The English of Philippine Call Centre Agents

1. The English of Philippine Call Centre Agents Kingsley Bolton & Martin WeisserCity University of Hong Kong kbolton@cityu.edu.hkmweisser@cityu.edu.hk

2. Outline • Project Background • Data Preparation • Data Analysis • Preliminary Results The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

3. Project Background • initial research carried out by Bolton on High-level Proficiency in Second-language Use research programme at Stockholm University • interviews with call centre managers, trainers, & agents (CSAs) • collection of around 1,400 call centre dialogues • current research: • re-transcription & -organisation of dialogue data • enriching of data on the levels of • phonology • syntax/grammar • semantico-pragmatic • pragmatics The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

4. Data Preparation (1) • automatic conversion of original transcriptions • extraction to plain text documents • conversion to simple DART XML format • manual pre-editing by student helpers • correction of conversion errors • improvement of transcription consistency, e.g. punctuation, etc. • addition of pause measurements • addition of phonological/grammatical observations The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

5. Data Preparation (2) –Original XML Format The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

6. Data Analysis (1) • automatic annotation in DART (Dialogue Annotation & Research Tool) ⇒16,432 units/86 dialogues • annotation levels included • syntactic c-units: address, decl, dm, yes, no, imp, q-wh, q-yn, frag • (surface-)polarity • semantics (topics) • semantico-pragmatics (modes) • pragmatics (speech acts) The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

7. Data Analysis (2) –Automatic Annotation Results The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

8. Data Analysis (3) • extraction of CSR-related information • syntax–speech-act parings for interaction strategy analysis • n-grams (1-8 words) for analysis of formulaic patterns • grammatical feature observations for identifying ‘non-native’ features • phonological feature observations for identifying ‘non-native’ features The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

9. Preliminary Results – Phonology (1) • pronoun reduction (37): e.g.may ihave your first and last name please • elision: • final fricatives, e.g. this might probably be familiar to yourself; and then you have to less 5 dollars and 99 cents for the home protection plan because this is free for 18 months • final plosives (24): that's right; but you will need to talk to our technical department; you need to call us the 5th of A... the fifth of July so we can remove it from your account • ‘eng-dropping’ (5), e.g. what type of shows or programs do you enjoy watching The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

10. Preliminary Results – Phonology (2) • devoicing: • final fricatives (8): let me just advise <comment type="phon" sounds_like="ədvaɪs" content="final fricative devoiced" /> you that …; just give me one minute please; there wasa refund submitted • dental fricative replacement: you can also make a debit or credit card payment through <comment type="phon" content="tru" /> • unaspirated initial plosives: have you returned the equipment to <comment type="phon" content="unaspirated initial plosive" /> us The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

11. Preliminary Results – Phonology (3) • epenthetic vowels: • shwas (69), e.g. as what ə you check ə; you're eligible to get one plan from Earthlinkə • unreduced past tense morphemes: e.g. what's the last bill paid <comment type="phon" sounds_like="peɪjəd" content="epenthetic vowel" /> please • contrastive ‘stress’ /strong forms (27): • whole words, e.g. because you just tell them that we will not be charging anything to them since you are the account holder; is there anybody there with you who can speak English • individual syllables: and i'm calling from Satellite TV Provider; there's no commitment here so you need not sign any contract; as soon as we receive the uh rebate form that i advised you to download (uptalk, rather than stress?) The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

12. Preliminary Results – Grammar (1) • plurals • unmarked (28) • incorrectly marked (2), e.g. there is a 6 dollarsleasing fee monthly • unidiomatic (1): with regardsto the breakfast • auxiliary use • missing (3), e.g. and we will Øgiving you a 5 dollar discount for uh 14 months • double (1): and uh that'swillbe your partial charge from today up to the 4th of May The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

13. Preliminary Results – Grammar (2) • prepositions • added, e.g. exit out from that screen • unidiomatic: e.g. the promotion that we you can also take advantage with; and this will allow us to replace your single tuner recordable receiver to; i can assist you to that; how long have you been staying with this address; the reason why we're calling you today is uh to tell you today about this great offer whereinwe can provide you free equipment, free installation, and a special programming discount (22) • missing: there are things that we can we can take care ofover the phone • ‘quantification’ • non-count → count, e.g. you already provided those information online; however you will need to replace one of your old equipmentə • incorrect comparison adverb: that will be 10 dollars more ofwhat you're paying right now The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

14. Preliminary Results – Grammar (3) • determiner (non-)use • missing, e.g. can also be caused by adamaged cable; do you have anemail address • question ‘inversion/embedding’, e.g. do you know how much is the John Brown University rate so i could check here on my system The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

15. Preliminary Results – Formulaic Expressions • in case⇒ • if that will be the case • if in case • this⇒that one, e.g. can you spell that one for me; let me just verify that one for you • non-contractions (192), e.g. i would like; i will; that is, etc. The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

16. Interaction Analysis (1) – (Im)Politeness • abundance of terms of address 893 (9.435%): • mainly deferential (Sir, Madam) • frequent unusual placement (‘syntax-breaking’), e.g. but i do apologize │ Sir│ifyou had not been provided the rebate form; you do not have the High Definition uhm eh capability at this time│Sir│with the receiver that you have • lack of (polite) indirectness • relatively high number of imperatives (~5%) • indirect imperatives, e.g. and i want you totell me if you see Main Menu on your screen The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

17. Interaction Analysis (2) –(Non-)Initiative • low number of requests for directives: only .28%, e.g. for which journey do you wish to purchase a ticket; would you like smoking or non smoking (examples from Trainline corpus) • mainly responding discourse markers (DMs) • acknowledging DMs 829 (8.759%) vs. initiating DMs 601 (6.35%) • agreeing DMs 66 (0.697%) The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

18. Questions? The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

19. References • Bolton, K. (2010). ‘Thank you for calling’: Asian Englishes and ‘native-like’ performance in Asian call centres. In A. Kirkpatrick (Ed.). The Routledge handbook of world Englishes (pp. 550-564). London: Routledge. • Friginal, E. (2009). The language of outsourced call centers: A corpus-based study of cross-cultural interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. • Lockwood, J., Forey, G., & Price, H. (2008). English in the Philippine call centers and BPO operations: Issues, opportunities and research. In M. L. S. Bautista & K. Bolton (Eds.), Philippine English: Linguistic and literary perspectives (pp. 219-241). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. • Weisser, M. (2010). Annotating dialogue corpora semi-automatically: A corpus-linguistic approach to Pragmatics. unpublished Habilitation, University of Bayreuth. • Weisser, M. (2011). DART – the Dialogue Annotation and Research Tool. Submitted to the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents