Linguistic Ethnography of a Multilingual Call Center

Johanna Woydack is Assistant Professor at Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria.

“Johanna Woydack provides a clear ethnographic account, supported by a sophisticated analysis, of the inner workings of a call center in the United Kingdom. The text provides new insights on the roles of standardization and scripts as dynamics of the workplace … . This text will be a useful tool for researchers studying labor markets, capitalist modes of production, customer relations, sales, and telemarketing in service economies throughout the world.” (Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi, Exertions, Society for the Anthropology of Work, April 18, 2022)“Woydack provides a thorough and critical review of the literature as well as an excellent example of how to bring innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of call centers. Woydack’s book is necessary reading for anyone engaging in linguistic ethnography or qualitative analysis of organizations or institutions as her tracking of textual trajectories throughout the call center provides an exceptionally useful methodological approach for research in contexts where texts can be omnipresent and yet ever-elusive to researchers.” (Grace Fay Cooper, Sociolinguistic Studies, Vol. 13 (2-4), 2019)“This book provides a unique perspective on the subject. While there are many examples of the script and how team leaders and agents would modify the master script, it would be helpful to have some authentic call samples to illustrate the actual exchanges. Professional communication, sociolinguistics and perhaps also business operation researchers will find this book useful.” (Jon S. Y. Hui, Language in Society, Vol. 48, 2019)“The book offers a new perspective on the contemporary debate on workplace standardization. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars interested in politeness research and intercultural communication as well as to call centre managers and business communication trainers.” (Sara Orthaber, Discourse & Communication, Vol. 13 (5), 2019)

• Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Getting to know Callcentral: a first encounter.- Chapter 3: The first stage of the script’s career: production of “the master script”.- Chapter 4: The second stage in the script’s career: adaptation of the master script.- Chapter 5: The final stage of the script’s career: enactment and use of the master script.- Chapter 6: Standardization and agency intertwined.