mean it is not possible to
pursue them here, but they are discussed at length in Cameron 2000.
10. This story does not necessarily indicate a greater sensitivity about gender/sexual
identity among American male workers than among their British counterparts.
Rather it probably re¯ects the greater willingness of American businesses to
prescribe this sort of behaviour. While British service cultures are changing (and
arguably they are changing in the direction of `Americanization'), routines like the
one described in the anecdote would still be considered `over the top' in the British
context. In my U.K.-based research I came across several attempts to introduce
American service customs, which had foundered on the rock of British customers'
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ba‚ement, contempt or ridicule. (One example: the stationing at the entrance to a
Scottish supermarket of a `greeter' who exhorted customers to `enjoy your shopping
experience' while handing them a basket. Both sta€ and customers reportedly found
this innovation embarrassing and ludicrous.)
11. That telephone operators were subject to quite intensive vocal and linguistic styling
is apparent from a feature on U.S. National Public Radio's news/magazine programme
All Things Considered (®rst broadcast 16 April 1999) using material from the
archives of the phone company AT & T.
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Address correspondence to:
Deborah Cameron
Institute of Education
London University
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H 0AL
United Kingdom
d.cameron@ioe.ac.uk
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