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Creating meanings through graduation in verbiage and voice in Philippine call centres
Author(s)
Date Issued
2008
Citation
Wan, Y. N. (2008 Jul 21-25). Creating meanings through graduation in verbiage and voice in Philippine call centres. The 35 International Systemic Functional Congress, Sydney, Australia.
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
Recently, offshore outsourcing has become an integral part of many multinational companies. One back office role which has been outsourced is that of
customer service. Many English language call centres in Asia, e.g. the Philippines, are playing a key role in business development but very little attention has been focused on linguistics analyses of these calls. Now, however, especially where sound files are allowed for analysis, it is possible to investigate not only what is said but how it is voiced. In this paper, I follow a ‘systemic functional’ approach and draw on aspects of social semiotic theories to explore the interpersonal development of call centre discourse through an analysis of the semantics of both verbiage and sound. Two of the major theoretical understandings informing my study are those of Appraisal theory (Martin and White, 2005) and the semantics of voice quality (van Leeuwen, 1999). I explore the unfolding interpersonal relationships constructed between the Filipino customer service representatives (CSR) and American customers in a set of problematic calls in the Philippines call centres. These calls are deemed to be problematic in that they lead to
communication breakdown. Appraisal theory is applied to investigate the sound quality and
attitudinal profile of this call centre discourse. I will specifically focus on prosodies of
attitude and on communication problems. The findings could contribute to support the
training and services offered by this important developing industry.
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