Technology Mediated Service Encounters 9027202125, 9789027202123, 9027262993, 9789027262998

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Technology Mediated Service Encounters

edi t ed by Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich Lucía Fernández-Amaya María de la O Hernández-López

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Technology Mediated Service Encounters

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (P&bns) issn 0922-842X Pragmatics & Beyond New Series is a continuation of Pragmatics & Beyond and its Companion Series. The New Series offers a selection of high quality work covering the full richness of Pragmatics as an interdisciplinary field, within language sciences. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/pbns

Editor

Associate Editor

Anita Fetzer

Andreas H. Jucker

University of Augsburg

University of Zurich

Founding Editors Herman Parret

Jef Verschueren

Robyn Carston

Sachiko Ide

Paul Osamu Takahara

Thorstein Fretheim

Kuniyoshi Kataoka

John C. Heritage

Miriam A. Locher

Jacob L. Mey

University of Southern Denmark

Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp

Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp

Editorial Board University College London University of Trondheim University of California at Los Angeles

Susan C. Herring

Indiana University

Masako K. Hiraga

St. Paul’s (Rikkyo) University

Japan Women’s University Aichi University

Universität Basel

Sophia S.A. Marmaridou University of Athens

Srikant Sarangi

Aalborg University

Marina Sbisà

University of Trieste

Kobe City University of Foreign Studies

Sandra A. Thompson

University of California at Santa Barbara

Teun A. van Dijk

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

Chaoqun Xie

Fujian Normal University

Yunxia Zhu

The University of Queensland

Volume 300 Technology Mediated Service Encounters Edited by Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López

Technology Mediated Service Encounters Edited by

Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Lucía Fernández-Amaya Pablo de Olavide University

María de la O Hernández-López Pablo de Olavide University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

doi 10.1075/pbns.300 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress. isbn 978 90 272 0212 3 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6299 8 (e-book)

© 2019 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

vii

List of tables

ix

List of figures

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An introduction to technology mediated service encounters Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López

1

Section I.  Social services Chapter 1 Language discordance and technological facilitation in health care service encounters: A contrastive experiment July De Wilde, Ellen Van Praet and Yves Van Vaerenbergh Chapter 2 Context and pragmatic meaning in telephone interpreting Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez and Gabriel Cabrera Méndez

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Section II.  Call centres Chapter 3 Managing verbal and embodied conduct in telephone-mediated service encounters David Matthew Edmonds and Ann Weatherall Chapter 4 Globalizing politeness? Towards a globalization-sensitive framework of mediated service encounters Anna Kristina Hultgren Chapter 5 Navigating commercial constraints in a service call Rosina Márquez Reiter

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Technology Mediated Service Encounters

Chapter 6 Call centre service encounters: Second-language users, conversationalisation, (im)politeness and discursive practices Gerrard Mugford

145

Section III.  E-service encounters Chapter 7 Responding to bargaining moves in a digital era: Refusals of offers on Mercado Libre Ecuador María Elena Placencia

173

Chapter 8 Intensification in online consumer reviews: Insights from Chinese Wei Ren

199

Chapter 9 Relational practices on commercial Facebook wall interactions Patricia Bou-Franch

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Index

245

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all those who, in a way or another, have helped in bringing this volume to fruition. First, our gratitude goes to the authors for contributing their chapters to the volume. It was a real pleasure working with and learning from them. We are also thankful to the reviewers for their time, insightful suggestions, and constructive comments.

List of tables

Table 1.1 Results of the SERVQUAL satisfaction questionnaires (using a 7-point Likert scale) Table 1.2 Frequency and duration of pauses/gaps in SEs with app/SEs without app Table 1.3 Average frequency and duration of service providers’ averted eye gaze in SEs with app / SEs without app Table 1.4 Frequency and type of service providers’ averted eye gaze in two SEs with app Table 1.5 Excerpt from SE 10, with app. Service provider (SP) interacting with the client (C), activating audio version of text content (PC). Dutch transactions have been translated to English, signaled in bold Table 4.1 Overview of call centres included in the study Table 4.2 The prescription to engage in “active listening” Table 4.3 The prescription to “make the customer feel understood” Table 4.4 The prescription to “avoid jargon” Table 4.5 The prescription to “signpost” Table 4.6 The prescription to “empathize” Table 4.7 The prescription to “small talk” Table 4.8 Prescribed and actual greetings in Britain and Denmark Table 4.9 Prescribed and actual acknowledgements in Britain and Denmark Table 4.10 Prescribed and actual hold notifications in Britain and Denmark Table 7.1 Categories of verbal supportive moves in the realization of refusals Table 8.1 Distribution of intensification strategies across ratings Table 8.2 Distribution of individual preceding intensifiers across ratings Table 8.3 Employment of intensification strategies in negative vs. positive reviews Table 8.4 Employment of intensifiers in negative vs. positive reviews Table 9.1 Post (dis)alignment with corporate status update (n = 289) Table 9.2 List of the relational practices that emerged in the present analysis, based on extant taxonomies of politeness (Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987) and impoliteness (Culpeper 2005, 2011; Lorenzo-Dus et al. 2011)

26 29 30 31

32 102 104 105 106 107 108 109 112 113 115 190 211 212 215 216 232

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List of figures

Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 Figure 3.1 Figure 4.1 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3

K&G app: landing page Dictionary tool Storyboard Streams of activity and interactional trajectories in response to disrupted request for information sequences British and Danish agents’ rule adherence (only rules with a statistically significant difference included) Explicit refusals: distribution of sub-strategies Implicit refusals: Distribution of sub-strategies Overall distribution of supportive moves

22 34 34 87 111 189 189 191

An introduction to technology mediated service encounters Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López This volume focuses on the language and language-related issues of technology mediated service encounters. Service encounters (SEs) constitute a genre practice in which products, information, or commodities are traded between a service provider and a service seeker that has always played a fundamental role in societal interaction. Not surprisingly, SEs have been the focus of interest of marketers, sociologists, business researchers and linguists, as well as the subject of scholarly multidisciplinary enquiry (Hernández-López and Fernández Amaya 2015). Within linguistics related disciplines, research on SEs has a long-standing tradition (Merrit 1976). In this tradition, studies on SEs have looked at all different features of communication occurring therein (for recent comprehensive analyses see Callahan 2009; Félix-Brasdefer 2015; Geluykens and Kraft 2016). It is important to note that although the main purpose of SEs is transactional, the bulk of this literature has focused on interactional aspects of the encounter, often politeness related (see among others Antonopoulou 2001; Bayyurt and Bayraktaroğlu 2001; Economidou-Kogetsidis 2005; Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2008; Márquez Reiter 2004; Petrits 2001; Placencia 2004; Placencia and Manceda-Rueda 2011; Sifianou and Tzanne 2018; Traverso 2006; Ventola 2005). This focus on the interactional is not surprising since, as McCallum and Harrison (1985) state, SEs are fundamentally social encounters. As the data used in the extensive SE literature draws mostly from face to face interaction, there is a gap in research that focuses on the consequences that outsourcing, among other globalized economic practices (Sifianou 2013) and remediation by new technologies have had on this genre (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2015). By looking at the development of technological applications and best practices as well as call centre interaction, e-commerce and e-word of mouth, this volume aims to contribute to fill in this gap. It does so by (i) including chapters written by world renowned researchers that focus exclusively on technology mediated SEs; and (ii) being multidisciplinary and multilingual in orientation.

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In the next three sections we contextualize, albeit briefly due to dearth of studies focusing on technology mediated SEs to date, each individual, distinct part of this volume and provide an account of the chapters included therein. We conclude with some remarks on how this work advances research on technology mediated SEs.

Part I – Social services The first part of this volume includes two highly interdisciplinary chapters that combine technology, social services, and linguistics. Due to the general availability of portable digital devices, mobile apps have become part of our everyday life. Therefore, it is no surprise that they receive increasing attention from social SE researchers, especially those that deal with issues related to healthcare related issues (Jaime Pérez 2015; Mosa et al. 2012; Ventola 2014; Weiner 2012). These new apps offer patients quick and innovative ways to solve health questions without visiting the doctor. Thus, they are shaping the way in which people interact with each other, as well as the social relationships that can be co-constructed through the interaction these new apps mediate. It can be argued along the line of Jones et al. (2015: 3) that apps such as these, and digital technology in general, “…both make possible new kinds of social practices and alter the way people engage in old ones.” In the first chapter, De Wilde et al. contribute to this emerging field of research by presenting the design and implementation of a multilingual mobile app that facilitates the communication in language discordant face-to-face SEs with immigrants who have limited Dutch proficiency. Based on the hypothesis that technological mediation facilitates the transfer of information, their study compares the data gathered from respondents that were randomly assigned to either a SE with an app, or a SE without an app. By means of (i) SERVQUAL satisfaction questionnaires and (ii) interaction analysis of video-recorded SEs, De Wilde et al.’s findings report on the impact of lengthened visit time and reduced eye contact and address the importance of additional training needs in order to adapt to mediated SEs. The chapter closes with brief guidelines for unlocking the potential of mHealth (mobile health) in language discordant SEs. Within social services, another kind of SE that is receiving increased attention is telephone interpretation. Studies in this field are scarce, however. Related scholarship has compared telephone conversation with and without an interpreter (Oviatt and Cohen 1992), with on-site interpretation (Wadensjö 1999; Rosenberg 2002), and with videoconference interpreting (Braun and Taylor 2011). Other scholars, for their part, have examined the characteristics of remote interpretation in healthcare settings (Azarmina and Wallace 2005; Verrept 2011). Contributing to this



An introduction to technology mediated service encounters

expanding field Lázaro and Cabrera, in the second chapter of this volume, unveil the strategies remote and telephone interpreters deploy to compensate for the lack of shared background and physical setting. The authors analyze real telephone interpreter mediated conversations between users and public service providers (staff of hospitals, ambulances, local administration offices, tourism offices, police stations, and the like) using a discourse analytical approach. Lázaro and Cabrera seek to isolate and describe the various strategies deployed by interpreters to try to come up with the appropriate context to process incoming stimuli either to avoid misunderstandings or to deal with contradictory information. The authors compile a taxonomy of reactive and problem-solving strategies on the basis of which they create teaching materials both for novice interpreters and their trainers to facilitate learning best practices when dealing with mediated environments.

Part II – Call centres Call centres are offices established by companies for inbound or outbound telephone calls. In the current, globalized, service-driven economy, telephone mediated services are unparalleled in terms of scope, quality of the service provided, and operational efficiency. They have become the preferred and widespread way for many companies to communicate with their customers. As a result, the call centre industry is massive, and quickly expanding in terms of both workforce and economic scope (Koole and Mandlebaum 2002). As Márquez-Reiter and Bou-Franch (2017: 670) argue, the proliferation of call centres all over the world can be related to, “a medium that allows participants to exchange information and carry out transactions synchronically and at a distance”. Not surprisingly, scholarship in linguistics has echoed the interest in call centre interactions. For example, researchers have contrasted and compared telephone conversational features with those found in face-to-face SEs (Baker et al. 2005; Cheepen 2010; de Ruyter and Wetzels 2010; Zimmerman 1984, 1992). Furthermore, call centre interaction, more specifically service providers’ scripts, has received significant attention (Cameron 2000; Freed 2010; Hultgren 2008, 2011; Hultgren and Cameron 2010; Woydack and Rampton 2015). An interesting outcome of these studies is the fact that in call centre interaction talk is usually planned and controlled by people who do not themselves take part in the conversation. That is, call centre workers are given detailed guidelines and scripts regarding the kind of linguistic strategies they are supposed to deploy when talking to customers. Furthermore, call centre interaction has also been researched from a politeness theoretical standpoint. Márquez-Reiter (2005, 2006), for instance, analysed the openings of calls to a Montevidean-based care-provider company and to a

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service repair company. She argued that the occurrence of greetings in service calls between strangers is seen as a sign of politeness in this context. For their part, Brown and Crawford (2009) analysed UK telephone encounters between NHS Direct health advisers and callers in need of advice over medication. They found that these advisers minimized imposition and carried out rapport building and relational work. In fact, when analysing call centre workers’ linguistic behaviour, scholars have concluded that the ability to empathize with customers is an important skill (Bordoloi 2004; Burgers et al. 2000; D’Cruz and Noronha 2008; Dorman and Zijlstra 2003; Pontes and Kelly 2000). However, Clark et al. (2013) question whether this kind of emphatic interaction is really necessary, taking into consideration that agents and customers are strangers, often from different cultures, who will probably never interact again. The authors believe that empathy may act against other call centre objectives, such as service efficiency and call length. However, after analysing 289 calls in which the agent was under social stress due to caller aggression or ambiguity, Clark et al. (2013) conclude that empathy can help soften this pressure because customers responded to it in a positive way. Further studies on politeness in telephone mediated SEs include Márquez-Reiter (2008), where she observed that agents of a service repair company shifted responsibility to a third party in order to distance themselves from a problematic issue. More recently, Márquez-Reiter (2011) analysed telephone calls to and from a Latin American call centre of a multinational timeshare company. The author found that the openings and closings in her corpus had a similar structure to that identified in institutional settings elsewhere. Finally, one of the most recent studies on this topic is Archer and Jagodzinski (2015) who focused on conflictive customer service interactions in call centres in order to analyse cases of impoliteness and verbal aggression on the part of callers as well as how some of these conflictual episodes were neutralised by agents. Several studies have focused on the issue, a consequence of globalization, that call centre workers may have different nationalities, which may also be different from those of their callers’ (Holman et al. 2007; Sonntag 2009; Xu et al. 2010). An example is the work by Sonntag (2009) who analysed the relations between Indian call centre agents and their American customers, and then compared them with the Canadian call centre industry. The author identified both differences and similarities in language practices and perceptions and concluded by suggesting a linguistic hegemony framework for the analysis of call centre language practices. Reflecting the widespread use of call centres and scholars’ interest in the interaction therein, the second part of the present volume includes four chapters on different aspects of call centre interaction. In the first chapter included in part two (Chapter 3), Edmonds and Weatherall use conversational analysis to examine



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multiactivity in the uni-modal interactional setting of telephone mediated interaction, mainly restricted to the verbal and aural medium. In particular, the authors investigate how verbal and embodied conduct is managed in disputes among callers (complainants) and conciliators (institutional representatives) in New Zealand and Australian helpline services belonging to electricity, gas and water providers. Results show participants’ orienting to a preference for progressivity in talk in interaction. Contributed by Hultgren, Chapter 4 applies an ethnographic approach to explore the extent to which globalization brings about changes in linguistic politeness conventions, and whether novel politeness conventions are adopted or resisted in offshore and onshore call centres in four disparate locations: Scotland, Denmark, Hong Kong and the Philippines. The author discusses the similarities and differences between institutional prescriptions in these four national contexts and explores agents’ practices compliant with institutional prescriptions. She concludes that the speech style used in all of them is remarkably similar despite the language/ location of the SE. In the next chapter (Chapter 5), Márquez-Reiter’s micro-analysis contributes to our understanding of the interactional intricacies of attempting/resisting to secure a sale in the context of an unsolicited call when participants try to advance their incompatible agendas. According to the author, a central aspect of the organization of the exchange examined is, on the one hand, that it is never clear if the client is ready to proceed with the depositing of one of the products, and, on the other hand, that the agent remains ambiguous as to the rights that depositing the product in question would give the client. In view of this, Márquez-Reiter explores how conversational participants avoid explicitly stating what each will do or indeed offer before they can determine what the other party will give in exchange. The chapter thus contributes to the literature on mediated SEs by shedding empirical light on the conversational ambiguity participants create and maintain to pursue different commercial agendas. The section closes with Chapter 6, in which Gerrard Mugford focuses on the emergence of non-native call centre agents that are often located hundreds of miles from their customers and tries to unveil to what extent this fact triggers asymmetrical transactional relationships with callers. More specifically, Mugford uses a critical discourse analysis approach to look at how Mexican bilinguals, non-native speakers of the service seeker’s first language, carry out interactional and personal language functions when under pressure to engage in commodified, transactional language use. Potentially placed at a communicative disadvantage with respect to their native-speaking callers, the operators cannot directly confront their customers. Furthermore, agents are expected to engage in conversationalised transactional talk, which is often characterised by scripts, standardised politeness routines and “synthetic personalisation” (Fairclough 2010). The author examines how Mexican

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call centre agents face up to the challenges of trying to construct a dialogue on equal terms, negotiate conflictive situations and overcome a sense of powerlessness due to their restrictive discursive options.

Part III – E-service encounters An electronic transaction, or e-service encounter (eSE), is the sale or purchase of goods or services conducted over digitally-mediated networks. In 2016, 53% of internet users made an online purchase, that is roughly 1 billion users. The numbers are staggering, especially taking into consideration that shopping is but one of the many services providers offer online. Indeed, according to Nielsen reports 2010, the aspect of our lives most deeply transformed by the Internet is how we shop for goods and services. Among the growing emergence of platforms that mediate between consumers and third-party service providers, there are two different types of SEs that are well-established in the online world: business-to-peer platforms (i.e., businesses using online sites to reach consumers), such as TripAdvisor (e.g., Ho, 2017a; Vásquez 2014) and Amazon (Virtanen 2017); and peer-to-peer platforms (i.e. individuals willing to offer products and services to other users), such as Airbnb (Bridges and Vásquez 2016; Hernández-López in press), eBay (Rawlins and Johnson 2007) and Mercado Libre (Placencia 2015). Peer-to-peer platforms are gaining ground not only due to their accessibility and adaptation to users, but also to the special prominence users acquire therein. In fact, users are free to express their opinion in both private and public spheres in experience-based websites (see Hernández-López in press), while they engage in some temporary negotiation or bargaining in product-oriented platforms, such as Wallapop in Spain, or MarketPlace, a Facebook group with 450 million members in 2016 (Constine 2016). For its part, Mercado Libre (Placencia 2015) is a case in point in the Latin American context. In Chapter 7 (this volume), Placencia further explores this platform by looking at the linguistic resources and strategies 230 sellers use to produce refusals. Despite anonymity and lack of familiarity, her results show that sellers display a wide range of strategies to mitigate refusals and make them more interactionally acceptable to buyers. They include, among others, affiliative address forms, greetings, apologies, justifications, and expressions of thanks. Only a few instances were found where sellers appear to take a confrontational stance. Placencia’s conclusions are interesting in the sense that they show that sellers do take into consideration interactional matters and thus buyers’ face. This



An introduction to technology mediated service encounters

portrays a view of eSEs as similar to face-to-face SEs service encounters regarding the focus on the interactional, rather than transactional features of the encounter. Other research, however, has pointed out that it is informed choice, rather than interaction, that is at the core of e-customers’ preference for the online medium (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2015). Another genre closely connected, almost inextricably linked to, eSEs, customer reviews, certainly brings to the fore this need for informed choice that guides on-line shopping. In that respect, business-to-peer platforms have been studied extensively in the last few years (e.g. Cenni and Goethals 2017; Ho 2017a, 2017b; Vásquez 2011; Vásquez 2014) due to their having achieved world-renowned recognition. One of the reasons for their increasing popularity is the use of a low-cost, highly efficient marketing technique, i.e. customer reviews, and other types of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2004; Litvin Goldsmith and Pan 2008), which has become an essential genre often embedded into eSEs. Consumer reviews have proven to be very successful partly due to the versatility they afford to consumers, who become prosumers, i.e., both consumers and producers of information (Vásquez 2011, 2014, 2015). Ren – in Chapter 8, contributes interesting insights into the realization of online consumer reviews as the most widely mode of eWOM in Chinese, an under researched language in this context. Specifically, the author analyses how Chinese consumers intensify their evaluations in a dataset of over 2000 user-generated online comments on the same product collected from Amazon and examines how intensification devices are deployed depending on the positive or negative nature of the evaluation. The third part of the volume concludes with Bou-Franch’s contribution, which deals with mediated SEs in social networking sites as examples of the new (or reconfigured) forms of social organization and interaction brought about by technology. Social networking sites afford multidirectional communication, i.e. encounters between companies and consumers, as well as interactions among consumers, which are impacting previously stable corporate and consumer roles and transforming efficiency and sociability management in various ways. This chapter specifically investigates relational practices on the wall interactions of commercial Facebook pages. Drawing on a revised framework of relational work and extant second-order taxonomies of im/politeness, a qualitative analysis unveils a number of relational practices that emerge in supportive and unsupportive interactions. Furthermore, results show the recurrence of specific interactional patterns and reveal the predominance of both textual and visual relational practices on Facebook.

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Concluding remarks Digital technologies and globalization have resulted in customer and provider face-to-face communication in SEs often being replaced by communication mediated by different technologies. These changes have had an important impact on reshaping the different sub- genres of the SE genre. The main thread that ties this volume together is its focus on the consequences these phenomena have had for the SE genre. The results of the studies included in the collection help to advance research on mediated SEs by: – Showing how the analysis of technologically mediated SEs can be approached from a wide array of methodological perspectives. Ethnography, such as questionnaires and interviews (De Wilde et al., Hultgren, Mugford); Interactional analysis (De Wilde et  al.); Discourse Analysis (Bou-Franch, Lázaro and Cabrera), Computer Mediated Discourse Analysis (Placencia); Conversation Analysis (Edmonds and Weatherall); Micro Analysis (Márquez-Reiter); Critical Discourse Analysis (Mugford); and Grounded Theory (Ren). – Having a multilingual/multicultural orientation. The data object of analysis in the contributing chapters are drawn from many different languages and culture groups: Australia, Belgium, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Hong- Kong, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Scotland, Spain, among others. – Including reports on technology developed to support SEs and how this technology impacts service providers. Important in this respect is De Wilde et al.’s contribution which presents the design and implementation of a multilingual mobile app that facilitates the communication in language discordant face-to-face SEs with immigrants who have limited Dutch proficiency. – Reporting on the influence of technology on the genre of SEs, more specifically on the type of linguistic contributions allowable therein. To this end, the chapters by Hultgren, Márquez-Reiter and Mugford help us understand prevalent linguistic practices in call centres, which tend to be scripted. This results in a speech style found to be quite homogeneous across the eSEs analysed despite their being carried out in diverse languages and disparate parts of the world. A different approach, but one that yields interesting findings regarding the influence of technology on SE, is Edmonds and Weatherall’s who look at instances during telephone mediated SEs where some requested information was not immediately provided and describe the linguistic resources speakers display to deal with this problem in situ.



An introduction to technology mediated service encounters

– Providing valuable insights on the language and strategic behaviour deployed in less researched kinds of SEs. In this regard, Ren’s contribution looks at eWOM and analyses the role of intensifying linguistic resources and strategies in product evaluations. Focusing on eSEs, Placencia describes the linguistic resources and strategies used to produce refusals that are interactionally acceptable to buyers. Furthermore, by applying second order taxonomies of im/politeness strategies, Bou-Franch looks at relational supportive and unsupportive practices on institutional Facebook pages and calls for multimodality to be an integral part of approaches to eSEs. The strategic behaviour described by Placencia and Bou-Franch can also be related to the point, the interface between the transactional/interactional goals of SEs, set out in the following. – Giving special attention to how technology impacts the interface between the transactional and interactional goals of SEs. Hultgren’s chapter is very revealing in this respect as it focuses on politeness conventions, the social meaning of SEs, and how these conventions may impact their transactional side. Márquez-Reiter’s contribution, for its part, throws light on how different commercial agendas are pursued by the client and the provider by resorting to ambiguity, which has also been related to the mitigating functions of politeness. Relatedly, Mugford discusses how call centre agents have to reconcile the transactional/interactional sides of eSEs by conversationalising scripted transactional talk and following standardised politeness routines. – Having real life applications and impact. De Wilde et al.’s report on how new app technologies impact immigrant populations and points to how language discordant app mediated SEs can be improved. Lázaro and Cabrera’s study, for its part, provides crucial insights regarding problem-solving strategies useful for both pre and in service medical translators. In addition, Mugford’s insights from ethnographic interviews can be an asset for call centre workers in dealing with potentially conflictual situations. Further research is still needed on the impact that rapidly changing technology has had and will continue to have on the SE genre. This collection is a step in that direction.

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Hernández-López, María de la O. (in press) “What Makes a Positive Experience? Offline/Online Communication and Rapport Enhancement in Airbnb Positive Reviews”. Pragmatics and Society. Hernández-López, María de la O, and Lucía Fernández-Amaya (eds). 2015. A Multidisciplinary Approach to Service Encounters. Leiden: Brill.  https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004260160 Ho, Victor. 2017a. “Giving Offense and Making Amends: How Hotel Management Attempts to Manage Rapport with Dissatisfied Customers”. Journal of Pragmatics 109: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2016.12.001 Ho, Victor. 2017b. “Achieving Service Recovery through Responding to Negative Online Reviews”. Discourse and Communication 11 (1): 31–50.  https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481316683292 Holman, David, Rosemary Batt, and Ursula Holtgrewe. 2007. The Global Call Centre Report: Inter­national Perspectives on Management and Employment [Electronic version]. Ithaca, NY: Authors. Hultgren, Anna Kristina. 2008. Linguistic Regulation and Interactional Reality: A Sociolinguistic Study of Call Centre Service Transactions. DPhil thesis, University of Oxford. Hultgren, Anna Kristina. 2011. “Building Rapport with Customers Across the World: The Global Diffusion of a Call Centre Speech Style”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15 (1): 36–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2010.00466.x Hultgren, Anna Kristina and Deborah Cameron. 2010. “’How May I Help You?’: Questions, Control and Customer Care in Telephone Call Centre Talk”. In “Why Do You Ask?” The Function of Questions in Institutional Discourse, ed. by Alice F. Freed, and Susan Ehrlich, 322–342. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jaime Pérez, Adriana. 2015. “Remote Interpreting in Public Services. Developing a 3G Phone Interpreting Application.” In Investigación Emergente en Traducción e Interpretación, ed. by Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez, Francisco Vigier Moreno, and María del Mar Sánchez Ramos, 73–82. Granada: Comares. Jones, Rodney H., Alice Chik, and Christoph A. Hafner. 2015. “Introduction: Discourse Analysis and Digital Practices”. In Discourse and Digital Practices: Doing Discourse Analysis in the Digital Age, ed. by Rodney H. Jones, Alice Chik, and Christoph A. Hafner, 1–17. London and New York: Routledge. Koole, Ger, and Avishai Mandelbaum. 2002. “Queueing Models of Call Centres: An Introduction.” Annals of Operations Research 113 (1): 41–59.  https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020949626017 Litvin, Stephen W., Ronald E. Goldsmith, and Bing Pan. 2008. “Electronic Word-of-Mouth in Hospitality and Tourism Management.” Tourism Management, 29 (3): 458–468. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2007.05.011 McCallum, Richard J., Wayne Harrison. 1985. “Interdependence in the Service Encounter”. In The Service Encounter: Managing Employee/Customer Interaction in Services Businesses, ed. by John A. Czepiel, J. A., Michael R. Solomon, and Carol F. Surprenant, 82–113. Lexington Books, Lexington. Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2004. “Displaying Closeness and Respectful Distance in Montevidean and Quiteno Service Encounters”. In Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish, ed. by Rosina Márquez-Reiter and Maria E. Placencia, 121–155. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.123.13mar Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2005. “Complaint Calls to a Caregiver Service Company: The Case of Desahogo.” Intercultural Pragmatics 2: 481–514. Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2006. “Interactional Closeness in Service Calls to a Montevidean Carer Service Company.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 39: 7–39. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327973rlsi3901_2



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Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2008. “Intra-Cultural Variation: Explanations in Service Calls to Two Montevidean Service Providers.” Journal of Politeness Research 4(1): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1515/PR.2008.001 Márquez Reiter, Rosina. 2011. Mediated Business Interactions. Intercultural Communication Between Speakers of Spanish. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637201.001.0001 Márquez-Reiter, Rosina, and Patricia Bou-Franch. 2017. “(Im)politeness in Service Encounters.” In Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness, ed by. Jonathan Culpeper, Michael Haugh, and Daniel Kádár, 661–687. Palgrave-Macmillan.  https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-37508-7_25 Merrit, Marilyn. 1976. “On Questions Following Questions in Service Encounters.” Language in Society 5: 315–357.  https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500007168 Mosa, Abu Saleh Mohammad, Illhoi Yoo, and Lincoln Sheets, L. 2012. “A Systematic Review of Health­care Applications for Smartphones.” Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 12 (67). Oviatt, Sharon L., and Philip R. Cohen. 1992. “Spoken Language in Interpreted Telephone Dialogues.” Computer Speech and Language 6: 277–302. https://doi.org/10.1016/0885-2308(92)90021-U Petrits, Angelique. 2001. “Addressing in Modern Greek: Evidence from a Case Study in the Athens Central Market”. In A Reader in Greek Sociolinguistics: Studies in Modern Greek Language, Culture and Communication, ed. by Alexandra Georgakopoulou and Marianna Spanaki, 199–222. Berlin: Peter Lang. Placencia, Maria E. 2004. “Rapport-building Activities in Corner Shop Interactions”. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8: 215–245.  https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2004.00259.x Placencia, Maria E., Ana Manceda-Rueda. 2011. “’Vaya, ¡qué chungo!’ Rapport-building Talk in Service Encounters: The Case of Bars in Seville at Breakfast Time”. In Spanish at Work: Analysing Institutional Discourse across the Spanish-speaking World, ed. by Nuria LorenzoDus, 192–207. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230299214_14 Placencia, María Elena. 2015. “Address Forms and Relational Work in E-Commerce: The Case of Service Encounter Interactions in Mercadolibre Ecuador”. In A Multidisciplinary Approach to Service Encounters, ed. by María de la O Hernández- López, and Lucía Fernández-Amaya, 37–64. Leiden: Brill.  https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004260160_004 Pontes, Manuel C. F., and Colleen O’Brien Kelly. 2000. “The Identification of Inbound Call Centre Agents’ Competencies That Are Related to Callers’ Repurchase Intentions.” Journal of Interactive Marketing 14: 41–49. https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6653(200022)14:33.0.CO;2-M Rawlins, Claudia, and Pamela Johnson. 2007. “Selling on Ebay: Persuasive Communication Advice Based on Analysis of Auction Item Descriptions.” Journal of E-Commerce 5 (1/2): 75–81. Rosenberg, Brett Allen. 2002. “Un Análisis de la Interpretación Telefónica.” In Traducción como Mediación entre Lenguas y Culturas, ed. by Carmen Valero Garcés, 243–249. Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, Servicio de Publicaciones. Sifianou, Maria. 2013. “The Impact of Globalization on Politeness and Impoliteness”. Journal of Pragmatics 55: 86–102.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.05.016 Sifianou, Maria, and Angeliki Tzanne. 2018. “The Impact of Globalisation on Brief Greek Service Encounters.” Journal of Pragmatics.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.12.011 Sonntag, Selma. K. 2009. “Linguistic Globalization and The Call Centre Industry: Imperialism, Hegemony or Cosmopolitanism?”, Language Policy 8 (1): 5–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-008-9112-9

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Traverso, Veronique. 2006. “Aspects of Polite Behaviour in French and Syrian Service Encounters: A Data-based Comparative Study”. Journal of Politeness Research 2:105–122. https://doi.org/10.1515/PR.2006.006 Vásquez, Camilla. 2011. “Complaints Online: The Case of TripAdvisor.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (6): 1707–1717.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.11.007 Vásquez, Camilla. 2014. ‘Usually Not one to Complain but…’: Constructing Identities in UserGenerated Online Reviews. In The Language of Social Media: Identity and Community on the Internet, ed. by Philip Seargeant and Caroline Tagg, 65–90. UK: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137029317_4 Vásquez, Camilla. 2015. “Right Now Versus Back Then: Recency and Remoteness as Discursive Resources in Online Reviews.” Discourse, Context and Media 9: 5–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2015.05.010 Ventola, Eija. 2005. “Revising Service Encounter Genre – Some Reflections”. Folia Linguistica 39:19–43.  https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2005.39.1-2.19 Ventola, C. Lee. 2014. “Mobile Devices and Apps for Health Care Professionals: Uses and Benefits?” Pharmacy and Therapeutics 39(5): 356–364. Verrept, Hans. 2011. “Intercultural Mediation through the Internet in Belgian Hospitals.” 4th International Conference on Public Service Interpreting and Translation, 13th–15th April 2011. Abstract available at http://tisp2011.tucongreso.es/ti2011/files/book-abstracts.pdf. Virtanen, Tuija. 2017. “Adaptability in Online Consumer Reviews: Exploring Genre Dynamics and Interactional Choices.” Journal of Pragmatics 116: 77–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.03.011 Wadensjö, Cecilia. 1998. Interpreting as Interaction. London: Longman. Wadensjö, Cecilia. 1999. “Telephone Interpreting and the Synchronization of Talk in Social Inter­ action.” The Translator 5(2): 247–264. Weiner, Jonathan P. 2012. “Doctor-patient Communication in the E-Health Era.” Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 1(33). Woydack, Johanna and Ben Rampton. 2015. “Text Trajectories in A Multilingual Call Centre: The Linguistic Ethnography of a Calling Script.” Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 124: 1–24. Xu, Xunfeng, Yang Wang, Gail Forey, and Lan Li. 2010 “Analyzing the Genre Structure of Chinese Call-Centre Communication.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 24(4): 445–475.  https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651910371198 Zimmerman, Don H. 1984. “Talk and its Occasion: The Case of Calling the Police.” In Meaning, Form, Use in Context: Linguistic Applications, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, 210–228. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Zimmerman, Don H. 1992. “The Interactional Organization of Calls for Emergency Assistance.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew and John Heritage, 359–469. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Section I

Social services

Chapter 1

Language discordance and technological facilitation in health care service encounters A contrastive experiment July De Wilde, Ellen Van Praet and Yves Van Vaerenbergh This chapter reports on the design and implementation of a multilingual, mobile app to facilitate the communication in language discordant face-to-face service encounters (SEs). It describes the results of a two-group between-subjects experiment, in which respondents (N = 20) were randomly assigned to either a SE with app (N = 11), or a SE without app (N = 9). The research builds on the hypothesis that technological mediation facilitates the transfer of information. To verify this hypothesis, it relies on qualitative and quantitative research data: (i) SERVQUAL satisfaction questionnaires and (ii) interaction analysis of video-recorded SEs. The findings address concerns of lengthened visit time, reduced eye contact and additional training needs. The chapter closes with brief guidelines for unlocking the potential of mHealth in language discordant SEs. Keywords: mHealth, TMC (technology-mediated communication), TFC (technology-facilitated communication), service encounter, service quality, SERVQUAL, two-group between-subjects experiment, mixed method, multilingualism

1.

Introduction

In highly developed countries, healthcare and consumer health experience are increasingly supported and mediated by a rapidly evolving eHealth (electronic health) and mHealth (mobile health) support infrastructure to enhance information and communication flow to customers, mainly to improve efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and/or quality (Froehle and Roth 2004; Oh et al. 2005; Pagliari et al. 2005; Weiner 2012). Healthcare professionals now progressively use smartphones or tablets where they previously relied on pagers, cell phones, or personal digital assistants or PDA’s (Mosa et al. 2012; Ventola 2014). These new mobile devices are increasingly

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multimodal, with multiple modalities employed simultaneously: web searching, global positioning systems (GPS), high-quality cameras, sound recorders, automated speech generation, etc. Against the backdrop of this technological advancement, a rapidly expanding field of research comes to the fore. Already in 2012, Nilsen et al. (2012: 5) address “the growing need for high quality mobile health research both in the United States and internationally”, and call for “a solid, interdisciplinary scientific approach that pairs the rapid change associated with technological progress with a rigorous evaluation approach”. At the time of writing this chapter, the scope and definition of mHealth remain somewhat vague, with studies in the field adopting a diverse set of research methods, and encompassing a wide range of applications (Kumar et al. 2013): diabetes self-management (Quinn et al. 2011); hypertension (Cole-Lewis and Kershaw 2010); asthma (Gupta et al. 2011); eating disorders (Fjeldsoe et al. 2009), HIV treatment and testing (Leach-Lemans 2009; Evans et al. 2016), smoking cessation (Ali et al. 2012; Gordon et al. 2016), weight loss, STD prevention and testing; maternal, new-born and child health (Nurmatov et al. 2014). A substantial number of these recently published and upcoming studies tends to focus on non face-to-face technology-mediated encounters, singling out those applications where the patient and healthcare provider are not physically co-located (e.g. e-messages, remote consultations between patient and doctor using video conferencing). This prioritization comes as no surprise: healthcare has traditionally demanded face-to-face contact between patients and professionals, with remote assessments and treatment profoundly challenging not only the service quality but also the ethics of traditional face-to-face encounters. While extremely valuable, it is unclear whether the results of these studies are equally applicable to pragmatic contexts in which the customer and service provider are physically co-located. In this paper we zoom in on face-to-face service encounters exploring how the inclusion of technologies challenges clinicians with increasingly diverse, unpredictable consultations from a sociolinguistic perspective, requiring flexibility and a tolerance of ambiguity (Swinglehurst and Roberts 2014). Consultations that incorporate both sociotechnical and sociolinguistic challenges are increasingly the norm in large urban areas. Although it is widely recognized that consultations are growing in complexity, pragmatic research addressing the twin pressures of globalization and technologisation remains limited. Admittedly, since the early 1990’s there has been a vast literature on overcoming language and cultural communication barriers in healthcare. For instance, scholars of medical communication have elaborated effective transcultural care practices (see e.g. Narayanasamy and White 2005) or explored which specific communicative behaviors are more adequate and effective when communicating with particular



Chapter 1.  Language discordance and technological facilitation 19

ethnic groups or with individuals with a different background (see e.g. Andrews and Boyle, 1999; Young and Klingle, 1996). Applied discourse analysts and critical sociolinguistic scholarship have shown how variations in communicative resources can cause misunderstandings but have also focused on the macro-processes, uncovering how language ideologies and practices are implicated in institutionally sedimented processes of exclusion that can limit migrants’ access to medical care (e.g. Drew 2001; Sarangi 2002; Duchêne, Moyer and Roberts 2013). Scholars in Interpreting Studies have shown how interpreters or mediators, far from acting as neutral conduits in the transmission of information, can take up many roles, ranging from patient’s ambassadors to institutional gatekeepers (e.g. Wadensjø 1998; Pöchhacker 2000; Davidson 2000; Baraldi, 2009; Candlin 2001; Frank 2000). Despite this vast scholarship on language discordant medical encounters, research zooming in on technological mediation in language discordant healthcare SEs is lagging behind. Only few researchers dare tackle the opportunities and challenges of mHealth provision in an age of super-diversity (Vertovec 2007; 2010). Addressing this lacuna, this chapter reports on the design and implementation of a multilingual, mobile app to facilitate the communication between service providers of Kind and Gezin (Flanders, Belgium) and foreign mothers with limited Dutch language proficiency. The research starts from the hypothesis that technological mediation facilitates the transfer of information in a foreign language. To verify this hypothesis, we set up an experiment cross-comparing two different client contact modes: (i) a technology-free face-to-face language discordant SE with (ii) a technology-facilitated face-to-face language discordant SE. Analyzing the data, we address the following research questions: RQ1 RQ2 RQ3 RQ4 RQ5

Does technological facilitation impact on client satisfaction? Does technological facilitation impact on service provider satisfaction? Does technological facilitation impact on conversational sequencing? Does technological facilitation impact on eye gaze? Does technological facilitation enhance communicative understanding?

Whereas experiments typically yield quantitative data, our approach combines the strict design and systematic setting variation from quantitative studies with the observation, induction and near-to-the-subject insights typical of qualitative studies. In what follows, Section 2 situates the case whereas Section 3 elaborates on the data collection and the mixed method approach. Next, we report on the outcome of the two-pronged approach and interpretation of the results (Section 4). The chapter closes with brief guidelines for unlocking the potential of mHealth in language discordant SEs (Section 5).

20 July De Wilde, Ellen Van Praet and Yves Van Vaerenbergh

2. Situating the case K&G is an internally autonomous agency with legal personality, operating under the authority of the Flemish Minister of Welfare, Public Health and Family. It has three main activity areas: preventive family support, child care and adoption. In all three areas, K&G displays a deep commitment to client-centered communication. Among other things, this is reflected in customized care, agenda setting by the client, and counseling methods stimulating (vulnerable) young parents to raise their children in a safe and responsible way, in accordance with their own religion, belief and education (Kind & Gezin s.d.). This dedication to client-centered communication is also manifest in a consistent attempt to better understand, communicate with and care for clients from diverse backgrounds. Over the years, K&G has continuously invested in the facilitation of language discordant communication by offering client information leaflets in other languages, glossaries, multi-language DVDs, picture and photo cards. They also hire family support workers with a Moroccan or Turkish immigration background for assisting the nurses and doctors in communicating with immigrant mothers, and they actively promote public service interpreting and translation (PSIT). In line with this mission, K&G set up a research project (2013) with (1) Kruispunt Migratie- Integratie (KM-I), an independent organization, subsidized by the Flemish government to develop expertise on migration, integration and ethno-cultural diversity and (2) a research team of applied linguists at Ghent University (MULTIPLES). The goal of the project was to develop a ‘communication matrix’ which would allow K&G to systematically identify and rate the performance of communication support tools in SEs between K&G employees and migrant mothers (De Wilde et al. 2016; Rillof et al. 2014). As a follow-up to this project (2015), K&G collaborated with Ghent University (MULTIPLES), to design and evaluate a multimodal app to support language discordant communication. Subsidized by the Federal Impulse Fund for Immigration Policy (FIM), the project’s goal was to give a boost to working with mHealth devices in the communication with ethnic minority clients. In accordance with K&G’s client-centered approach, the app was meant to promote client involvement and interactivity, but also to enhance professional comfort and usability by integrating already existing and new language support tools in a single mobile device. To adjust to the needs of the organisation, we collaborated closely with service providers and management for design, development, training and implementation. Given the limited timeframe and budget, it was decided to narrow down the thematic focus of the app to one key theme (potty training). The underlying



Chapter 1.  Language discordance and technological facilitation 21

rationale for this decision was threefold. First, the theme of potty training reflected the major challenges of K&G’s client-centered and flexible approach: it was our task to create an app which could freely switch between a more gradual child- centered approach (Brazelton 1962) or a goal-oriented parent-centered approach (Azrin and Foxx 1974), while taking into account the various individual, ethnic and cultural factors that determine initiation and completion of potty training (deVries and deVries 1977). Second, potty training is a recurrent topic in SEs, permitting us to testdrive the app on a regular basis. Third, K&G service providers reported that they frequently faced parents experiencing tremendous stress when their child failed to stay dry when leaving day care and entering kindergarten. Potty training consultations often involve strong emotions such as anxiety, stress, anger or frustration, with a language barrier only adding to that. Dealing with these emotions within the limited time frame of a 10-minute consultation turned out particularly challenging for service providers, and it was our task to create an app which would allow service providers to understand and communicate emotions better, within the allotted time frame. In the course of numerous discussions with K&G staff, it turned out that language discordance and miscommunication forced service providers to resort to an “information-delivery format” in which they deliver information and parents remain silent apart from small acknowledgement tokens (Silverman et al. 1992: 176; see also interview Excerpts (1) and (2)):

(1) We hebben te weinig taal om het probleem te verkennen (…) en daardoor gaan we veel sneller advies geven, eigenlijk weten we niet echt wat het probleem is, of als er eigenlijk wel een probleem is.  (SP2) We don’t have enough language to explore the problem and (…) this makes us move much faster to the stage of giving advice, without really knowing what the problem is, or whether there is a problem in the first place.  (SP2, our translation)



(2) Ik ben iemand die graag uitlegt waarom ik advies geef: “kijk, mama, ‘t is belangrijk daarom en daarom”. Maar als er een taalprobleem is, wordt dat moeilijk. Sommige dingen zijn moeilijk uit te drukken: gevoelens, tijdsduur, ‘t feit dat het ene kind total anders reageert dan het andere en ieder kind zijn eigen ritme heeft.  (SP2) I am someone who likes to explain the why when giving advice: “you see, mum, it’s important for this or that reason”. But in the case of a language barrier, this is hard to realize. Specific things are really difficult to express: feelings, time spans, the fact that one child reacts differently than another and that each one has its own growing phase.  (SP2, our translation)

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In designing the navigation structure of the app, this given was crucial. To promote client-initiated questions, the app offers a set of pre-recorded questions and concerns, with a ‘toggle’ function allowing to switch between the service provider’s or the client’s perspective. Next to pre-recorded elements, the app also includes a storyboard with a series of combinable pictures to be dragged and dropped so that concerns not covered by the pre-recorded sentences can be further detailed using picture-based story telling. The app also comprises a dictionary which has a bilingual search function (Dutch + chosen foreign language) and offers a visual representation of the searched word. All written text is doubled with audio through a text-to-speech function so that even clients with low literacy skills can access the information. In case of extreme communication difficulties, the app also includes the possibility to connect telephone or webcam remote interpreting.

Figure 1.1  K&G app: landing page

3. Data collection and method To address the research questions mentioned in Section 1, we relied on a mixed methods approach and methodological triangulation (Denzin 1978). The inclusion of multiple methods for data collection and analysis has resulted in contributing valuable and relevant insights to the issue under investigation. Research was conducted by more than one investigator (investigator triangulation) for decreasing bias in gathering, reporting and analyzing the data. Two investigators (authors July De Wilde and Ellen Van Praet) are skilled at qualitative analysis, whereas a third investigator (author Yves Van Vaerenbergh) is adept at quantitative research. The data have been collected in accordance with ethical standards, including written informed consent from research participants.



3.1

Chapter 1.  Language discordance and technological facilitation 23

A qualitative perspective

First, the research has been profoundly informed by ethnographic fieldwork. In the period between 2013 and 2015, we collected field notes, video-recorded face-toface SEs, conducted interviews with K&G service providers and gathered a variety of institutional discourse data (policy guidelines, mission statements, job descriptions, multilingual information leaflets) (De Wilde et al. 2016). All interviews were transcribed and video-recorded SEs were analyzed using NVivo qualitative data analysis software. 3.2

Experimental approach

To verify the hypothesis that technological mediation facilitates the transfer of information in a foreign language, we set up a two-group between-subjects experiment at Ghent University, Belgium (November 26, 2015). Spanish exchange students (19 female and 1 male, aged between 18 and 22, all with limited Dutch proficiency, CEFR level A1 or lower than A1) played the part of the immigrant parent, resorting to the help of two ‘real’ service providers (both female), with more than 15 years of working experience at K&G. The simulated clients (N = 20) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: either a SE with app (N = 11), or a SE without app (N = 9). Whereas the students were assigned to either a technology-free SE, or a technology-facilitated SE, the two service providers (SP1 & SP2) randomly switched between technology-free (9) and technology-facilitated SEs (11). Both service providers were informed beforehand that they would be dealing with simulated clients and be video-recorded. Simulated clients were informed of the recording after the SE when asked for data-recording consent. To safeguard internal validity (“Was the observed effect caused by the intervention, or by other factors?”), and control the effect of topic/theme on the results, an open role-play (Kasper and Dahl 1991) was used. The unscripted scenario specified the clients/ service providers’ roles, but did not predetermine the course and outcome of the SE. The role-play allowed us to control a series of contextual parameters: the family context and age of the child, and the nature of the problem for which simulated clients needed the help of K&G (see appendix 2). The students received this scenario in Spanish -their mother tongue- and were given up to 10 minutes to read it through and prepare. The service providers received the Dutch version of the scenario two days before the experiment. Measuring the impact of technological facilitation on the SE, we juxtaposed two methods of collecting and analyzing data: (3.2.1) SERVQUAL satisfaction questionnaires and (3.2.2) analysis of video-recorded interactions.

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3.2.1 Satisfaction questionnaires To assess simulated client satisfaction with the service (RQ1) and measure the impact of technological facilitation on service providers’ satisfaction (RQ2), we relied on satisfaction questionnaires (see appendix 3 and 4). The questionnaires are based on the SERVQUAL model (Zeithamlet al. 1990), also known by its acronym RATER. The standard version used in management studies has been designed to assess service quality by measuring the difference between expectations and performances. It consists of 22 statements, highlighting the following five dimensions: 1. Reliability – the ability to provide the promised service consistently, accurately, and on time. 2. Assurance – the knowledge, skills, and credibility of staff, including their ability to use this expertise to inspire trust and confidence. 3. Tangibles – the physical evidence of the service provided, e.g. offices, equipment, employees, communication and marketing materials. 4. Empathy – the service provider’s capacity to place him/herself in the customer’s position. 5. Responsiveness  – the ability to provide a quick, high-quality service to customers. The SERVQUAL model has been applied in many different types of settings, including business, engineering and healthcare (see in particular Lee and Yom 2007 for quality assessing of nursing services). While respecting the overall design of the SERVQUAL model, we slightly reformulated some of the standard items to suit the specific context of K&G. Next to the SERVQUAL dimensions, we also tracked overall service quality (items adopted from Larivière 2008, see appendix 3, items 1–3) and overall satisfaction (single item adapted from Maxham and Netemeyer 2002). The satisfaction questionnaire for the simulated clients also included a single item on positive word-of-mouth intentions (adopted from Maxham and Netemeyer 2002). In line with Van Vaerenbergh and Thomas’ (2013) recommendations, the research participants specified their level of (dis)agreement on a 7-point Likert scale. The analysis of the data was done using independent-samples t-tests. 3.2.2 Interactional analysis of video-recorded SEs To answer RQ 3, 4 and 5, we resorted to qualitative methods, performing an interactional analysis of the video-recorded SEs (3 hours, 19 minutes). All SEs were coded using CAQDAC software Nvivo 11. To identify patterns in the research data, we first created a node structure relying on the communicative goals identified in established guides to the medical consultation (Cole and Bird 2000; the enhanced



Chapter 1.  Language discordance and technological facilitation 25

Calgary-Cambridge guide to the medical interview, Silverman et al. 2013). Broadly speaking, we distinguished 3 (often overlapping) phases in the SEs: 1. Gathering information: the service provider explores the parent’s problems, concerns and expectations through varying information-gathering strategies, e.g. open-ended questions, closed-ended questions, expressions of concern, attentive listening, etc. 2. Giving advice: after the exploration phase, the service provider helps the parent to deal with the issue raised. In the particular context of the experiment (potty training of the youngest son), advice-giving included both overall recommendations and, to a lesser extent, tips and tricks. 3. Providing additional information: the service provider adds information reinforcing the given advice, e.g. providing reassurance that some children learn faster than others, that not all two-year-olds are ready for potty training, etc. Second, we coded aspects of turn-taking (e.g. between- and within-speaker intervals), conversational repair (e.g. caretakers gauging understanding), and relevant non-verbal communication (e.g. eye gaze). We also coded marked instances where research participants make use of the app’s multimodal potential (e.g. built-in dictionary function).1 In the next section we report on the outcome of our two-pronged approach: To answer RQ 1 and 2, we relied on satisfaction questionnaires probing for the perceived service quality of the 20 clients/students (RQ1) and 2 service providers (RQ2) (Section 4.1), while research questions 3, 4 and 5 were answered by means of interactional analysis of filmed SEs (Section 4.2). 4. Results and discussion 4.1

Satisfaction questionnaires

The results (see table below) demonstrate that simulated clients rate the delivered service highly, regardless of whether technology was used or not: clients/students give a positive rating of 5.9/6.0 for overall service quality, and 6.6/6.1 for satisfaction.

1. The coding and analysis was inspired by the methodological frameworks offered by interactional analysis (Gumperz 1982 and 1999) and conversational analysis for (institutional) talk-in-interaction (Arminen 2005; Félix-Brasdefer 2015; Heritage and Greatbatch 1991; Sacks et al. 1974).

26 July De Wilde, Ellen Van Praet and Yves Van Vaerenbergh

Table 1.1  Results of the SERVQUAL satisfaction questionnaires (using a 7-point Likert scale)  

Clients/students

Service providers

 

Technologyfree

Technologyfacilitated

Technologyfree

Technologyfacilitated

 5.9  6.6  6.3

 6.0  6.1  5.9

 2.9  3.2  NA

 4.6  4.6  NA

 6.5  6.4  5.5  6.6  6.4

 6.3  6.5  6.6  6.6  6.3

 3.2  4.0  1.7  3.4  2.7

 4.8  4.8  5.5  4.9  4.3

Overall service quality Overall satisfaction Positive word-of- mouth intentions Reliability Assurance Tangibles Empathy Responsiveness

The two service providers are generally less positive about the service they delivered, but do rate the overall service quality of technology-facilitated SEs significantly higher than the quality of technology-free SEs (2.9/4.6 for service quality) and are more satisfied with technology-facilitated SEs than with technology-free SEs (3.2/4.6 for overall satisfaction). In fact, for all five SERVQUAL dimensions rated, service providers clearly prefer technology-facilitated SEs over technology-free SEs. This marked preference for technology-facilitated SEs does not apply to simulated clients, in spite of their overall high ratings of the delivered service. Most likely, this is due to the fact that clients were unable to compare since they were assigned to either a technology-facilitated or a technology-free SE. In contrast, service providers randomly switched between two types of SEs, which may be inviting comparison. Still, clients’ positive rating of the app is prominently visible in the tangibles dimension, with a rating of 6.6 for technology-facilitated SEs, and technology-free SEs scoring significantly lower (5.5), demonstrating they reacted favorably to the physical presence of the app. Another notable outcome of the satisfaction questionnaire is that service providers’ preference for technology-facilitated SEs is less outspoken for the assurance dimension (4.0/4.8). In other words, service providers do not feel they are able to provide the service with significantly more self-confidence, calmness and less frustration when using the app (see appendix 4, items 13–15 for the statements corresponding to assurance). This finding ties in with results we obtained from fieldwork and retrospective interviews with service providers, showing that they were very reluctant to the idea of using the app in a ‘real’ setting, mostly for reasons of insecurity. For instance, one service provider stresses in an interview that nurses working for K&G are not tech-savvies, i.e. not very knowledgeable about IT/computers:

Chapter 1.  Language discordance and technological facilitation 27





(3) Tuurlijk we hebben wel een computer, maar we zijn verre van experten he, we hebben een ipad thuis, maar veel kunnen we daar niet mee, gewone dingen (…) dat hier, da’s anders  (SP2) of course, we use a computer, but we are not at all high techs, we have an ipad at home, but don’t really do a lot with it, and no complex things (…) this here is different  (SP2, our translation)

Summarizing, satisfaction questionnaires show two notable findings. First, the use of the app is rated positively by all respondents: technology-facilitated SEs are clearly preferred over technology-free SEs. Second, the findings also put up a red flag, signaling a distinct need for additional training to improve service-providers’ trust and confidence. 4.2

Interactional analysis

4.2.1 Does technological facilitation impact on conversational sequencing? (RQ3) Our investigation into conversational sequencing was driven by two concerns voiced by the staff. First, service providers had articulated fears that language discordance caused them to abandon the information gathering sequence quicker and move on to the phase of advice giving (see also interview excerpts in Section 2). Along the same line, service providers had expressed concerns that the language gap impeded clients from actively engaging in the conversation (e.g. asking questions). Accordingly, the expectation was that the app would engage clients more actively and instigate client-initiated questions. Second, service providers openly expressed the hope that the app could help them deal with complex emotions, particularly within the limited 10-minute timeframe of a consultation. Cross-comparing the interactional data for technology-facilitated and technology-free SEs, we observed that the conversational pattern of the opening phase (gathering information) was identical for technology-free SEs and technology-facilitated SEs: next to (1) relevant background information about the family, service providers ask questions in order to identify (2) the precise problem faced by the parent, (3) the behavior and emotional reaction of the child when toilet trained, (4) the emotions of the parents when facing the difficulties related to potty training. Adding to that, the number of questions in both types was alike. On average, service providers ask 21 questions in technology-facilitated SEs and 19 questions in technology-free SEs. Clients, on the other hand, ask 2 questions in technology-facilitated SEs, while formulating 3 questions in technology-free SEs. Finally, the number of instances of advice giving was also similar (10 and 10,3 instances for technology-facilitated and the technology-free SEs respectively). Relating to the second concern, analysis showed striking differences between the two types of SEs: on average, a technology-facilitated SE lasts 4 minutes longer

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than a technology-free SE (11:48 and 7:44 respectively). In particular, we noted a salient difference between the two types of SEs on the level of between- and within-speaker intervals. SEs with app were laced with frequent and long pauses/ gaps. We examined the statistical distribution of intervals within the speech of one speaker (i.e. pauses) as well as between speakers or at speaker changes (i.e. gaps and overlaps).2 Table 1.2 gives an overview of (1) the frequency of pauses/gaps and (2) their proportionate duration vis-à-vis the total duration of the SE. On average, service providers pause 2.8 times, taking up no more than 5.33% of the total time of the encounter, when working without the app. These results are in sharp contrast to their pausing behavior in encounters with app: on average, pauses/gaps occur 16 times, taking up 41.02% of the total duration of the SE, which clearly lengthens visit time. Overall, we observed that pauses/gaps were never activity-silent. In the recorded data, non- verbal activities in between- and within-speaker intervals can be grouped in 5 categories: 1. Reading – Despite the fact that they had been given 10 minutes of preparation time, five instances of observed pausing are taken up by simulated clients reading the role-play scenario they had been given prior to the SE. 2. Browsing and navigating – Participants, in particular service providers, concentrate on working with the app, e.g. browse the Q&A section, switch between app sections (from Q&A section to dictionary), build client-based stories using icons and text. 3. Drawing – Participants produce a drawing with the intention to communicate, e.g. in a SE without app, the service provider draws a doll on a piece of paper, to help her frame potty training advice to the client. 4. Information finding – Participants scan a pre-printed document with pictograms to support communication. This function was identified exclusively in the SEs without the app, where service provided relied on a series of 13 pictograms on a printed document. 5. Signaling non-comprehension – Participants signal an inability to respond, accompanied by facial expressions, hand gestures and body posture.

2. In this chapter we adhere to the terminology of Sacks et al. (1974) who distinguished between three kinds of acoustic silences in conversations: pauses, gaps, and lapses. We did not distinguish between filled and unfilled pauses (Matsumoto et al. 2013, p. 59). In our coding, we have set the detection threshold for silences large enough (3 seconds), because consultations with allophone clients are by default filled with longer and more frequent pauses (searching for words). Research has also shown that it takes more than 4 seconds for a silence to become really awkward (Koudenburg et al. 2011).

Chapter 1.  Language discordance and technological facilitation 29



Table 1.2  Frequency and duration of pauses/gaps in SEs with app/SEs without app Technology-facilitated SEs SE (anonymized) SE00 SE02 SE04 SE06 SE08 SE10 SE14 SE16 SE18 SE20 SE22 AVERAGE

Number of pauses/ gaps 16 10  6 13 10 20 21 16 21 21 22 16

Proportionate duration of pauses/gaps 42.10% 37.06% 15.20% 33.68% 41.68% 37.98% 58.18% 43.18% 38.09% 60.84% 43.20% 41.02%

Total visit length 0:08:31 0:08:07 0:05:55 0:13:23 0:12:32 0:16:09 0:15:04 0:10:03 0:13:56 0:15:08 0:10:55 0:11:48

Technology-free SEs SE number (anonymized) SE03 SE05 SE07 SE09 SE11 SE13 SE15 SE19 SE21 AVERAGE

Number of pauses/ gaps  5  3  2  1  5  4  3  2  1   2.8

Proportionate duration of pauses/gaps 11.28%  4.87%  2.30%  1.93%  8.73% 10.60%  3.32%  3.18%  1.78%  5.33%

Total visit length 0:07:49 0:08:02 0:06:39 0:11:03 0:06:43 0:03:52 0:06:04 0:09:58 0:09:27 0:07:44

Regardless of the non-verbal activity during the silent intervals, the majority of the pauses were awkward, rather than enriching the conversation or inviting participation. For example, when a client is waiting for an answer from the service who is scrolling through the Frequently Asked Question section, or moving through the images in the folders, looking for the right visual. In sum, the answer to RQ3 is double: on the one hand, technological facilitation has no impact on the overall structure of the encounter (i.e. information gathering, advice giving, providing additional information), nor does it increase the number of questions, or alter the pattern of advice giving. On the other hand, technological facilitation impacts severely on pausing behavior, resulting in lengthened visit time.

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4.2.2 Does technological mediation impact on eye gaze? (RQ4) Our detailed analysis of eye gaze in the 20 recorded extracts was mainly triggered by research indicating that the use of ICT in healthcare settings impacts highly on eye gaze in terms of time spent gazing at the computer screen, or altered participants’ engagement, emotional responsiveness or patient’s satisfaction (Farber et al. 2015; Margalit et al. 2006; Schmid et al. 2008). We systematically coded the service providers’ eye gaze patterns and eye gaze durations in SEs with app and without app. In doing so, we focused solely on averted eye gaze, i.e. instances where the service provider looks away from the client. In line with research (see supra), the results reveal that working with the app significantly reduces client-centered eye contact. Table 1.3  Average frequency and duration of service providers’ averted eye gaze in SEs with app / SEs without app   Technology-free SEs (N = 9) Technology-facilitated SEs (N = 11)

Number of instances of averted eye gaze 14.2 24.7

Proportionate duration of averted eye gaze 17.43% 53.49%

On average, service providers interrupt eye contact with the client 14.2 times, taking up 17.43% of the total time of the encounter, when working without the app. These results are in sharp contrast to eye contact behavior in technology-facilitated SEs where, on average, service providers interrupt eye contact with the client 24.7 times, taking up 53.49% of the total time of the encounter. Analyzing the coded eye contact disruptions in more detail, we identified several contextual cues for averted eye gaze and grouped them into 3 categories: 1. Eye contact interruption by self – not surprisingly, an important proportion of instances of averted gaze co-occur with between- and within-speaker gaps/ pauses: service providers lose eye contact because they focus on the screen while searching for visuals, or when they switch between different functionalities. The dialogue between client and service provider is placed on hold, as it were, because the service provider is solely focused on the app. Although far less frequent, similar cases of eye-contact loss were identified in technology-free SEs when service providers browse through the pre-printed documents with pictograms laying on the table in front of them and, for a moment, seem to forget the client. 2. Eye contact interruption by other – instances where eye-contact loss is initiated by the client, rather than by the service provider. They occur when participants select one of the pre-recorded sentences (technology-facilitated SEs) or when

Chapter 1.  Language discordance and technological facilitation 31



they search for pictograms on the pre-printed document that is lying on the table in between the participants (technology-free SEs). 3. Eye contact interruption in full motion – instances characterized by eye contact loss co-occurring with vivid speech production and hand gesturing. The service provider uses several modalities simultaneously in a rapid series of actions: she points at the screen, talks and explains, touches the screen, clicks on pre-recorded audio-support, etc. In doing so, we detected different patterns of averted eye contact behavior for the two service providers. Interruptions co-occurring with vivid talk and gesturing are prevalent in SEs conducted by service provider 2 (SP2), while much less present in SEs with service provider 1 (SP1). Consider, for instance, the contrast between two SEs with app, one conducted by SP1, and the other by SP2 (see Table 1.4): Table 1.4  Frequency and type of service providers’ averted eye gaze in two SEs with app  

SE 22 (SP1) SE 08 (SP2)

Type 2 – Eye Total number Type 1 – Eye Type 3 – Eye contact interruption contact interruption contact interruption of instances of by other averted eye gaze by self in full motion 31 30

21  6

 3  3

 7 21

While the total number of eye contact interruptions is similar in both SEs (31 and 30 for SP1 and SP2 respectively), the proportionate distribution of the different contextual cues is not. The findings suggest that service provider 2 (SP2) combines app related activities (e.g. browsing and navigating) with standard interactional routines more easily: she seems completely absorbed by searching processes (type 1) in only 6 instances of averted eye gazes, whereas type 3 contextual cues for eye contact loss are very frequent (21 instances). This suggests that service provider 2 integrates different meaning making modalities (speech, hand gestures and tool related activities) relatively easily. Inversely, SP1 shows an inverse relationship between type 1 and type 3 contextual cues (21 and 7 respectively), which seems to suggest that co-deploying various modalities (e.g. visual and auditive elements of the app with regular speech production) for message production and interactive service provision requires a great deal of effort on her part. Summarizing, the findings show that while technological facilitation reduces client-centered eye gaze, this may not necessarily have a negative impact on SEs. Instead, our findings suggest that, depending on the skills and training of the service provider, averted eye gaze may be linked to intensified multimodal meaning making (Baldry and Thibault 2006; Fägersten et al. 2010).

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Does technological facilitation enhance communicative understanding? (RQ5) The interactional analysis reveals that, despite frequent and sometimes long searches for visual support, the visuals included in the app sparked interest, helped build emotional connections, clarify words, explain abstract ideas, and helped to draw conclusions. These findings are supported by close analysis of the client’s acknowledgement tokens (“ah”, “ok”, “vale”), sudden postural shifts or facial expressions (smiles, raised eyebrows). The app clearly helped to visualize concrete objects in one click (“diaper”, “pants”) and communicate abstract concepts or ideas better. For instance, the notion of time was frequently explained with the help of an icon which graphically represents 24 hours in a day, or using the visual of a stopwatch, a graphical representation of a month on a calendar, an icon of the moon (night) or the sun (day). Moreover, on numerous occasions, the dictionary tool, offering translation, visual representation and an audio version of text content, helped service providers to explain difficult and abstract concepts (e.g. “patience”, “stimulate”, “pain”, “interest”, “routine”, “angry”, “stubborn”). Consider for instance, the following multimodal transcription (Norris 2004) of an excerpt (SE10) in which the service provider (SP) resorts to the multimodal input of the Dictionary tool to explain to the simulated client (C) that her toddler should not be forced into potty training: 4.2.3

Table 1.5  Excerpt from SE 10, with app. Service provider (SP) interacting with the client (C), activating audio version of text content (PC). Dutch transactions have been translated to English, signaled in bold Line

Time

P

Spoken word (English translations follow the Dutch or Spanish utterances and are signaled by italics)

Non-verbal communicative behavior/ Notes on SE

76

10:22

SP

Nog één keer, ja: zo. (1.3) Een droog broekje, goed zo! Als kindje, euh, ni op potje wil zitten, kan mama (2.3), voor te oefenen (2.4), we gaan es kijken, ja. (7.2) mmm (5.2) Once more, yes: like this. (1.3) Dry pants, very well! If the child, hmm, doesn’t want to sit on the potty, then mum can (2.3), in order to practice (2.4), let’s have a look, yes (7.2) mmm (5.2)

While referring to the previous topic, C touches the screen, swipes a dry panty on the screen, swipes diaper off the screen. N gives thumbs up, as a sign that C understood well. C nods, smiles. Eye gaze SP alternately oriented on the device and client. Long pause at the end, N builds a story (swipes off images previously used and swipes on new ones)

(continued)

Chapter 1.  Language discordance and technological facilitation 33



Table 1.5  (continued) Line

Time

P

Spoken word (English translations follow the Dutch or Spanish utterances and are signaled by italics)

Non-verbal communicative behavior/ Notes on SE

77

10:58

SP

Zo, ja? Als kindje ni op ‘t potje wil zitten, kindje wenen (1.9), kindje boos (0.8), ni, euh (1.7), forceren. Weet je wat forceren is? (0.8) Ja? (0.9) Anders gaan we even in woordenboek. Like this, ok? If the child doesn’t want to sit on the potty, it’s crying (1.9), child is angry (0.8), don’t, euh (1.7), force it. Do you know what ‘to force’ means? (0.8) Yes? (0.9) If not, let’s switch to the Dictionary section.

SP mimics the reactions of the child (crying, anger) while pronouncing the words. SP nods head when she talks about forcing the child, then leans slightly forward when asking C whether she knows what the Dutch word ‘forceren’ means. After that, SP orients eye gaze towards the device, touches screen, selects Dictionary section from the navigation bar.

78

11.16

PC

Diccionario. Dictionary

SP accidentally activates loudspeaker icon below the section heading ‘diccionario’ on the navigation bar (see Figure 2).

79

11.18

SP

Mm (3.8) hmm (2.3). Eventjes, euh: Mm (3.8) hmm (2.3). Let’s, euh:

SP gazes at screen, types the Dutch word ‘dwingen’ in the search field of the Dictionary tool, then activates the audio-version of text (loudspeaker).

80

11.24

PC

Obli[gar. To force

Sound produced by hybrid laptop.

81

11.25

C

[Mmh.

Client nods, signals understanding non-verbally.

82

11.26

SP

Niet dwingen, ja? Don’t force, all right?

 

83

11.28

SP

Ja, (2.1) hmm (6.2) maar (2.4) beter da mama de pop, beertje op potje zet, en kindje komt kijken. Kijken, mama ook kijken, en mama ook dikke duim voor de beer. Ja? Yes (2.1) hmm (6.2) but (2.4) it’s better that mum puts the doll on the potty, and the child comes and has a look. The child looks, mum also, and mum gives thumbs up for the teddy. OK?

SP touches the screen, switches between sections. Hand gesture in vertical movement when pronouncing ‘on the potty’. Eye gaze alternately oriented on device and client.

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In the excerpt, the service provider (SP) is able to give two types of advice in a relatively short time span: (1) do not force your toddler into potty-training (line 77) and (2) place an inanimate object on the potty as a way of demonstrating (a doll, a teddy bear) (line 83). While recommending to the client that she (C) not force the toddler, she relies on the multimodal input of the dictionary tool (see line 81). She uses the tool’s bilingual search function to find the Dutch word ‘dwingen’ (to force), and clicks on the search icon (magnifying glass). Next, the following information pops up on the screen (Figure 1.2):

Figure 1.2  Dictionary tool

After this, the service provider clicks on the icon (line 80) for audio support (loudspeaker), and the Spanish translation ‘obligar’ rings through the room, whereupon the client’s quasi-simultaneous reaction (line 81) indexes understanding. Next, while recommending the client to place a teddy bear on the potty (line 83), the service provider opens the storyboard and selects a visual to help her make her point (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3  Storyboard

Summarizing, the fragment aptly illustrates how technological facilitation may enhance communicative understanding, augment multimodal meaning, and extend information transfer: the integration of text, video, icons and sound helps build emotional connection, clarify words, explain abstract ideas and draw conclusions.



Chapter 1.  Language discordance and technological facilitation 35

5. Conclusions This chapter reported on the design and implementation of a multilingual, mobile app to facilitate the communication between service providers of Kind & Gezin (Flanders, Belgium) and foreign mothers with limited Dutch language proficiency. Our mixed method study gave insights into the way technological facilitation operates in a real organization, exploring how technological mediation works in ways that matter to both the clients and the service providers. First and foremost, our findings show that service providers prefer technology-facilitated SEs over technology-free SEs. For all dimensions rated in the satisfaction questionnaire, service providers expressed a marked preference for working with the app. Adding to that, simulated clients rated technology-facilitated SEs highly, with scores ranging between 5.9 and 6.6 on a 7 point Likert scale. Second, our findings demonstrate that technological facilitation sparked interest, helped build emotional connections, clarified words, explained abstract ideas, and helped draw conclusions. Finally, technological facilitation notably enhanced multimodal meaning making. Yet, the findings are not one-sidedly positive. Service providers did not feel more confident when using the app, SEs with app were laced with frequent and long pauses/gaps, and the app did not increase client-initiated questions. Balancing the positive and the negative, the results point at the potential of technological mediation in language discordant health care encounters, but also put up a red flag, signaling a distinct need for additional training to improve service-providers’ trust and confidence. One of the main takeaways of our research project is that digital transformation requires time, thorough reflection, negotiation and engagement from all parties involved, along with the provision of ample training opportunities. Digital innovation is always a struggle and novelties come with a host of fears and insecurities. To facilitate the implementation of digital health tools in an age of super-diversity (Vertovec 2007), institutions need to adopt a bottom-up, empowering culture and a trial-and-error mind-set, embracing failure as part of the process and understanding that capabilities are built up through experience over time. Since it is difficult to generalize experimental results obtained from a small sample, further research will be needed to verify the findings. New avenues that could be explored in future research are whether ‘real’ clients in authentic SEs react equally positive, and whether adequately trained service providers may tilt the positive impact of technological facilitation to a higher level. Nonetheless, we hope that our findings are a starting point to promote observation and discussion in the field of pragmatic research about the consultation from an orientation that embraces its new complexities.

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Larivière, Bart. 2008. “Linking Perceptual and Behavioral Customer Metrics to Multiperiod Customer Profitability: A Comprehensive Service-Profit Chain Application.” Journal of Service Research 11 (1): 3–21.  https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670508319092 Leach-Lemens, Carole. 2009. “Using Mobile Phones in HIV Care and Prevention.” HIV and AIDS Treatment in Practice 137 (7): 2–8. Lee, Mi Aie, and Young-Hee Yom. 2007. “A Comparative Study of Patients’ and Nurses’ Perceptions of The Quality of Nursing Services, Satisfaction and Intent to Revisit the Hospital: A Questionnaire Survey.” Nursing Studies 44 (4): 545–555. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2006.03.006 Margalit, Ruth Stashefsky, Debra Roter, Mary Ann Dunevant, Susan Larson, and Shmuel Reis. 2006. “Electronic Medical Record Use and Physician-Patient Communication: An Observational Study of Israeli Primary Care Encounters.” Patient Education and Counseling 61: 134–141.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2005.03.004 Maxham, James G., and Richard G. Netemeyer. 2002. “A Longitudinal Study of Complaining Customers’ Evaluations of Multiple Service Failures and Recovery Efforts.” Journal of Marketing 66 (4): 57–71  https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.66.4.57.18512 Matsumoto, David, Mark G. Frank, and Hyi Sung Hwang. 2013. Nonverbal Communication. Science and Application. USA: Sage Publications. Mosa, Abu Saleh Mohammad, Illhoi Yoo, and Lincoln Sheets. 2012. “A Systematic Review of Health­care Applications for Smartphones.” Medical Informatics and Decision Making 12 (67). https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6947-12-67 Narayanasamy, Aru and White, Ethelrene. (2005). “A Review of Transcultural Nursing.” Nurse Education Today 25: 102–11.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2004.09.011. Nilsen, Wendy Jean, Santosh Kumar, Albert Shar, Carry Varoquiers, Tisha Wiley, William T. Riley, Misha Pavel, and Audie A. Atienza. 2012. “Advancing the Science of mHealth.” Journal of Health Communication 17 (1): 5–10.  https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2012.677394 Norris, Sigrid. 2004. Analyzing Multimodal Interaction. A methodological framework. New York/ London: Routledge. Nurmatov Ulugbek, Siew Lee, Bright Nwaru, Mome Mukherjee, Liz Grant, and Claudia Pagliari. 2014. The effectiveness of mHealth interventions for maternal, newborn and child health in low- and middle-income countries: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Global Health. 4:010407.  https://doi.org/10.7189/jogh.04.010407 Oh, Hans, Carlos Rizo, Murray Enkin, and Alejandro Jadad. 2005. “What Is eHealth (3): A Systematic Review of Published Definitions.” Journal Med Internet Res 7 (1): 32–40. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.7.1.e1 Pagliari, Claudia, David Sloan, Peter Gregor, Frank Sullivan, Don Detmer, James Kahan, Wija Oortwijn, and Steve Macgillivray. 2005. “What Is Ehealth: A Scoping Exercise to Map the Field.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 7 (1): e9. Available on http://www.jmir. org/2005/1/e9/ Pöchhacker, Franz. 2000. “Language Barriers in Vienna Hospitals.” Ethnicity and Health 5 (2): 113–119.  https://doi.org/10.1080/713667449 Quinn, Charlene C., Michelle D. Shardell, Michael L. Terrin, Erik Barr, Soshana H. Ballew, and Ann Gruber-Baldini. 2011. “Cluster-Randomized Trial of a Mobile Phone Personalized Behavioral Intervention for Blood Glucose Control.” Diabetes care 34 (9): 1934–1942. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc11-0366



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Rillof, Pascal, Ellen Van Praet, and July De Wilde. 2014. “The Communication Matrix. Beating Babel: Coping with Multilingual Service Encounters.” In (Re)Visiting Ethics and Ideology in Situations of Conflict, ed. by Carmen Valero-Garcés, Bianca Vitalaru and Esperanza Mojica López, 263–269. Alcalá: Universidad de Alcalá. Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. 1974. “A Simplest Systematics for Turn Taking in Conversation.” Language 50: 696–735.  https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1974.0010 Sarangi, Srikant. 2002. “Discourse Practitioners as a Community of Interprofessional Practice: Some Insights from Health Communication Research.” In Research and practice in professional discourse, ed. by Christopher N. Candlin, 95–135. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press. Schmid, Marianne, Judith A. Hall, Christina Köckner, and Elisa Choi. 2008. “Physician Gender Affects How Physician Nonverbal Behavior Is Related to Patient Satisfaction.” Medical Care 46 (12): 1212–1218.  https://doi.org/10.1097/MLR.0b013e31817e1877 Silverman, David, Anssi Peräkylä, and Robert Bor. 1992. “Discussing Safer Sex in HIV Counselling: Assessing Three Communication Formats.” Aids Care 4: 69–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540129208251621 Silverman, Jonathan, Suzanne Kurtz, and Juliet Draper. 2013. Skills for Communicating with Patients. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Swinglehurst, Deborah, and Celia Roberts. 2014. “The Role of The Electronic Patient Record in The Clinical Consultation.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Health Com­ munication, ed. by Heidi E. Hamilton and Wen-ying Sylvia Chou, 490–505. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. Van Vaerenbergh, Yves, and Troy D. Thomas. 2013. “Response Styles in Survey Research: A Literature Review of Antecedents, Consequences, and Remedies.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 25 (2): 195–217.  https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/eds021 Ventola, C Lee. 2014. “Mobile Devices and Apps for Health Care Professionals: Uses and Benefits?” Pharmacy and Therapeutics 39 (5): 356–364. Vertovec, Steven. 2007. “Super-diversity and its implications.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6): 1024–1054.  https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870701599465 Vertovec, Steven. 2010. “Introduction: Depicting diversity.” Diversities 12 (1): 1–3. Retrieved January18, 2017, from http://newdiversities.mmg.mpg.de/?page_id=2106 Wadensjø, Cecilia. 1998. Interpreting as Interaction. London: Longman. Weiner, Jonathan P. 2012. “Doctor-Patient Communication in the E-Health Era.” Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 1 (33).  https://doi.org/10.1186/2045-4015-1-33 Young, Marti and Klingle, Renee S. (1996). “Silent Partners in Medical Care: A Cross-cultural Study of Patient Participation.” Health Communication 8: 29–53. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327027hc0801_2 Zeithaml, Valarie A., A. Parasuraman, and Leonard L. Berry. 1990. Delivering Quality Service – Balancing Customer Perceptions and Expectations. New York, NY: The Free Press.

40 July De Wilde, Ellen Van Praet and Yves Van Vaerenbergh

Appendix 1.  Acronyms and abbreviations CAQDAS eHealth EPR K&G mHealth GPS PDA SE SMS STD TFC TMC WHO

Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software. Electronic health Electronic patient record Kind en Gezin (Child and Family) Mobile health Global positioning system Personal digital assistant Service encounter Short message service Sexually transmitted disease Technology facilitated communication Technology mediated communication World Health Organization

Appendix 2.  Role-play (English translation, role-play was provided in Spanish, the mother tongue of the participants. The two service providers had received a Dutch translation of the role-play two days prior to the experiment) You are a mother/father with three children: two daughters of 5 and 7 years old, and one son of 2 years old. You are unemployed and are taking care of them at home. A few weeks ago you started potty-training your son: he started showing interest for the potty and he gave a sign that he wants to use the toilet. At the beginning all went well, but now he does no longer want to sit on the potty to poop. He is holding up his poop until he is given a diaper. When you try to convince him to sit on the potty he gets angry, starts crying and runs away. Back in time, you had no difficulties at all with potty-training your daughters. You don’t know how to solve this situation and you end up giving your son a diaper. You want to discuss this problem with a Kind & Gezin service provider. Feel free to add information not included in this script (e.g. about your family, your feelings, your previous experiences, etc.).

Appendix 3.  Satisfaction questionnaire for simulated clients (English translation. Satisfaction questionnaire was provided to the simulated clients in Spanish, their mother tongue) Dear participant, This study focuses on ways to facilitate the communication between Kind & Gezin (K&G) service providers and clients who have hardly or no knowledge of Dutch.

Chapter 1.  Language discordance and technological facilitation 41



In order to improve the service quality, we want to know your opinion on the service provided. Please take a few minutes to fill out the questionnaire. Questionnaire On a scale of 1 to 7, indicate your level of agreement with the following statements – 1 indicates you disagree strongly – 7 indicates you agree totally [Remark: the original questionnaire did not have any numbers, numbers were added here so that the authors of the chapter could refer to the questionnaire items] Overall the service was: 1 of poor quality 2 limited scope 3 low level

1 1 1

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of excellent quality wide-ranging high level

strongly agree 4 Overall I’m happy about the interaction with the K&G service provider. 5 I’d recommend the organization K&G to others.

strongly disagree

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strongly agree 6 Service quality was good 7 The K&G service provider tried to solve the problem. 8 The K&G service provider interacted with skill, precision and detail. 9 For the K&G service provider it was important that I understood the message.

strongly disagree

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strongly agree 10 The K&G service provider responded to my needs within the time frame. 11 Service attention was quick. 12 Communication with the K&G service provider was effective. 13 The K&G service provider helped me solve the problem posed. 14 The K&G service provider was willing to help.

strongly disagree

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July De Wilde, Ellen Van Praet and Yves Van Vaerenbergh

strongly agree 15 The behaviour of the K&G service provider gave me confidence. 16 The K&G service provider respected my privacy. 17 The K&G service provider offered a courteous and friendly service. 18 The K&G service provider showed professional competence: she could answer all my questions.

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strongly agree 19 The K&G service provider gave me personal attention. 20 The K&G service provider took sufficient time to answer my doubts or personal questions. 21 The K&G service provider understood and was interested in my personal needs. 22 The K&G service provider treated me with kindness, respect and patience.

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strongly agree 23 The K&G organization has modern looking instruments and equipment. 24 The instruments used are visually appealing. 25 The instruments used helped me to communicate better with the K&G service provider. 26 The K&G service provider used the instruments needed to ensure effective and appropriate care.

strongly disagree

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Chapter 1.  Language discordance and technological facilitation 43

Appendix 4.  Satisfaction questionnaire for service providers (English translation. Satisfaction questionnaire was provided to the service providers in Dutch, their mother tongue. The lay-out of this questionnaire was identical to the one for simulated clients, presented in appendix n. 3. For reasons of space, we will list the questions consecutively without the corresponding Likert scale). 1. 2. 3. 4.

Overall the service was (poor / excellent quality) Overall the service was (limited / wide-ranging) Overall the service was (low level / high level) Overall I’m happy about the interaction with the client. (Note by the authors: Item on positive word of mouth intentions included only in the survey for simulated clients) 5. Service quality was good. 6. I was able to solve the client’s problem. 7. I interacted with the client with skill, precision and detail. 8. The client understood the message. 9. I responded to the client’s needs within the time frame. 10. Service attention was quick. 11. Communication with the client was effective. 12. I was able to solve the problem posed by the client. 13. I was able to conduct the interaction with self confidence. 14. During the service encounter I didn’t feel frustrated when the client couldn’t understand the message. 15. I stayed calm during the service encounter. 16. I was able to answer the client’s questions efficiently and precisely. 17. I was able to provide a personalized answer to the client’s questions (adapted to his/her specific situation). 18. I had sufficient time to fully answer all of the client’s questions. 19. I was able to pay attention to the personal needs of the client. 20. I dealt with the client in a friendly, patient and respectful manner. 21. I used modern looking instruments and equipment. 22. The instruments used are visually appealing 23. The instruments used helped me to communicate better with the client. 24. I used the instruments needed to ensure effective and appropriate care.

Chapter 2

Context and pragmatic meaning in telephone interpreting Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez and Gabriel Cabrera Méndez Remote and telephone interpreting involve a number of skills that must be acquired. For instance, telephone interpreters cannot take into account their first impression of the situation before starting work as, because of reasons of practicality, briefing is rarely possible. Thus, it is typically quite challenging to select the appropriate context and, in turn, grasp the pragmatic meaning of the discourse being interpreted. Professional telephone interpreters have developed a set of strategies to cope with this difficulty – mostly based on their own skills and experience. This chapter presents the analysis of a case study consisting of a mediated telephone conversation between doctors/patient and interpreter in Spanish and Italian within the context of Hospital Emergency Department. Our main aim is to illustrate, with examples, the difficulties interpreters encounter and the strategic solutions they adopt in order to cope. Keywords: telephone interpreting, pragmatic meaning, context, discourse, community interpreting

1.

Introduction

The study presented in this chapter is the result of the cooperation between the corporate world and academia. One of the leading, most well-known telephone interpreting companies in Spain (Dualia Teletraducciones SL) gave researchers at the University of Alcalá access to analyze some of its data. The researchers’ goal was to identify difficult and challenging episodes that could act as a basis for training and general recommendations for company interpreters. This joint project is innovative both in terms of its content and its form, serving two main purposes. On the one hand, it has allowed researchers to gain insights into the discourse of interpreter-mediated telephone conversations, thus contributing to the advancement of the interpreting studies field. On the other, it has put forth practical recommendations for telephone interpreters’ initial and ongoing training at universities.

46 Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez and Gabriel Cabrera Méndez

While this is a on-going, long-term project, this chapter will tackle a very specific problem for telephone interpreters, namely how to select the appropriate context and the difficulties this situation poses for them when trying to understand pragmatic meaning; we illustrate this scenario by means of a case study methodology. Interpreters working over the phone handle a great variety of situations, such as conversations between doctors and patients, telephone calls to insurance companies, conversations with bank clerks, and even telephone shopping. For the purposes of this paper, only community interpreting (interpreting between public service providers and users) will be considered. There are two main types of remote interpreting: (i) consecutive, in which the interpreter listens to the speech and renders it, at the end, in a different language, generally with the aid of notes (over the phone, via videoconferencing); and (ii) simultaneous, in which the interpreter works in a soundproofed booth with at least one colleague. In the latter, the speaker in the meeting room speaks into a microphone, the interpreter receives the sound through a headset, and the translated message is rendered into a microphone almost simultaneously. Meanwhile, the audience is in the meeting room listening to the interpreter through a headset (via videoconferencing or any type of software that supports videoconferencing, chatting, and file sharing in real time). In this chapter, only interpreting over the phone with the interpreter intervening remotely will be analyzed. The company that provided the data for this study has been operating in Spain for 12 years. When compared to on-site interpreting, remote and telephone interpreting involve a number of skills that must be acquired. Initial training offered by universities is usually inexistent and, when it does take place, its quality and duration are of varying degrees of effectiveness. It is not rare for telephone interpreting companies to be called upon to offer this kind of training to postgraduate programs or in the form of professional development courses; however, training is also provided by telephone interpreting companies themselves to their workers (both members of staff and freelancers). Most of the telephone interpreting companies operating in Spain, such as Dualia and Interpret Solutions, offer initial training for new interpreters who wish to work with the company and said training usually includes the use of specific protocols, basic information about the field in which work will be conducted (for instance, community – or public service – interpreting), and ethical issues. Ongoing training is also usually provided as part of quality assurance programs, and it is very much linked to changing needs and emerging challenges. One of the main difficulties telephone interpreters encounter is the selection of the appropriate context in which to process ongoing talk, as they are not able to fall back on their first impression of the situation before starting work (because of reasons of practicality, briefing is rarely possible). Thus, coming up with a context and, in turn, grasping the pragmatic meaning of the discourse being interpreted is



Chapter 2.  Context in telephone interpreting 47

usually challenging. If this is not done efficiently, participants’ expectations will be put in jeopardy and the risk of communication failure will increase. Professional telephone interpreters, drawing on their own skills and experience, have developed a set of strategies to cope with this difficulty. We feel it is necessary to identify these strategies as well as the difficult situations in which they are deployed. In this way, we can build useful, up-to-date training materials both for novel and experienced telephone interpreters. For our on-going research, naturally occurring interpreter-mediated telephone conversations between users and public service were analyzed by applying a discourse analytic approach to the data. Our aim was to isolate and describe challenging episodes, as well as the various strategies deployed by interpreters when trying to contextualize the interaction – or when the context suddenly needs to be changed as a result of a misunderstanding or contradictory information provided by public service users and professionals who do not have the same expectations. The ultimate goal of our research is material development for both novel and experienced telephone interpreters. This chapter will begin by briefly explaining the theoretical underpinnings and will, thus, tackle concepts related to pragmatic meaning interpretation, context, and participants’ expectations. Subsequently, the community interpreting field will be presented by reviewing some of its most significant research contributions and describing the work of community interpreters as well as the main challenges they encounter. Some special considerations about telephone and remote interpreting will likewise be discussed. Moving on to the methodology section, the theoretical framework, which is based on discourse analysis and focus groups, and the data collection process will be briefly described. A case study will be analyzed qualitatively in order to present some of the results of our ongoing research. Since we report on ongoing research, quantitative data is not yet available. Through the examples extracted from the case study, we will be able to gain insights into the main challenges related to context and pragmatic meaning in interpretation that telephone interpreters encounter while, at the same time, learning how professional interpreters solve these difficulties. After reflecting on the data, some suggestions will be provided for the training of telephone interpreters. 2. Context and the pragmatic construction of meaning Semantics considers how words and sentences convey meaning without a context (Griffiths 2006). For its part, in Yule’s words, “[p]ragmatics is the study of contextual meaning” (Yule 1996: 3). Pragmatic meaning is – thus – inferred meaning; As Verschueren (2008: 14) states, “it is hard, if not impossible, to talk about

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meaning without taking into account context.” Developing this idea even further, Yule (1996) distinguishes between co-text and context. The co-text is the linguistic material that accompanies an uttered expression, and which has the effect of limiting the range of possible interpretations. Regarding context, Peleg et al. (2004: 172) state that “[h]ighlighting the role context plays in shaping our linguistic behavior is the major contribution of pragmatics to language research.” The growing interest in contextual inference within the field of pragmatics has been documented by authors such as Carston (2002) and Sperber and Wilson (1986), and it can be affirmed that “contextual information is a crucial factor determining how we make sense of utterances” (Peleg et al. 2004: 172). Considering language use as the object of study of linguistic pragmatics, we could describe it as a process of interactive meaning generation based on a set of production and interpretation choices. The options from which speakers choose are multiple and varied, but also co-constructed within a negotiation process in which communicative needs are taken into account. In Verschueren’s words, context “stands for any combination of ingredients of a communicative event, along any set of parameters of variability, with which linguistic choices are inter-adaptable” (2008: 15). Additionally, if context is a matter of choice, we could argue that, although an overarching outside context or reality may exist (something that could be referred to as ‘objective context’), context is actually a construct in the mind of the conversational participants – something which is needed for the whole process of meaning generation to be correctly undertaken. Although contextual information is always taken into account, there is an ongoing controversy regarding which sources of information are used first, i.e. either those based on the semantic meaning of utterances or those extracted from context. According to Grice (1975), Gerhardt (1990), and Peleg et al. (2004), the first and primary source of information – and, consequentially, resource for interpretation – is the literal meaning of an utterance in its semantic-syntactic structure. When the sense that we extract from the literal meaning is unexpected or seems incoherent to us, we take context into account. Indirect speech constitutes a good example, given that a certain degree of inferential effort is needed in order to understand the meaning of these utterances, which are based on contextual information. Likewise, authors such as Levinson (1979), Wittgenstein (1953), and Buchler (1939) argue that utterances are always interpreted in terms of their place within larger contexts. A great number of conversational and discourse analysts (Gumperz 1982; Sarangi and Roberts 1999; Schegloff 1984; Schegloff and Sacks 1973, among others) agree with them in considering context to be the main factor that provides utterances with meaning. Actually, meaning “can be fundamentally affected by a change in context” (Verschueren 2008: 20), and, on the contrary, “context may be affected by a choice of linguistic forms” (Verschueren 2008: 21). Thus, as



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Verschueren (2008) suggests, the relationship between context and language (or structure) is bidirectional. Furthermore, there is a pragmatic difference between what is implied by the speaker and what is understood by the listener, as there are different senses and possibilities for the interpretation of utterances. In fact, Sperber and Wilson (1986: 15) stated that “a context is a psychological construct,” which means that the context is not static in nature but, instead, it is “a subset of the hearer’s assumptions about the world.” Also, speakers can choose many different types of utterances to express themselves, and the decision they make depends on their goals, the general principles of communication and, of course, the context in which the utterance is produced. In addition, similar factors influence the interpretation of the utterance by the addressee. The effects of context, the conventions of language use, and the goals of the speaker in relationship with the meaning of the language in use were all taken into consideration by authors such as Crystal (1985), Leech (1983), Lyons (1981), and Levinson (1983), among others. Verschueren (2008) departs from the concept of variability in the speaker’s discourse to explain how both production and comprehension choices are negotiated in a dynamic process that requires adaptability. For this author, “[t]he communicative dynamics consists of movement through consecutive and/or overlapping contexts [(elements related to speech events)] and alternating focus on different levels of structure [(related to any level of the linguistic structure)]” (2008: 17). Additionally, and focusing on intercultural communication, Thomas (1995) discusses several aspects of interaction which influence interpretation. One of them is the discourse domain in which each participant in the interaction is situated – something that is related to homonymy and synonymy. Thomas (1995: 3) explains that a word such as ‘cat,’ which has several meanings, might trigger a different concept in the mind of someone who has missed part of a conversation and, thus, some of the context. The hearer might attribute the most common and widely used meaning to that word, or a less common meaning might come to mind, such as ‘cat o’nine tails’, especially if there have been previous recent conversations about a particular topic or if some other words in the speaker’s utterance point to a specific domain. Thomas notes that “[i]n general, competent native speakers do not have to seek laboriously for the contextual meaning of a word, phrase or sentence” (1995: 4) most of the time. However, non-native speakers find it difficult to recall the less common and widespread meanings attached to specialized contexts. In Thomas’ words, “[a]ssigning the correct or intended sense to polysemous or homonymous lexical items can be especially problematic for non-native speakers” (1995: 7). Assigning a particular contextual meaning is particularly challenging when quick changes of topic occur, as the hearer might still be immersed in one specific discourse domain, but the speaker may have already switched to a new one.

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Another feature influencing interpretation is the use of deictics. Usually, a speaker is not conscious that a particular utterance may be ambiguous because of the way they use deictic expressions. This is called ‘structural ambiguity’ (Thomas 1995), and it is more problematic in multilingual interactions when languages with different structures are used. For example, the possessive adjectives in English and Spanish refer to different persons. The third person possessive adjective in English has gender and plural marks (‘his,’ ‘her,’ ‘their’), whereas in Spanish only one form is used (‘su’). When interpreting from English into Spanish, interpreters must take this into account to avoid a possible erroneous assignment of reference. Different expectations related to activity type are also a source of misunderstanding (Thomas 1995: 137), and in multicultural interactions it is not rare for participants to have differing expectations. The literature on intercultural communication in public services (Lázaro Gutiérrez 2012; Raga Jimeno 2012) is full of examples that show how communication fails between public service providers and users because of the different expectations held by nonnative speakers who are used to different systems of healthcare, justice, etc. in their native countries. Speech conventions, according to Yule (1996: 22), “may differ substantially from one social group to another and may be marked differently from one language to another.” When we take into consideration interpreter-mediated conversations in which speakers from different social groups and linguistic and cultural backgrounds meet, we can assume that there might be some divergence between the pragmatic meaning speakers want to convey and the meaning listeners infer from their utterances. 3. Community interpreting Community interpreting is performed at institutions which offer public services for the general population, as is the case of courts, hospitals, police offices, healthcare centres, schools, governmental offices, etc. Community interpreters bridge communication gaps between service providers (lawyers, doctors, teachers, police officers, social workers, etc.) and users. One of the first definitions of public service interpreting was given by Wadensjö (1998: 49): Interpreting carried out in face-to-face encounters between officials and laypeople; meeting for a particular purpose at a public institution is (in English-speaking countries) often termed community interpreting.

Community interpreting is, among others, the response to the linguistic diversity that emerges as the result of immigration. Immigrants, at least at an initial stage, usually have a limited command of the language of the host country, but they have



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the right – and sometimes the duty – to access various public services and communicate just as any other citizen would. It could be argued that governmental bodies should provide the resources needed to tackle this language diversity; however, this is not always the case and, even when it is, this provision is sometimes intermittent and organized in different ways (Valero Garcés 2014). In the wealth of settings in which public interpreting is carried out, interpreters use bi- directional interpreting on site, over the phone, and through videoconferencing technologies. This area of interpreting has specific characteristics that differentiate it from others. Here, we list a compilation of features that have been gathered from different sources: – Interpreters must have deep knowledge of the languages they interpret and of the cultures to which their clients belong (Valero Garcés 2006). – The conversation among participants is usually asymmetrical (Lázaro Gutiérrez 2012). The characteristic asymmetry of institutional encounters increases when the user of public services does not speak the institutional language (the language used by the service provider – not only at a semantic level, but also at a pragmatic one). – The situations in which these interpreted conversations take place are sometimes tense (Phelan 2001; Valero Garcés 2006). – The profession is not sufficiently acknowledged, which usually leads to nonprofessional interpreters undertaking this task, or results in poor working conditions for professional interpreters. Also, resources are scarce. Interpreters often do not receive prior information about the topic of the conversations to be interpreted or the peculiarities of the interactants or are called upon very shortly before the assignment starts (Lázaro Gutiérrez 2014)). – The performance by the interpreter involves a much broader task than that of simply interpreting; this includes, amongst others, the burden and responsibility of coordinating conversational turns (Wadensjö 1998). 3.1

Interpreting over the phone and remote interpreting

As was mentioned in the previous section, community interpreting takes place not only on site, but also over the phone and through videoconferencing. As Jaime (2015) points out, community interpreting has adapted to technological advances over the last few decades. This is due, according to Corsellis (2010), to a potential significant increase in specialized knowledge and in the way both interpreting services and public services are provided. Some authors (Pérez 2002; Phelan 2001) have stated that telephone interpreting is just a kind of liaison interpreting which is done over the phone. However, this

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mode of interpreting presents a sizable number of differences and peculiarities when compared to other types. One of them is the fact that both main speakers and interpreters have to follow a particular ritual to establish communication. A person who wants to use a telephone interpreting service needs to have previously been taught the steps he or she must follow for doing so – from dialing a particular number to talking to the selected interpreter after choosing from the various options offered by the recording. Often, this is done in the presence of another person who – most likely – does not understand why his or her interlocutor is suddenly making a phone call, as Prieto (2008: 377) indicates: […] cuando más problema hay es cuando le tienes que poner el teléfono al paciente: cómo le explico yo al paciente, si no entiendo su idioma, que tiene que usar el teléfono, que un hombre le va a traducir o una mujer le va a traducir algo. […the biggest problem is when you have to put the patient on the phone: how do I explain to the patient, if I do not understand his language, that he has to use the telephone; that a man or a woman is going to translate something for him.]

Telephone interpreters need specific abilities to perform their task efficiently without being physically present. They lack the information they would gather from the physical setting, including the elements and people present in the interaction, their roles, their body language, their physical movements, etc. Although telephone interpreting is not exclusive to public services, it has gained headway in this sector over the last decades thanks to technological improvements (e.g., the fast spread of mobile phones and videoconferencing), the decrease in the price of telephone calls, and its immediacy. Indeed, telephone interpreting companies typically have a large team of interpreters specializing in a great variety of languages who have committed to making themselves available for work during most of the day. The fact that interpreters can receive calls from any part of the world makes it no longer necessary to spend money on transportation. Furthermore, interpreters are usually not paid for waiting for calls, although some companies do add an extra payment on a monthly basis for wait times at night and during the weekend. In most cases, interpreters receive payment according to the number of minutes they are on the phone (some companies pay a minimum number of minutes to the interpreters for every call). As they can be waiting for the call anywhere they choose, they can combine their work as telephone interpreters with other occupations, such as freelance translation. The low cost of this type of interpretation has made it very popular within the public service sector. In Spain, interpreting over the phone started in 2004, when Dualia introduced this system to different public institutions. Other initiatives and companies, such as Interpret Solutions, joined in some time later and, in recent years, innovative changes have been introduced thanks to the spread of smart phones. The mobile



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application Voze, developed by Migralingua (Jaime 2015), is worth mentioning. According to Murgu and Jimenez (2011): Given the current linguistic map of our country, it is essential to provide interpreting services to public services. They need to be quick, widely known and both low cost and of a good quality. Telephone interpreting is a solution that meets all these requirements and is increasingly present in our country (214).

Although research in this field is still scarce, it is currently growing. Most related research deals with quality issues (Jaime 2015; Martínez-Gómez 2008) and authors have different positions on that matter. Despite the advantages of telephone interpreting (more accessibility, fewer costs), it presents some disadvantages, such as the lack of personal contact with the interpreter and the fact that the service providers have to make their clients understand how this communication works – something which is quite complex if we take into account that they do not share a common language. Among the studies carried out on telephone interpreting, we can cite Oviatt and Cohen (1992), who compared telephone conversations with and without an interpreter, and Wadensjö (1998), who contrasted an on-site interpreter-mediated conversation with one interpreted over the telephone. Some years later, Rosenberg (2002) carried out a broader study using 1,876 interpreter-mediated telephone conversations, reaching the following conclusions: El teléfono no es un medio inadecuado para la interpretación consecutiva sino que son los factores extralingüísticos y situacionales que surgen como resultado de tener que interpretar para clientes heterogéneos en lugares distantes y en ámbitos poco conocidos lo que conlleva una mayor complejidad al discurso interpretado.  (Rosenberg, 2002: 249) [The telephone is not an inadequate means for consecutive interpreting; instead, the extralinguistic and situational factors that emerge as a result of having to interpret for heterogeneous clients in distant places and little-known domains are what create a higher degree of complexity for the interpreted discourse.]

However, telephone interpreting is only one of the many types of remote interpretation, as Braun and Taylor (2011) point out. The authors distinguish between videoconference interpreting and remote interpreting. In the first type, the two main speakers are at different locations and communicate via a video link (videoconference) or audio link (usually the telephone), and the interpreter is present with one of the parties. On the contrary, in remote interpreting, the parties are physically together and linked to the interpreter, who is in a remote location. Azarmina and Wallace (2005) carried out a review of the research on remote interpretation in healthcare settings; the authors concluded that “remote interpretation

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is at least as acceptable as physically present interpretation to patients, doctors, and (to a lesser extent) interpreters themselves” (2005: 44). For his part, Verrept (2011), in his study about remote interpreting in Belgian hospitals, states that this type of interpretation, due to its nature, poses greater difficulties when compared with face-toface interpreting – said difficulties being the need to check sound and image quality, the moderate use of gestures, note taking, and the coordination of turn taking. In this chapter, we will only focus on telephone interpreting; that is, remote interpreting through an audio link, according to Braun and Taylor’s (2011) terminology. 3.2

Training

Most research in the field of telephone interpreting focuses on assessing the quality of the service through the collection of user feedback (Jaime 2015). In the context of Spain, the results of the research conducted by Luque Martín (2008), Martínez-Gómez (2008), Murgu and Jiménez (2011) and Prieto (2008) point to a lack of knowledge about this new interpretation mode and, consequently, a lack of educational resources for training both community interpreters and public service providers in the use of the telephone interpreting systems. In the last decade, researchers have pointed to the need to train telephone and remote interpreters properly. For instance, Kelly (2008) mentions the need for specific protocols and training for telephone interpreting and puts forth a guide for telephone interpreters in general (2007) and a guide for telephone interpreters working in the healthcare setting (2008). For his part, Verrept (2011), after a study of remote interpreters in four Belgian hospitals, notes that interpreters often need further training to be able to use the equipment adequately. Ozolins (2011), along the same lines, suggests that further research is needed so that both technological issues and interpreter performance can be improved, while Hlavac (2013) concludes that telephone and video link interpreting should be included in both training and testing programs. One author who has taken extra steps in advocating for training for telephone interpreters is Fernández Pérez (2015). In an earlier paper (2012), she described the defining characteristics of telephone interpreting and established a classification scheme for the specific skills that telephone interpreters need to acquire. Among those she referred to interpreters having to develop tactics to deal with lack of visual information, users with very different origins and contexts, and diverse types of technology (Fernández Pérez 2015). Furthermore, regarding conversational management, interpreters need to know how to organize turn taking, and show command of prosodic elements and direct and indirect speech.

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4. Methodology As previously stated, this chapter presents a small sample of the results from a joint project that merges academia and practitioners. Cooperation between the University of Alcalá and the company Dualia Teletraducciones dates back to 2010, when a series of training sessions were included in the master’s degree in Intercultural Communication and Public Service Interpreting and Translation. Students from the master’s degree completed their 125-hour internships with Dualia Teletraducciones. Also, senior interpreters from Dualia Teletraducciones visited the university periodically to give lectures and workshops. Dualia Teletraducciones also played an active role in research dissemination, conferences, and seminars organized by the University of Alcalá, as well as in small-scale research projects. 4.1

Object of study and data compilation

The project that has made the present research possible started early in 2016 with the cooperation of AFIPTISP, the Spanish Association of Trainers, Researchers, and Practitioners of Public Service (Community) Interpreting and Translation. This is an on-going process and aims to provide useful and up-to-date training for telephone interpreters both at the beginner and experienced levels. As was previously stated, this chapter focuses on the analysis of a case study consisting of a mediated telephone conversation, extracted from a larger reference corpus. Our main aim here is to illustrate the difficulties interpreters encounter and the strategic solutions they deploy in order to cope with communication hurdles. This study, therefore, looks at the real recorded interpreter-mediated telephone conversations that the company has selected for study and analysis. The compilation of data consists of three phases: – For security reasons, the company, with client consent, records all interpretermediated conversations. Then, an exhaustive quality assurance process is undertaken during which some of these recordings are carefully examined in search of errors, and quality improvement is subsequently undertaken. – Some recordings are selected by the company and, after eliminating personal and sensitive data, they are taken to the university in the form of transcriptions and accompanying audio. Due to privacy concerns, the transcriptions are not systematic and do not contain the entire content of the conversations. In addition to privacy concerns, this is also done to avoid including information (such as length of pauses or deviations in pronunciation) that is not particularly relevant. The recordings are listened to at the university by at least one of

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the researchers of the FITISPos-UAH Research Group (FITISPos stands for ‘Training and Research in Public Service Interpreting and Translation’). This listening is always done in the presence of a member of the company, which has possession of the audio files at all times. This process safeguards clients’ privacy and anonymity while upholding the company’s confidentiality commitments to its clients. – The company periodically organizes meetings with its workers to which clients are invited. These take on the form of informal meetings which are about two or three hours long. They are conducted by the quality manager who poses some questions to spark discussion on the main difficulties encountered in the practice of telephone interpreting. The format follows that of a focus group discussion with some of the recurrent questions addressing challenging work situations and requests from clients. Interpreters are encouraged to ask clients about the practical aspects of the conversations they have to mediate. The faculty members are invited to these meetings and also have the chance to ask questions to both interpreters and clients. These meetings are not recorded so as to ensure the privacy of all participants and to guarantee that participants feel free to express their opinion. The data obtained from this quality assurance process is used to shape both the protocols of interpreter practice and training. 4.2

Case study and focus groups

In this chapter, we discuss a case study of an interpreter-mediated telephone conversation. First, a general description of the case will be presented and the most challenging aspects for the interpreter will be analysed, particularly those which deal with the difficulty of finding the right context in which to interpret input and the conveyance of pragmatic meaning, as well as the solutions adopted. Based on this analysis, we will offer suggestions for improvement. Parts of the transcript, provided by the company, will be included to illustrate our findings. These findings will be supplemented by the comments made by interpreters during the regular focus group discussions that the company organizes within its quality assurance program. The case here under scrutiny is a thirty-minute conversation that took place in the Accident and Emergency Department at a hospital. An interpreter of Italian is called upon by a team of doctors and nurses who want to communicate with an Italian speaker. The interpreter is the only participant located remotely. The rest are together in the Accident and Emergency Department. We are unsure of how many interlocutors take part in the interaction (not even the interpreter knows for sure), but we can hear at least four different voices in the recording.



Chapter 2.  Context in telephone interpreting 57

In what follows, we will proceed with the analysis of this conversation, presenting the extracts in chronological order. These were selected to illustrate the difficulties that interpreters encounter when undertaking their task regarding contextualization and interpretation of meaning. 4.2.1 Building a context and managing expectations The interpreter answers the phone call and starts introducing herself in accordance with company protocol. However, she is briskly interrupted by somebody who greets her briefly and tells her that they are trying to communicate with a patient. (1) 1. Interpreter: Dualia, buenos días […] [Hello, good morning…] 2. Unknown 1: Hola, buenos días. Mire, le paso con la doctora. Un segundito, que vamos a hablar con un paciente. [Hello, good morning. Hold on a second, I’ll put the (female) doctor on. Just a moment, we are going to talk to a (male) patient.] 3. Interpreter: Sí [Ok.]

This is all the information the interpreter gets before she has to begin interpreting. As has been mentioned in previous sections, there is a high risk of unsuccessful interpretation when the discourse domain is not well defined. As a result, the interpreter may have difficulties in activating the context in which to process the information. The most useful information that the interpreter obtains probably comes through the words “doctor” and “patient,” as this lets her know that the conversation is taking place in a medical exam room. The interpreter is not able to explain her role, her code of ethics or how the communication is going to work. These explanations contribute to shaping the participants’ expectations and to the successful interpretation of meaning. However, she understands that the call might be related to an emergency and she picks up the fast pace of the person who is on the other end of the line, not asking for further explanations or introductions. Due to the grammar of Spanish, the interpreter knows that she will be talking to a female doctor. Although this might be trivial, it actually is a good clue for the interpreter, as she will be expecting a female voice in Spanish and a male voice in Italian. After the introduction, the interpreter waits to talk to the doctor, but she can still hear the voice of the first person she talked to, probably an operator. This person is no longer talking to the interpreter but to the doctor. The interpreter successfully notices this and does not translate or reply to those utterances. All this is done thanks to the interpreter’s successful interpretation of the discourse conventions and familiarity with this specific activity type. After a moment, the doctor gets on the line and greets the interpreter. The interpreter answers back but the doctor

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cannot hear her. The doctor explains once again that they are at the Accident and Emergency Department of a hospital and announces that she will put the patient, who speaks Italian, on the line. (2) 1. Unknown 1: Ya está, ¿vale? [Here it is, alright?] 2. Doctor: Hola, buenas tardes. [Hello, good afternoon.] 3. Interpreter: Buenas tardes. Diga. [Good afternoon. How can I help you?] 4. Doctor: ¿Hola? [Hello?] 5. Interpreter: Sí. [Yes.] 6. Doctor: Ay, ay, perdone. [Oh, oh, sorry.] 7. Interpreter: ¿Sí? [Yes?] 8. Doctor: que no la… que no la podía oír. Es porque que estamos en las Urgencias del hospital y queríamos hablar con un señor italiano… [I wasn’t… I wasn’t able to hear you. It’s because we’re at the Accident and Emergency Department of the hospital and we wanted to talk to an Italian man…] 9. Interpreter: Sí [Yes] 10. Doctor: para ver si nos podía ayudar. [to see whether you could help us.] 11. Interpreter: Vale, muy bien. [Ok, very well.] 12. Doctor: ¿Vale? Espere, se lo paso, espere un momento… [Ok? Hold on, I’ll put him on, just a second…]

The following thirty seconds are extremely chaotic for the interpreter. She can hear a female voice in Italian, but she understands that this voice does not belong to the patient, as she has been told that the patient is a man. She starts out by greeting in Italian (pronto) but does not get any answer. Several voices are heard in the background, but it is very hard to distinguish what they say. The interpreter keeps greeting in Italian, as she had been told that she is going to speak to the patient. Then, another female voice can be heard. She is giving instructions to someone else about how the interpreting system works and asks him or her to speak on the phone. She suddenly engages in another conversation (apparently, she had been talking to two people at the same time) while the interpreter continues to greet in Italian. (3) 1. Doctor: ¿Hola? [Hello?] 2. Interpreter: Pronto? [Hello?] 3. Doctor: ¿Hola? [Hello?] 4. Interpreter: Sí, pronto… [Yes, hello…] 5. Doctor: Hola, soy un compañero médico. [Hello, this is another (male) doctor.] 6. Interpreter: ¡Ah, hola! Buenas. [Ah, hello, good afternoon.] 7. Doctor: Hola, ¿qué tal? [Hello, how are you?] 8. Interpreter: Cuénteme. [What can I do for you?]



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Finally, it seemed, the interpreter heard the male voice she had been waiting for. She thought that she was talking to the patient and greeted him in Italian. The male voice answered back in Spanish and the interpreter, whose construct of situational meaning did not include a male Spanish participant, kept answering back in Italian. Finally, the male voice introduced himself and explained that he was a doctor. This is when the interpreter realises that she has to speak to him in Spanish. All the doctors in the Accident and Emergency Department must wear a white gown so that they can be identified as members of the healthcare staff. Unfortunately, our interpreter cannot see this, as she has no access to visual information and, instead, she has to rely on the information provided by the previous speaker. Once the second doctor has introduced himself, the interpreter quickly switches languages and continues. The doctor starts explaining the situation to the interpreter, so that she can have some background information before she starts interpreting. However, the sound quality is very poor, and many other voices can also be heard. This is usual in the Accident and Emergency Department (Cox and Lázaro Gutiérrez 2016), where many staff members tend to the same patient concurrently, which may cause chaos and confusion, for a telephone interpreter (when voices are similar, it is hard to identify how many people are present and who is talking to whom at any given time). The interpreter tells the doctor that she cannot hear him properly. She had only been able to understand that the patient was an elderly person who apparently had arrived in Madrid from Rome. The doctor makes some adjustments with the phone and we are finally able to hear the patient’s voice. (4) 1. Doctor: Vale, vale, ya le hemos colocado, a ver qué tal nos oye. [Ok, ok, we’ve adjusted the phone, can you hear us now?] 2. Interpreter: Me decía, compañero. [Yes, what were you saying?] 3. Paciente: Buenos días. [Good morning.] 4. Doctor: Él es el paciente, pregúntale qué es lo que hace en Madrid y cómo es que acaba en el hospital. [That was the patient, ask him what he’s doing in Madrid and how he ended up at the hospital.]

The interpreter encourages the doctor to continue speaking after the adjustments have been made. The doctor reacts quickly, anticipating the interpreter’s difficulty in constructing the appropriate context in which to process the information, and explains that the person who greeted her was the patient. He then asks the interpreter to pose some questions to the patient. However the patient, instead of waiting for the interpreter’s rendition, starts answering the doctor’s questions. The interpreter cannot hear the patient properly and keeps on uttering “pronto” to catch his attention. She finally succeeds, and the patient stops to listen to her rendition. However, the answer he gives is not related to the question asked, so the interpreter

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repeats the question. The patient answers again but, unfortunately, the interpreter cannot hear properly and has to ask him several times to produce the same utterances and speak louder and more clearly. When the interpreter realises that it is not possible to understand what the patient is saying because of the poor sound quality, she asks him to pass the telephone to the doctor. Then, the doctor answers directly and explains that they are using the telephone’s speakerphone option. This is when we understand why the sound quality is so bad. The interpreter explains to the doctor that she cannot understand properly and that it may be due to several reasons: perhaps the patient is not pronouncing clearly, the telephone signal is poor, or it may just be due to the surrounding noise. The doctor starts explaining the patient’s case to her, but his voice sounds distant and the interpreter cannot distinguish whether he is talking to her or to someone else. She lets the doctor know of the difficulties and the doctor makes further adjustments, probably moving the phone closer. Finally, after almost six minutes into a conversation fraught with difficulties, the interpreter is able to get the information she needs in order to interpret properly: (5) 1. Doctor: La historia… yo soy el médico, ¿vale?, la historia es que es un señor de unos 60 años, italiano, de Roma… [The case… this is the doctor speaking, ok? The case is that he’s a man in his sixties, Italian, from Rome…] 2. Interpreter: Sí… [Yes…] 3. que lo han encontrado en las calles de Madrid tres días seguidos, vagando un poco sin rumbo… [who has been found on the streets of Madrid three consecutive days, kind of wandering around…] 4. Ah vale. [Ah ok.] 5. Que parece que lo han encontrado en medio de Madrid haciendo escala, viniendo de Santo Domingo a Roma en avión y que parece que ha perdido su avión de vuelta a Roma desde Madrid. [It seems that he was found in the middle of Madrid, waiting for a flight connection, coming from Santo Domingo to Rome by plane… and it seems that he missed his flight back to Rome from Madrid.] 6. Interpreter: Ya. [Ok.] 7. Doctor: Entonces el SUMMA lo ha traído al hospital tres días seguidos por desorientación en medio de la calle. [So, the medical emergencies service has brought him to the hospital three days in a row because of being disoriented on the streets.]

Now that the interpreter has the information she needs, she is able to select the right context to interpret the stimuli provided and apply what she has learned from the company training. The patient seems to be homeless and in a precarious situation.



Chapter 2.  Context in telephone interpreting 61

Cases such as these can be associated with particular discourse problems; for example, the patient may lie, or produce incoherent and/or unclear utterances with an unfamiliar pronunciation. Additionally, the doctors will most likely try to elicit specific information by means of questions which are either repeated or reformulated several times to ensure that the patient is not lying and that he has no mental disorder. The interpreter has to cooperate with the doctors and alert them when she notices incoherence or any other sign of mental disease. From this point on, the discourse is more fluid, and the doctor is able to ask his questions to the patient through the interpreter. Although the patient provides somewhat incoherent information, the interpreter is able to render a comprehensible version of his answers. (6) Doctor: Hable en italiano, que le entiende. [Please, speak Italian, she understands you.]

The usual flow of information in this kind of conversation is as follows: the doctor says something in Spanish, the interpreter translates into Italian, the patient answers in Italian, and the interpreter translates into Spanish. However, there are times when the doctor and patient can understand each other without the help of the interpreter due to the similarities between both languages. Example (6) illustrates this situation and shows the doctor’s reaction when the patient stars talking directly to him in very poor Spanish. This is understandable as, due to the interpreter not being present, it is sometimes difficult to address a mobile phone instead of the person we have in front of us. The doctor was not able to understand the patient properly, and he noticed that he had to make an extra effort to speak. The expectations of the patient are not met, because he is not comfortable speaking to a phone instead of to a person. However, the doctor exerts his institutional power and directs the patient to speak in Italian “to her”. As for the interpreter, while this exchange occurs, she has to wait until the speakers switch languages again, or she detects a misunderstanding. (7) 1. Doctor: Vale, pregúntale en qué fecha estamos. [Ok, ask him which day it is today.] 2. Interpreter: ¿Perdón? [Excuse me?] 3. Doctor: En qué fecha estamos, pregúntale. [What day is it today? Ask him.]

A common procedure in the Accident and Emergency Department is the protocol followed to discard brain damage. This consists of a set of questions about the patient’s environment (e.g., ‘What day is it today?’ ‘What city are we in?’ etc.) and some simple orders (e.g., ‘raise your left arm’, ‘stand up’, ‘touch your nose with your right hand’, etc.). These questions may be unexpected to both interpreter and

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patient, due to a mismatch of background knowledge amongst speakers (Lázaro Gutiérrez 2012). Here, we can see that the interpreter needs to ask for clarification as she did not expect this line of questioning; in other words, this questioning does not meet her expectations regarding the usual medical consultation process. A best practice would be to include this protocol in the interpreters’ training, as it is quite common in the Accident and Emergency Department. (8) 1. Interpreter: Dice, pero qué Urgencias ni Urgencias. Estamos en un funeral, o sea, algo así… [He says, ‘but what are you talking about with an Accident and Emergency Department? This is a funeral…’ I mean, he’s saying something like that…] 2. Doctor: ¿Acaba de decir que estamos en un funeral? [Has he just said that we are at a funeral?] 3. Interpreter: Sí, en sentido irónico lo dice. [Yes, ironically said.] 4. Doctor: Ah vale. [Ah, alright.]

The patient is not answering the doctor’s questions in a coherent way. The doctor’s goal is to discard brain damage. However, this incoherence can be caused either on purpose (because the patient is lying) or unintentionally (under the influence of drugs, or due to disorientation or brain injury). In this case, it is initially difficult to know what is going on, but it gradually becomes clearer that he is lying. The patient is also getting irritated because the conversation is taking quite long and, at a particular point, he answers one of the doctor’s questions with irony. When the interpreter renders her translation, the doctor does not grasp the patient’s intended irony and understands his speech literally, immediately relating it to a symptom of brain damage. He checks with the interpreter, who promptly explains that the patient was being ironic. It is not uncommon in medical settings for the members of the healthcare staff to ask interpreters for advice, particularly regarding cultural matters. Following medical protocol, the interpreter becomes part of the team of professionals who assist the patient (Valero Garcés, Lázaro Gutiérrez, and Del Pozo Triviño 2015). This, more often than not, is a challenge for interpreters, who must be very honest and conscious of their own limitations and be ready to admit they cannot help if they feel that what is being asked of them is beyond their ability.



Chapter 2.  Context in telephone interpreting 63

5. Discussion In the previous section, we examined some of the most common challenges that a telephone interpreter faces in their daily practice. Most of these are related to the difficulty of selecting the right context (as defined by Verschueren 2008) because of the lack of key information about participants or physical setting – elements related to the speech event which have an impact on the interpreter’s understanding and construction of meaning. These difficulties may often take place during the opening sequence, as that is the moment when most information is missing. In our case study, the interpreter repeatedly tries to collect contextual information by actively interacting with healthcare providers and patient by means of questions and requests for repetitions. Many of the conversations that telephone interpreters have to mediate take place in the Accident and Emergency Department or are related to other kinds of emergencies (telephone calls to emergency services). These conversations follow generalizable patterns and characteristics, such as their asymmetry (Lázaro Gutiérrez 2012) or their urgent nature and could be classified as an ‘activity type’ (Levinson 1979), or a ‘genre’ (Briggs and Bauman 1992). The possible classification of the conversations and their description provides useful contextual information. For instance, the urgent nature of these encounters greatly influences how the interaction is going to develop. Speakers usually want to communicate essential information as quickly as possible. However as we could see in our case study, if the sound quality is not checked first, this may lead to further problems and it could cause information not to be effectively exchanged until several minutes later (in our case study, it took up to 6 minutes for the interpreter to be able to hear properly). This prevents interpreters from gathering essential information about the communicative event. Providing basic information about the setting, such as how many people are present and who is going to speak in what language, can be, thus, very useful to avoid misunderstandings and make the conversation more fluid and free of errors. Background information about the patient, such as the details with which the doctor provided our interpreter in Example (5), is also desirable. Telephone interpreters receive training on the most common characteristics of what will be their most frequent assignments; the information they get about the patient’s background and the setting can help them activate background knowledge and thus improve their performance. According to Wadensjö (1998), the interpreter usually has to play the role of conversation coordinator. A good starting point for this is to allow the interpreter to properly introduce herself or himself to all the participants for whom interpretation

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is to take place. In this way, interpreters are able to explain their role, their code of ethics, and suggest basic guidelines for successful communication. Likewise, it is worth mentioning here that, although emergency situations are particularly challenging, it is often worth waiting a few extra seconds for the interpreter to provide this information to ease out the rest of the interaction. Although interpreters usually have knowledge about the field they are interpreting in (the medical field in this case), service providers must remember that they are not members of the medical staff and they may lack key information about particular protocols and procedures, which constitutes essential contextual information. A best practice would be to inform interpreters of the reasoning behind some questions so that they can better adapt their interpreted discourse to the situation, as in Example (7), where the doctor initiates the protocol to discard brain damage. The same applies when the healthcare professionals ask interpreters for advice. When the interpreter is a member of the team of professionals who assist the patient, it is a good idea to ask him or her about, for example, cultural matters. However, both parties – doctor and interpreter – should be conscious of the limitations of the interpreter’s knowledge and only base their exchanges on the information that is mastered by the interpreter. Example (8) illustrated how difficult it may be to grasp the intention of the primary speakers once their discourse has been interpreted. Recipients tend to understand the interpreted message literally and usually fail to distinguish, for example, irony, which leads to sociopragmatic failure. Interpreters should provide the recipient with this type of information and not wait until the misunderstanding has occurred. 6. Conclusions This chapter presents the results of a case study that has been analysed as part of a larger ongoing research project about naturally occurring interpreter-mediated telephone conversations between users and public service providers. Our aim was to isolate and describe challenging episodes, as well as the various strategies deployed by the interpreter when trying to contextualize the interaction. Through the examples extracted from this case study, it has been possible to gain insights into some of the main challenges related to context and pragmatic meaning in interpretation which are encountered by telephone interpreters, and to see how professional interpreters may handle these difficulties. Based on those findings, we have offered some suggestions for practice and training. These suggestions may be useful for developing training programs for telephone interpreters, which are currently still scarce and unstructured. However,



Chapter 2.  Context in telephone interpreting 65

although it is possible to include them in interpreters’ beginner and ongoing training programs, these suggestions may not be very helpful unless both interpreters and service providers become involved in training.

References Azarmina, Pejman and Wallace, Paul. 2005. “Remote Interpretation in Medical Encounters: A Systematic Review.” Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare 11: 140–145. https://doi.org/10.1258/1357633053688679 Braun, Sabine and Taylor, Judith L. 2011. “Video-Mediated Interpreting: An Overview of Current Practice and Research.” In Videoconference and Remote Interpreting in Criminal Proceedings, ed. by Sabine Braun, and Judith L. Taylor, Judith, 27–57. Guildford: University of Surrey. Briggs, Charles and Bauman, Richard. 1992. “Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2 (2): 131–172.  https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.1992.2.2.131 Buchler, Justus. 1939. Charles Peirce’s Empiricism. London: Kegan Paul. Carston, Robyn. 2002. Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Blackwell.  https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470754603 Corsellis, Anne. 2003. “Formación de los Proveedores de Servicios Públicos para Trabajar con Intrérpretes y Traductores. Habilidades y Competencias Interculturales.” In Traducción e Interpretación en los Servicios Públicos. Contextualización, Actualidad y Futuro, ed. by ­CarmenValero Garcés, 71–90. Granada: Comares. Corsellis, Anne. 2010. Traducción e Interpretación en los Servicios Públicos. Primeros Pasos. Trans­ lated from English by Carmen Valero Garcés and Rosa Cobas Álvarez. Granada: Comares. Cox, Antoon, and Lázaro Gutiérrez, Raquel. 2016. “Interpreting in the Emergency Department. How Context Matters for Practice.” In Mediating Emergencies: Front-line Translation and Interpreting, ed by Federico Marco Federici, 35–58. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55351-5_2 Crystal, David. 1985. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell. Fernández Pérez, María Magdalena. 2012. Identificación de las Destrezas de la Interpretación Telefónica. La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna. Research Study to obtain the Diploma of Advanced Studies. Unpublished. Fernández Pérez, María Magdalena. 2015. “Propuestas de Ejercicios de Simulación para la Didáctica de la Interpretación Telefónica.” In MonTI: Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación. Special Issue 2: 259–279. Gerhardt, Julie. 1990. “The Relation of Language to Context in Children’s Speech the Role of HAFTA Statements in Structuring 3-year-old’s Discourse.” IpRA Papers in Pragmatics 4 (1/2): 1–57.  https://doi.org/10.1075/iprapip.4.1-2.01ger Grice, Herbert Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In. Speech Acts, Syntax and Semantics 3 ed. by Cole, Peter and Morgan, Jerry, 187–210. New York: Academic Press. Griffiths, Patrick. 2006. An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gumperz, John. 1982. Discourse Strategies. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511611834

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Hlavac, Jim. 2013. “Should Interpreters Be Trained and Tested in Telephone and Video-Link Interpreting? Responses from Practitioners and Examiners.” International Journal of Inter­ preter Education 5(1): 34–50. Iliescu Gheorghiu, Catalina. 2001. Introducción a la Interpretación: La Modalidad Consecutiva. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante. Inglis, Margaret. 1984. A Preparatory Course in Bilateral Interpreting. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, Department of Linguistics. Jaime Pérez, Adriana. 2015. “Remote Interpreting in Public Services. Developing a 3G Phone Interpreting Application.” In Investigación Emergente en Traducción e Interpretación, ed by Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez, Francisco Vigier Moreno, and Maria del Mar Sánchez Ramos, 73–82. Granada: Comares. Kelly, Nataly. 2007. Telephone Interpreting: A Comprehensive Guide to the Profession. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Kelly, Nataly. 2008. A Medical Interpreter’s Guide to Telephone Interpreting. Massachusetts: International Medical Interpreters Association. Lázaro Gutiérrez, Raquel. 2009. “Dilemas éticos del traductor / intérprete en los servicios públicos.” In Translation, Interpreting and Social Activisim. Available at: http://www.translationactivism.com/ArticleIndex.html Lázaro Gutiérrez, Raquel. 2012. La Interpretación en el Ámbito Sanitario. Estudio de la Asimetría en Consultas Médicas. Saarbrücken: Editorial Académica Española. Lázaro Gutiérrez, Raquel. 2014. “Use and abuse of an interpreter.” In (RE)Considerando ética e ideología en situaciones de conflicto, ed. by Carmen Valero Garcés, 214–221. Alcalá de Henares: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alcalá. Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. Levinson, Stephen. 1979. ”Activity types and language.” Linguistics 17: 356–99. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1979.17.5-6.365 Levinson, Stephen. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813313 Luque Martín, Mariola. 2008. “La Interpretación Telefónica en España.” Hermeneus 10: 313–320. Lyons, John. 1981. Language and Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511809859 Martínez-Gómez Gómez, Aída. 2008. ‘La Interpretación Telefónica en los Servicios de Atención al Inmigrante de Castilla-La Mancha.’ In Investigación y Práctica en Traducción e Interpretación en los Servicios Públicos: Desafíos y Alianza, ed. by Carmen Valero Garcés, Carmen Pena Díaz, and Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez, 339–354. Alcalá de Henares: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alcalá. Murgu, Dora, and Jiménez, Sandra. 2011. ‘La Formación de un Intérprete Telefónico.’ In Tra­ ducción e Interpretación en los Servicios Públicos en un Mundo INTERcoNEcTado (TISP en INTERNET), ed. by Carmen Valero Garcés, Anca Bodzer, Bianca Vitalaru, Bianca, and Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez, 214–219. Alcalá de Henares: Servicio de publicaciones de la Uni­ ver­sidad de Alcalá. Oviatt, Sharon L., and Cohen, Philip R. 1992. “Spoken Language in Interpreted Telephone Dialogues.” Computer Speech and Language 6: 277–302. https://doi.org/10.1016/0885-2308(92)90021-U Ozolins, Uldis. 2011. “Telephone interpreting: understanding practice and identifying research needs.” Translation and Interpreting, 3(2): 33–47.



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Peleg, Orna, Giora, Rachel, and Fein, Ofer, 2004. “Contextual Strength: the Whens and Hows of Context Effects.” In Experimental Pragmatics, ed by Ira A. Noveck, and Dan Sperber, 172–186. Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan.  https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524125_8 Pérez, Isabelle. 2002. “Interpreting.” In Guide to Good Practice, A Collection of Peer Reviewed Articles. Southampton: Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies. Available at http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/316. Phelan, Mary. 2001. The Interpreter’s Resource. Manchester: Multilingual Matters. Prieto, María Nieves. 2008. ‘La Interpretación Telefónica en los Servicios Sanitarios Públicos. Estudio de Caso: El Servicio de “Conversación a Tres” del Hospital Carlos Haya de Málaga,’ In Investigación y Práctica en Traducción e Interpretación en los Servicios Públicos: Desafíos y Alianza, ed. by Carmen Valero Garcés, Carmen Pena Díaz, and Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez, 369–384. Alcalá de Henares: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alcalá. Raga Jimeno, Francisco. 2012. “Sobre los Límites de la Comunicación y la Mediación Inter­cultu­ ral.” In Pragmática y comunicación intercultural en el mundo hispanohablante, ed. by Maria Elena Placencia, and Carmen García, 3–12. Leiden: Brill. Rosenberg, Brett Allen. 2002. “Un Análisis de la Interpretación Telefónica.” In Traducción como mediación entre lenguas y culturas, Carmen Valero Garcés, 243–249. Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, Servicio de Publicaciones. Sarangi, Srikant, and Roberts, Celia. 1999. Talk, Work and Institutional Order. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.  https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110208375 Schegloff, Emanuel. 1984. “On some Questions and Ambiguities in Conversation.” In Structures of social action: Studies in conversational analysis, ed. by Maxwell Atkinson, and John Heritage, 28–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, Emanuel, and Sachs, Harvey. 1973. “Opening up closings.” Semiotica 7: 289–327. Searle, John. 1975. “Indirect speech acts.” In Syntax and Semantics. vol. 5: Speech Acts ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry Morgan, 59–82 New York: Academic Press. Sperber, Dan, and Wilson, Deirdre. 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Thomas, Jenny. 1995. Meaning in Interaction. London: Longman. Valero Garcés, Carmen. 2006. Formas de Mediación Intercultural e Interpretación en los Servicios Públicos. Conceptos, Datos, Situaciones y Práctica. Granada: Comares. Valero Garcés, Carmen. 2014. Communicating across Cultures. A Coursebook on Interpreting and Translating in Public Services and Institutions. Lanham: University Press of America. Valero Garcés, Carmen, Lázaro Gutiérrez, Raquel, and del Pozo Triviño, Maribel. 2015. “Inter­ pretar en Casos de Violencia de Género en el Ámbito Médico.” In Interpretación en Contex­ tos de Violencia de Género, ed. by Carmen Toledano Buendía, and Maribel del Pozo Triviño, 186–229. Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanch. Verrept, Hans. 2011. “Intercultural Mediation through the Internet in Belgian Hospitals.” 4th International Conference on Public Service Interpreting and Translation, 13th–15th April 2011. Abstract available at http://tisp2011.tucongreso.es/ti2011/files/book-abstracts.pdf. Verschueren, Jef. 2008. Context and structure in a theory of pragmatics. Studies in Pragmatics. 10: 14–24. Wadensjö, Cecilia. 1998. Interpreting as Interaction. London: Longman. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. New York: MacMillan. Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Section II

Call centres

Chapter 3

Managing verbal and embodied conduct in telephone-mediated service encounters David Matthew Edmonds and Ann Weatherall In telephone-mediated service encounters, there are limits on how parties interact with one another. Speakers are restricted to only verbal (what they say) and aural (what they hear) means of communication. Therefore, a practical problem at the heart of such interactions is how speakers manage embodied conduct, given that they can only hear – rather than see the other person. We investigated how verbal and embodied conduct were managed in a corpus of 63 calls to a New Zealand helpline service where callers (complainants) interact with conciliators (institutional representatives) to complain about, and attempt to resolve disputes with their electricity and gas providers. Using conversation analysis, we document two ways that callers could manage verbal and embodied conduct in a particular type of sequence in these calls. Keywords: telephone-mediated interaction, conversation analysis, embodied conduct, multi-activity, temporary interactional exits

1.

Introduction

Telephone helplines are an important medium through which the public do business and access important services (Baker, Emmison, and Firth 2005). Nevertheless, in these service encounters (as with other forms of mediated interaction), there are constraints on how speakers communicate with one another. In contrast to co-present interaction, in telephone calls speakers are restricted to only verbal (what they say) and aural (what they hear) semiotic modalities for communication.1 Accordingly, a practical problem at the heart of telephone – mediated service encounters can be how speakers manage embodied courses of action, given that 1. Semiotic modalities refer to the various means by which people communicate with one another in talk-in – interaction (Goodwin 2007). For example, talk, gaze, body orientation and gesture.

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they do not have visual access to one another (non-co-presence) and are essentially interacting through talk only (uni-modal communication). The present chapter investigates this problem in calls to a helpline service where callers (complainants) interact with conciliators (institutional representatives) to complain about and attempt to resolve disputes with their electricity and gas providers. One objective of the analysis is to document one type of sequence where this issue regularly occurred; instances where some requested information was not immediately provided. We also describe the practices speakers use to deal with this problem in situ. In these sequences, callers used expressions such as “hold on a minute” and “wait a second” to anticipate a disruption to progressivity before moving to find and provide the information. Our work also aims to unpack how several fundamental interactional principles such as engagement, multi-activity and progressivity are implicated in the practical problem examined. We focus on how speakers manage (dis)engagement (i.e. displaying that they are still ‘on the line’), multiple courses of verbal and embodied action at once or simultaneously (multi-activity) and the progression of actions to completion (progressivity). 2. Telephone-mediated service encounters Telephone calls are a pervasive feature of everyday life. In fact, the advent of mobile phone technology, has “affect[ed] every aspect of our personal and professional lives either directly or indirectly” (Katz and Aakhus 2002, i). Using the telephone, we can carry out everything from mundane tasks such as calling family and friends, to accessing specialized institutional services such as to request assistance in emergencies (Whalen and Zimmerman 1990) and receive counselling (Butler et al. 2010). Conversation analysts have conducted sustained empirical investigations of these latter types of calls. Such work has investigated a wide range of telephone-mediated service encounters from sales cold-calls (Mazeland 2004) to surveying (Maynard and Schaeffer 1997). However, the majority has focused on helplines (Hepburn, Wilkinson, and Butler 2014) in various forms – where members of the public contact some institutional representative to access a service. These encounters are often geared towards accomplishing a single primary activity (or objective; Kevoe-Feldman 2015). In the case of dispute resolution helplines, these main actions are to seek remedy and assistance with some problem, or to complain about service provision (see Dewar, 2011; Weatherall, 2015). Our work contributes to the emerging literature on dispute resolution helplines. Previous research in this area has focused on a range of issues and topics. Weatherall and Stubbe (2015) investigated how emotion was displayed and negotiated in such



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calls. In particular, they showed how conciliators avoided responding to turns where callers displayed emotion. Weatherall (2016) also documented how a helpline’s policy of neutrality was enacted in situ. The present chapter extends on this existing research by focusing on an integral task in these interactions; establishing the facts of callers’ complaints. Further, we explore the interactional implications of the technologically mediated nature of these encounters. 3. Managing engagement and actions in telephone-mediated interaction Telephone calls are in some ways different to face-to-face interactions because of the constraints imposed by their technologically mediated nature. In co-present conversations, people can communicate and indicate their engagement using a wealth of semiotic resources including embodied conduct such as gesture, body position and gaze. Technological limits can create a range of practical problems for how engagement and embodied conduct are managed in telephone calls, where users do not have the luxury of these extra resources. Instead, communication is restricted to what speakers say and hear. A fundamental issue in telephone-mediated interaction is how speakers indicate their disengagement (i.e. temporarily exiting the conversation) from the call. Unlike closings, where parties mutually accomplish the end of an interaction (Schegloff and Sacks 1973), disengagement involves speakers understanding that the call is merely ‘on hold’. One practice for doing so (not just in telephone calls) is a temporary interactional exit (Levinson 1983), where a speaker uses an expression such as “hold on a second”. The other then displays their understanding of the upcoming suspension with an utterance like “okay” or “alright”. In this manner, the practices used to display (dis)engagement from a call are done with an orientation to the technological affordances or constraints of the interaction. In contrast, in co-present settings, the management of verbal and embodied conduct concurrently is visible to both participants. Such “multi-tasking” is a common occurrence in everyday life. Before we proceed, some clarification of terminology is in order. Multi-tasking is a psychological concept concerning how people undertake two or more tasks simultaneously, such as talking on a cell phone whilst driving (Kane and Engle 2002). It is often studied experimentally, and research focuses on how cognitive performance is impaired by doing multiple things at once (Watson and Strayer 2010). We instead take the perspective of conversation and interactional analysis and reconceptualise it as multi-activity (Haddington et al. 2014). Instead of studying it within the artificial confines of a laboratory, we study it through recordings of social interaction in situ (Haddington et al. 2014). We focus on the situated practices speakers in telephone-mediated service

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encounters use to manage verbal and embodied conduct either simultaneously or in a divided manner. Previous research within conversation and interactional analysis has shown how people in co-present interaction can suspend one activity to focus on another (i.e. in a divided manner; Licoppe and Tuncer 2014). For example, Sutinen (2014) documented the different ways that speakers jointly accomplished switching between mundane conversation and task – focused business (e.g. inventorying receipts) in interactions at home. Such work has also examined how multiple courses of action are undertaken concurrently. In fact, an established body of research focuses on this latter problem in institutional contexts such as service encounters. Ticca (2014) showed how travel agents simultaneously interacted with (co – present) customers whilst also making and taking phone calls at their desks. Despite this, little is known about the management of multiple streams of activity in uni-modal communicative contexts such as telephone calls.2 Embodied conduct can still be relevant in uni-modal forms of interaction. Stokoe (2009) studied audio-recorded police interrogations where suspects and officers were co – present and found that when suspects performed an embodied action, such as demonstrating their physical actions during the crime, police officers would describe it aloud “for the benefit of the tape” (1887). These verbal formulations transformed what was visible for the co – present parties and made it accessible for the non-co-present jury who would eventually listen to the recordings at trial. Although from a different interactional context to this chapter, an upshot of Stokoe’s (2009) work is that in uni-modal forms of communication, speakers can use verbal formulations to make it clear that they are engaged in embodied action. One reason that embodied conduct might become relevant in telephone calls is when speakers need to interact physically with something in their immediate environment. For example, to retrieve some requested information (the exact monthly electricity usage) from a physical item (an electricity bill). To situate such instances within wider interactional principles, we now turn to a discussion of sequence organization, questioning and progressivity.

2. The concept of streams of activity is taken from Goodwin and Goodwin (1992). In their work, streams of activity were conceptualized as defined lines of activity accomplished by participants. In this chapter, the term is used in a similar manner – to refer to the defined activity participants are accomplishing through verbal and embodied means.



Chapter 3.  Managing verbal and embodied conduct 75

4. Sequence organization, questioning and progressivity Conversation analytic research has shown that most social actions are be accomplished through sequences of talk (Hutchby and Wooffitt 2008). The most basic unit is the adjacency pair sequence; two consecutive turns of talk by different speakers, where the first turn launches an action (first-pair-part) and the second provides a response (second-pair-part; Schegloff 2007). Responses are also typed. That is, certain first-pair-parts make certain second-pair-parts relevant (Schegloff 2007). Such units can also be extended upon through various sequence expansion practices. Of crucial importance for our work are insertion sequences; which are further adjacency pairs that intervene (i.e. are inserted between) a base first and second-pairpart (Schegloff 2007, Chapter 6). Our analysis will document and elaborate upon the role of pre-second insert sequences, those which initiate an activity that is done in the service of progressing the base second-pair-part (see Schegloff 2007). To further illustrate the concept of adjacency pairs and situate the forthcoming analysis, we can focus on the ubiquitous question-answer sequence. Questions can be formulated in many ways, and thus make different sorts of answers relevant. For example, a “wh”- or content question makes some piece of information relevant as a response (e.g. “who” makes relevant a person’s name). In contrast, polar questions require simple “yes” or “no” replies (Hayano 2014). Further, these latter types of questions can be ‘tilted’ to project either a positive or negative response. For example, “you didn’t want the book?” presupposes “no” as an answer (Raymond 2003). In this chapter we focus specifically on requests for information. Heritage and Raymond (2012) discussed how such questions contain normative expectations that recipients know and can provide the information (as a second-pair-part). Importantly, in our cases – and sequences more generally – failing to provide the relevant second-pair-part can become a noticeable and accountable matter for recipients (Schegloff 2007). Progressivity is a concept crucial to sequence organization and the phenomena analysed in this chapter. Talk normatively progresses sound-by-sound, unit-byunit, turn-by – turn, sequence-by-sequence, and at a broader level the interaction itself (Schegloff 2007). Progressivity concerns the temporally continuous nature of talk and how sequences of action unfold (Schegloff 2007). The analysis considers two dimensions of progressivity. First, sequential progressivity is achieved when the relevant response is provided, and the sequence of action is completed. In contrast, it can be disrupted when a response is not immediately forthcoming or not provided at all. Side sequences are another example of disruptions to sequential progressivity. These are instances where a sequence is in progress and another is initiated – say to focus on clarification of talk – before the prior one resumes (Jefferson 1972). The second dimension is the overall progression of an interaction, or conversational

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progressivity. This can also be bound up with sequential progressivity. For instance, the analysis below focuses on cases where a conversation is disrupted – through it being suspended – when some relevant information is not provided. Previous research has established a preference for progressivity in conversation, such that speakers are mutually oriented to it as a normative principle in interaction. The conversation analytic concept of preference is structural, sequential, and interactional rather than reflecting speakers’ psychological dispositions (Schegloff 2007). Stivers and Robinson (2006) examined questions in multiparty interaction that were directed toward a particular speaker but that were answered by someone else. These sequences involved two conflicting preferences: the preference for a relevant second-pair-part (sequential progressivity) and for the selected speaker to respond. They found robust evidence that in such cases speakers prioritized sequential progressivity over the preference for a next speaker to respond. Our analysis will also consider the ways that speakers manage sequential and conversational progressivity. The objective of this chapter is to analyse how verbal and embodied conduct are managed in telephone-mediated service encounters, given the technological constraints of the medium. In order to answer this question, our work focuses on instances in the calls where some physical activity is required to further a locally relevant action – retrieving requested information – when it may conflict with the demands of remaining verbally engaged on the phone. Before proceeding to the analysis, we turn to a description of the data and methodological approach. 5. Methodology 5.1

Data

Our work examines audio-recorded calls to a New Zealand telephone helpline. Members of the public call the service to complain about, and resolve disputes with, their electricity and gas service providers. The service functions as a third-party mediator between customers and companies. It is independent, neutral, and freely accessible. The service is separate from the utility industries and central government (i.e. independent) and does not advocate directly for either consumers or providers (i.e. neutral) (Weatherall 2015). Callers speak to helpline representatives, known as conciliators, and after providing personal details describe their issues in narrative form. Conciliators will then further establish the details of the complaint by questioning callers about relevant matters (e.g. amount of money they have been overcharged) (Edmonds 2016; Weatherall and Stubbe 2015). It is important that conciliators obtain all the

Chapter 3.  Managing verbal and embodied conduct 77



necessary information from callers because it forms part of the official institutional record of the complaint going forward in the dispute resolution process. Our analysis draws on a corpus of 63 of these calls. The data was recorded and collected in two waves; 42 calls were collected in 2008 and 21 in 2016 (see Edmonds 2016; Weatherall and Stubbe 2015). Calls were then transcribed using the system developed by Jefferson (2004), presented in Appendix A. Ethical approval to record and collect calls was obtained through the organization and the university’s ethical review committee. 5.2

Procedure

We analyse the calls using conversation analysis, which is a grounded, empirical and participant-oriented method for studying talk-in-interaction. Using audio-recorded data (and when possible video-recordings) of naturally occurring social interaction, the conversation analytic approach aims to establish the interactional practices used to accomplish social actions and to provide an in-depth understanding of how talk-in-interaction is structured (Sidnell 2014). The method studies what participants themselves orient to, and display as relevant, in and through their talk (Hutchby and Wooffitt 2008). Conversation analytic research is undertaken through building collections of particular interactional phenomena, to identify their general features and functions in talk (Hutchby and Wooffitt 2008; Sidnell 2014). Accordingly, we built a collection based upon a recurrent observation from a systematic examination of all the calls. This observation was the occasional, yet consequential, disruptions to the calls’ progressivity. Thus, the impetus for the collection examined in this chapter was to ask – for what interactional reasons did disruptions to progressivity occur? Our collection centres on one routine way that speakers mark such disruptions, by using expressions such as “wait a second” and “hold on a minute”, as well as accounts and/or informings. The entire collection numbers 56 cases. However, the analysis below focuses on the largest sub-set of 28 cases that occurred in a particular sequence. In these sub-set instances, conciliators requested some information from callers, which was not immediately forthcoming. Callers then marked a disruption to progressivity or some interactional difficulty through the target expressions. Reasons for the non-immediate provision included callers not having the information to hand, not knowing it, or they were less than certain in their answers being correct. Nevertheless, callers treated it as necessary to find and provide the information. A fundamental problem for the callers in the sub-set of cases examined in this chapter was managing two streams of activity: continuing to talk to the conciliator

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(verbal stream of activity) and physically retrieving some information (embodied stream of activity). We observed two distinct interactional trajectories in response to the non-forthcoming information in these sequences.3 The interactional trajectories can be considered as related, albeit different, solutions to the practical problem presented by these two streams of activity: do they manage both at once or do they suspend the conversation in order to find the information? In these cases, we also see speakers enacting and orienting to their respective institutional roles and concomitant rights and responsibilities (Heritage and Clayman 2010). Conciliators display their rights to question callers to establish the relevant facts of the matter (Edmonds 2016). Most importantly, we see callers orienting to their responsibility to know and provide details of their complaint when requested. The sections below are structured around an analysis of the two different interactional trajectories. The five cases we present are selected as the clearest examples of the phenomenon, whilst still being representative of the wider collection. The extracts are anonymized, and pseudonyms have been used. The turns of interest are indicated in boldface. 6. Analysis 6.1

Managing verbal and embodied activity simultaneously

The first interactional trajectory involves callers talking to conciliators whilst physically finding some requested information. In doing so, we can see callers treating both streams of activity as compatible, in that both can be undertaken simultaneously. Essentially, some form of embodied conduct was required to further the locally relevant action. In these cases, expressions such as “wait a minute” anticipated a disruption to the interaction’s progression. Two clear cases are presented in this section to illustrate how callers managed verbal and embodied conduct simultaneously in telephone-mediated service encounters. Extract (1) shows a caller using self-talk as a practice to make their embodied conduct understandable to the conciliator. At line 01, the conciliator asks when the caller’s electricity meter was read.

3. This chapter draws on Liddicoat’s (2009) conceptualization of interactional trajectories as the discernible direction the conversation takes in response to disrupted request for information sequences. So, streams of activity refer to the activity being done – whereas interactional trajectories are related to the general shape of, or the path the interaction takes.

Chapter 3.  Managing verbal and embodied conduct 79



Extract (1)  “Meter Reading”: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

CON: CAL: CON: CAL: CON: CAL: CON: CAL: CAL: CON: CAL: CAL: CON: CAL: CON:

a:::nd (0.6) #thuh# (0.2) d’you know whe:n thu:h m: meter was read? (0.2) .hh was the] last< time= [ ((rustling)) ughh ] =it was read before [that? do you know?] [ ((rustling)) ] ah yes: ◦hold on I’ll just get this◦ ou:t ◦.hh◦ .snih (0.9) ºI just [(wonder-)º ] [ac – act]ual read, h u::m (2.7) º(o:wh) it doesn’t haveº (.) actual read ◦here (does)◦ it? º.hhº (0.2) should do, ((rustling)) u::m= =((rustling continued)) ↑whi[ch ] [the] o:ne before tha::t actual reading ◦◦.hh◦◦ uh was (.) April? (0.2) ↑okay.

The caller begins to answer the conciliator’s question, “it would’ve been” (line 07), but abandons it and instead accounts for an inability to answer immediately, “I would have it on the bill” (lines 07–08). The account displays the potential relevance of some embodied course of action as it alludes to the information possibly being located on something that the caller may have to physically access. As such, in this case, embodied conduct is made relevant before the caller marks a disruption to progressivity. The caller provides an answer with hedged certainty, “last week I would think” (lines 08–09), which the conciliator accepts as sufficient (line 10). In this instance, the caller provides the requested information from an official source – their electricity bill. During the conciliator’s question, the caller can be heard interacting with something (presumably the bill) in the background – as captured through the rustling indicated on the transcript. Rustling provides an aural resource for the conciliator to understand that the caller may be managing two concurrent streams of activity (i.e. doing two things at once). The conciliator then requests another specific date from the caller (lines 10–12). We know that such questions contain normative expectations and obligations for recipients (see Heritage and Raymond 2012). The question that follows, “do you know” (line 12), can be understood as relaxing an expectation for the caller to provide the information; by explicitly orienting to the possibility that they may

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not know it. The caller confirms that they know the information and alerts the conciliator to “hold on…” (line 14), anticipating some disruption to the interaction. The following talk, “I’ll get this out” marks the caller’s embodied interaction with some item (line 14). Presumably, the caller is inspecting the bill to ascertain when the meter was last read. Furthermore, in moving to find the information the caller displays an orientation to their obligation and responsibility as a “caller” to know about and be able to provide details related to their complaint. The caller’s talk between lines 14 and 21 overcomes the problem of non-copresence and makes their embodied conduct hearable and accessible to the other. When combined with the rustling, the caller’s talk makes it clear that they are searching for the requested information and managing simultaneous streams of activity. Owing to our lack of visual access (as analysts) to the caller’s surroundings, it would be too speculative to state what – beyond the bill – the caller is searching for. The caller produces some self-talk between lines 19 and 20. Goffman (1981) described self-talk as utterances that we say aloud – usually in our own company-that are not intended for a response. However, in this instance, the self-talk is produced with the awareness of the conciliator as an over-hearing audience and serves important functions. First, it acts as a commentary of what the caller is doing -visually perusing their documents – and renders this hearable for the conciliator. Finally, the self-talk means that the caller is still verbally engaged in the conversation and that they are treating both verbal and embodied conduct as compatible. Sequential progressivity was disrupted because the information was not immediately forthcoming. However, the caller made an effort to secure and provide the second-pair-part. As such, the caller can be understood as working to promote sequential progressivity. The caller provides the date the meter was last read, which the conciliator acknowledges and accepts as sufficient (lines 23–26). The next extract provides a clear, albeit extended, example of a caller managing verbal and embodied action simultaneously. The caller makes a sustained effort, with some difficulty, to find the customer number given to them by their electricity provider. Extract (2)  “Customer Number”: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

CON: CAL: CAL: CON: CAL:

.hhh and uh:::::::: .hh what’s y:our (0.6) mch .hh have you got you:r um cus:tomer number with blue[tower] [.hhhh] (0.8) uh yes I can ge:t that (.)[(on again)] [thank you ] (0.2) ha::ng on a seco:nd (.) let me deal with this he::re for u::::h (oh I hope – I have-) (.)(uh) just hang (on) a s(h)ec(h)ond



12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

Chapter 3.  Managing verbal and embodied conduct 81

.hhhh (0.2) (◦just hang a sec let me- I’ll jus get that◦)(◦ ◦ ) (2.0) CAL?: ◦ .hhhhh◦ ((rustling)) CAL: I’ll get that bluetower bill. (◦hang on◦) (1.1) CAL: .hh (I’m on)(I’m after) ( ) jus tryna get onli:ne and it’s (frozen)=yeah (that’s what I needed today)(literally/let me just) .hhh (.) (hh) u::hm (1.2) CAL: ( ) ◦this is not good is it◦ ◦hang on◦ ( ) (oh we) just have to reboot this again (.) give me a bit of ti::me to come up back up again (0.8) CAL?: .hhhhhhh (0.5) CAL: (eh) um- hh ((background noise)) (1.1) CAL: ◦let me just◦ ◦um◦ (1.4) ◦see whats goin on here◦ (2.0) ((2.8 seconds with some faint noise)) CAL: in meantime while this: going do you [want the the (eye vee/eye pee)] CON: [.hh that that’s okay] (0.5) CAL: [>d’ya wan-d’ya want< the eye pee- (.) number] CON: [yes. if you] give me the eye see pee that would be very helpful.

The conciliator abandons an initial content question and instead produces a polar interrogative. The first question, had it been completed, could have contained an assumption that the caller had the requested information. However, the re-formulated question displays an assumption that – for whatever reason – the caller may not have, or not know, their customer number; relaxing the assumption that they will be able to provide it immediately. The caller confirms they have the information and commits to finding it, “I can get that” (line 06). Up until this point, the parties had been verbally interacting. Now, embodied conduct becomes relevant because of the physical retrieval inferred from “getting it”. However, it is unclear yet as to whether the caller is treating verbal and embodied action as compatible. An appreciation, “thank you”, acknowledges the effort the caller will make (line 07). “Hang on a second”, anticipates a disruption to the interaction and is followed by an informing, “let me deal with this here” (lines 09–10). The latter makes it clear that the caller is now engaged in concurrent streams of verbal and embodied activity. Further disruptions are marked between

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lines 10 and 12. A two second lapse occurs at line 14, providing evidence that despite the caller managing two simultaneous streams of activity, the production of talk is not entirely continuous. The caller makes it clear that they are attempting to find their customer number on the electricity bill (line 16). A practical problem emerges when the caller alludes to the bill being located on a computer (“tryna get online”; line 18) and that it could take some time to find it because of technological difficulties (“it’s frozen”; line 19). The caller negatively evaluates the continued delay, “this is not good is it” (line 23). As with the previous case, and others in the collection, an informing and commentary between lines 18 and 33 overcome the technologically mediated constraints of the interaction by providing as much access to the conciliator as possible regarding the caller’s predicament. These practices can be understood as ways of transforming semiotic modalities by making what is visually accessible for the caller, hearable for the conciliator. Eventually, the caller offers a different piece of information. The interaction reached a point where the requested information was not forthcoming and because of the technical difficulty with the computer, it may not be provided soon. To satisfy their own commitment to finding the information, the caller gives some similar details to further progress the conversation. Later in the interaction, the caller offers their customer number after apparently finding it, but the conciliator rejects it as no longer necessary (not included in the extract). This observation is evidence of a speaker going to great lengths to satisfy the responsibility associated with their role as a “caller”. 6.2 Treating verbal and embodied activity as incompatible The cases discussed so far show that sometimes in telephone-mediated service encounters speakers can manage both verbal and embodied conduct simultaneously. However, sometimes speakers do not – or cannot – manage both concurrently, treating them as incompatible. In doing so, callers could initiate a temporary interactional exit (Levinson 1983), which involved the call being temporarily suspended – or put ‘on hold’- while they retrieved the information, to resume their engagement in the conversation shortly after. Three cases are presented below to illustrate how callers displayed that they were sacrificing verbal engagement in favour of embodied action. Extract (3) shows a caller displaying some uncertainty as to whether they have the requested information, before moving to find it. The caller uses the turn “bear with me for a….” to mark and initiate the upcoming temporary interactional exit (line 05).

Chapter 3.  Managing verbal and embodied conduct 83



Extract (3)  “Actual Supply Period”: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15

CON: CAL: CON:

CAL: CON: CAL:

okay. .hh so on that bill is there an actual supply:, (.) period? (1.5) u::m (0.5) I don’t (0.2) thi:nk so ◦uh◦ can I check= =can you [bear with me for a ( ) (please)] [ sure yeah yep. ] (1.4) ((receiver possibly down)) ((52.5 seconds of rustling, noise from television in background, interspersed typing and possible interference with receiver)) hello? yes:. .hhh u::::m: well- (#mmghm# um) twenty second (of) October two thousand and eight?

The question in line 01 requests confirmation that the “actual supply period” is on the caller’s electricity bill. The question presupposes an affirmative response, and thus, contains an expectation that the caller knows the details of their complaint, in particular because the information is on an official record (“the bill”). In conversation analysis, what a turn of talk is doing is established by the next turn proof procedure – where evidence of the action is found in what speakers do in their next turns (Sidnell 2014). The response, “can I check”, demonstrates that the caller treated the question as requesting that information (line 04). The caller’s response, “I don’t know”, marks a displayed lack of certainty and what follows, “can I check”, displays that they treat the answer as insufficient and an orientation to their normative obligation to provide information when requested (line 06). In producing the request, the caller marks the emergent relevance of embodied conduct, by treating it as necessary to find the “actual supply period”. The caller requests permission to leave the interaction, “can you bear with me”. The format suggests the caller orients to the upcoming disruption as a breach. “Can you bear…” forms the first-pair-part of a hold-acceptance insert sequence (line 05; Levinson 1983). In this case, the insert sequence comes between the initial request and the eventual provision of that information. The hold – acceptance sequence initiates the caller’s exit to find the relevant information. As a pre – second insert sequence, it serves to progress the action of providing the information – the base second-pair-part. The request explicitly marks an upcoming disruption to the interaction’s progression. The caller is temporarily ceasing continued conversation in order to physically find the relevant detail. In doing so they treat the two streams of activity as incompatible (i.e. unable to be done at the same time), and prioritise the embodied over the verbal. One reason for this is that the information might be located on

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“the bill”, which the caller may not have to hand. The conciliator grants the request with “sure” (line 06, second-pair-part of insert sequence) and displays a joint understanding of the upcoming suspension. The call is suspended for nearly 52 seconds, as the caller presumably makes an effort to find the information. The caller resumes the conversation with “hello” (line 12), or as Leung (1997) termed, an “availability check”, as it functions to establish whether the other speaker is still on the line. Extract (3) provides particularly strong evidence that the caller treats verbal and embodied action as incompatible because they re-established verbal engagement with the conciliator. Almost a minute has passed, yet the date provided by the caller at line 13 is understood as representing the “actual supply period” requested in the initial question. With the requested information provided, the conditional relevance of a response is satisfied, and the interaction can further progress. The progressivity of the interaction was disrupted when callers initiated temporary interactional exits. However, Extract (4) illustrates that these disruptions were done in the service of promoting sequential progressivity. At line 01, the conciliator enquires about the caller’s personal details for future contact purposes. Extract (4)  “Contact Phone Number”: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

CON: CAL: CON: CAL: CON:

CAL: CON: CAL: CON: CAL: CON:

and is the:re another contact (.) phone number for you? (0.5) (.hh) u:::m it’s: my: (u:h) mobile phone number? [.hh u:h] [okay ( )] (0.3) ju:st one second. hh= =[sure thing.] [((receiver ]down)) (13.9) ((receiver[ up)] [oh ◦three◦ ] it’s u:h o:h three five? (0.4) oh three five, (0.3) oh six two (0.4) oh six two (0.4) three (.) six (.) nine (.) two. three six nine two. thank you

The caller treats the question at line 01 as a request for an alternate contact number. The information’s presence is inferentially confirmed, “it’s”, and the caller specifies what type of phone the number is for, “my mobile phone number” (line 04–05). As



Chapter 3.  Managing verbal and embodied conduct 85

the caller has confirmed that they have another phone number, provision of this information now becomes relevant to satisfy sequential progressivity (Schegloff 2007). Instead, the caller states “just one second” (line 08), with the minimal time reference marking that the conversation will be suspended and resumed shortly. “Just” has been found to have a minimizing function in conversation (Lindemann and Mauranen 2001). Alongside the minimal time reference “one second”, the use of “just” can be understood as an attempt to minimize the upcoming breach of the interactional exit. A mutual understanding of the upcoming suspension is achieved in lines 08 and 09. The caller does not explicitly state that they will be finding the information. Rather, the conciliator can infer the purpose of the suspension because the caller has yet to provide the required second-pair-part and because the latter has indicated the presence of a specific type of number. The sound of the phone being put down (line 10) provides an aural resource for the conciliator to understand that the caller is removing themselves from the conversation. Two levels of progressivity are disrupted at this point. Sequential progressivity is disrupted because of the non-forthcoming second-pair-part. The hold-acceptance insert sequence (lines 08–09) further delays provision of the information by filling the place where an answer could be provided (Schegloff 2007). Conversational progressivity is also disrupted through the suspension of turn taking during the interactional exit. The call is put on hold for around fourteen seconds and resumes with the caller tying their talk as the answer to the initial question (“it’s…”). It is not clear what the caller did to find the information, as there were no verbal references to embodied conduct – unlike the prior case where it was understandable that the caller was checking “the bill”. However, the caller presumably did some extra-interactional work to find and provide the relevant second-pair – part, and thus worked to promote sequential progressivity. In fact, by suspending the interaction, the caller displayed that they were prioritising sequential over conversational progressivity. The caller treated it as more important to fulfil their normative obligation to provide the information, rather than remain involved in the conversation. Extract (5) provides a final example of a caller treating verbal and embodied action as incompatible. The conciliator has just initiated a topic shift following the caller complaining about their power company’s service. The conciliator switches to an institutionally relevant task – gathering personal details – as a way to avoid affiliating with the caller’s complaint and to maintain their neutral institutional role (c.f. Weatherall 2015).

86 David Matthew Edmonds and Ann Weatherall

Extract (5)  “Email Address”: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

CON: CAL:

CAL: CAL: CON:

CAL: CON: CAL: CON: CAL:

[you]↑said that you had email? can i get your email address? no:w (0.2) i’m not- (0.2) ◦i can nev-◦ i’ve only had it for about .hhh (.) three or four months but i’ll get my: ((.hh/rustling)) uhhh ◦because◦ sometimes (0.4) on my (.hhh) (hhh) ((background noise)) uhhh (0.9) (i’ve been) (0.7) ◦u:::hhm◦ ◦.hhh◦(owh ch)i’ll put the ↑phone down [please just (one/a) moment] [↑sure no (problem) ] no problem. ((receiver down)) ((CAL away for 27.7 seconds)) ((Receiver up)) oh (i’m) sorry.=I have it in my diary [here: .hh]= [oh↑great.] so- because my children have uh done this for me [orignally ] put it in. .hh[hh it’s] [↑good ((echoes)) ] [↑m(h)m ] (0.3) Meg, .hh eh no capitals

The conciliator requests another specific piece of information – an email address – to which the caller has previously referred (lines 01–02). An expectation is set up that the caller can provide the information because they have already indicated that they have it. Furthermore, it is their “institutional responsibility” to provide it. However, the initial response, “now…I’m not”, does not provide the information (line 03). “I’ve only had it for…” inferentially confirms that the caller does have, and knows, their email address (lines 03–04). The caller describes the length of time that they have had their email address for, which also accounts for its non-immediate provision. Apparently, three to four months is a time seemingly insufficient for the caller to know their email address by heart. The informing, “but I’ll get my” (lines 04–05), displays to the conciliator that the caller may be moving to find the information and makes embodied action potentially relevant. At this point at least, the caller appears to be treating both streams of activity as compatible, because they are still talking whilst displaying a possible search for the information. After some lapses in the interaction, the caller announces, “I’ll put the phone down”, to suspend the call (line 11). This is perhaps the most explicit formulation possible from a caller that they would be physically disengaging themselves from their telephone to search for something. As with the other cases in this section, the caller treats the upcoming disruption as a breach. The “please”, minimal time reference “a moment” and “just” can be understood as politeness strategies to minimize the breach of the upcoming suspension and mitigate

Chapter 3.  Managing verbal and embodied conduct 87



it as a potentially face-threatening act (line 12). The expression was produced in overlap, so the conciliator may have been unable to hear it. Yet, clearly, the caller treated the disruption as an issue, as evidenced by the need to minimise it. Again, a pre-second insert sequence is used to advance the base sequence to completion. The call is suspended for around 28 seconds. Prior fragments of talk, “I’ll get my…” (lines 04–05) and “sometimes on my…” (line 06) alluded to the information possibly being located on some item external to the interaction. Therefore, the conciliator could have inferred that the caller was working to promote sequential progressivity by making an effort to physically find and provide the second-pair-part. The caller resumes the interaction by apologising for the interactional exit (line 17), providing further evidence that the disruption was treated as a normative breach of conversational progressivity. The account “I have it in my diary here” makes it clear that the caller found their email address on something during the interactional exit (line 17). Thus, they treated verbal and embodied conduct as incompatible, because they had to interact with an item in their immediate environment at the expense of talking on the phone. 7. Discussion and conclusions This chapter has sought to understand how speakers manage verbal and embodied conduct in telephone-mediated dispute resolution. For ease of reference, the findings are visually summarised below:

Verbal activity

Requested information to be retrieved

Interactional trajectories

Verbal activity

le: patib nal Incom interactio y r ora temp exit.

Com p Talk a atible: nd fin d. Embodied activity

Figure 3.1  Streams of activity and interactional trajectories in response to disrupted request for information sequences

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Parties had been interacting verbally throughout the calls. However, when callers had to find some requested information, an embodied stream of activity became relevant. Callers had to manage these streams of activity in situ. In the sequences examined, verbal and embodied conduct could be potentially conflicting as speakers were not always able to manage both concurrently. Managing verbal and embodied conduct could be done in two ways. As shown above, callers could continue talking to conciliators whilst they tried to find the information (compatible trajectory). Callers used informings, announcements, commentary and self-talk to verbally formulate their embodied action and thus to manage multi-activity. These practices overcame the technological constraints of the mediated interaction. They transformed semiotic modalities, providing as much access to conciliators as possible regarding the callers’ embodied action and situated circumstances. Multi-activity has been primarily (if not exclusively) studied in co-present talk-in – interaction. Although, recent research has begun to examine multi-activity in technologically mediated forms of interaction such as Skype video chat (e.g. Licoppe and Tuncer 2014). However, there exists, to the best of our knowledge, no research investigating speakers managing multi-activity in non-co-present telephone-mediated interactions. Ultimately, research does not have to focus only on face-to-face interactions, because as these findings suggest, multiple semiotic modalities are not necessary for multi-activity to be relevant (Haddington et al. 2014). Callers could also treat the streams of activity as incompatible and take a temporary interactional exit in order to find the requested information. Temporary interactional exits have primarily been studied in co-present forms of interaction (e.g. DeLand 2012; Szymanski 1999). Nevertheless, our work supports the established finding that hold-acceptance adjacency pairs are a practice to suspend verbal engagement in telephone calls (e.g. Hopper 1993; Leung 1997). Based on the allusions or explicit references to embodied conduct in prior talk, such as “can I check”, it was inferable to conciliators that callers were exiting the interaction in order to physically find the relevant information. We also observed that callers oriented to the suspensions as breaches, shown through the minimising features of the turn’s design. This observation points to a preference for conversational progressivity that might benefit from further investigation. The sequences examined in this chapter often formed part of the broader institutional tasks of establishing the facts of the complaint and gathering the caller’s personal details (Edmonds 2016; Weatherall and Stubbe 2015). Therefore, the management of verbal and embodied conduct was reflexively tied to particular institutional tasks in telephone-mediated dispute resolution. Thus, we further contribute to an established literature showing that managing multi-activity is crucial for how institutional work is carried out in situ (Nevile 2015). Yet, it would be



Chapter 3.  Managing verbal and embodied conduct 89

worth further investigating how the management of multi-activity is implicated in accomplishing other institutional tasks in telephone-mediated service encounters, given the paucity of research on this topic. The analysis also showed how these cases were bound up with speakers’ institutional roles and associated responsibilities. Importantly, these roles were not influencing the interaction in an a priori sense (Heritage and Clayman 2010), but rather, they were produced and oriented to through speakers’ conduct. The requests for information contained normative expectations that callers knew and could provide information pertaining to their complaint. These questions were a display of conciliators’ rights to ask about the relevant information to form an official record. Callers’ conduct – moving to find the information – fulfilled the rights and responsibilities associated with their institutional role. An important finding was that callers made efforts to find and provide the requested information and as such, they were working to promote sequential progressivity. In fact, in the cases in Section 6.2, callers prioritised sequential over conversational progressivity. These findings support previous research that has established a preference for progressivity in interaction, in particular at the level of the sequence (Stivers and Robinson 2006). Our unique contribution is to show the use of pre-second insert sequences (i.e. the hold-acceptance adjacency pair) as structural and sequential evidence for such a preference. The type of phone that callers used raises a problem for interpreting the findings. Mobile phones are portable and thus talking while finding information would be easier. If the majority of cases in Section 6.1 involved mobile phones, the findings could be better explained by the technology callers used. Landline phones are in a physically fixed location and thus substantial movement from users is less likely. If a majority of the temporary interactional exit cases involved landline calls then, again, the findings could be due to the constraints of the technology used rather than speakers treating streams of activity as incompatible. An examination of the influence of the telephone technology used by callers could force a re-think of the analytic argument of the interactional trajectories. Several reasons make it difficult to account for the technology used by callers and argue against its potential influence on the analysis. The call recording equipment and software we used did not indicate whether callers were using a landline, cordless or mobile phone. In addition, it was not always clear what type of phone was used when listening to the audio recordings. However, some of the compatible interactional trajectory cases appeared to involve mobile phones, yet there was no clear pattern.4 Similarly, some of the interactional exit cases appeared 4. This observation is based on what callers said when providing their personal details during these encounters.

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to be made from landline numbers; possible evidence for the influence of technology.5 However, it is common for such numbers to be linked to portable cordless handsets (Redmayne 2013). If callers used handsets during temporary interactional exit cases, this would provide evidence for them treating the streams of activity as incompatible, because they would have the option to move around and talk. Future research should be cognizant of this issue and tease out whether the form of technology is relevant for how speakers manage concurrent streams of activity in telephone-mediated interactions. Despite the analytic benefits of using audio-recorded telephone calls (Schegloff 2002), limitations still exist. What is missed is how speakers conduct themselves in their situated environments. We have a good idea as to how they managed verbal and embodied action in these calls. However, aside from knowing that callers were retrieving information from external sources (such as computers and electricity bills), we were unable to answer why, in some cases, they treated streams of activity as incompatible or compatible. Accordingly, future research could video record callers in their situated environment as they interact over the phone. Such an approach is not unprecedented; Relieu (2010) discussed some advanced technological ways to capture how people interact with their mobile phones in relation to the demands of their surroundings. This approach would provide a greater understanding of how callers manage verbal and embodied conduct in telephone-mediated interaction. Video recordings would allow an analysis of what callers do during the temporary interactional exits. In the compatible interactional trajectory, recordings could show us how callers coordinate talking to conciliators whilst finding the requested information. This method would also allow us to know what type of phone speakers were using. In sum, video recording the calls would establish whether the interactional trajectories we found are due to caller’s management of streams of activity or the telephone technology used. The essentially uni-modal constraints of telephone-mediated service encounters mean that when it is necessary to find or retrieve some requested information speakers may have two options concerning competing streams of activity. Speakers can stay on the phone and find it – if they can, or briefly disengage to find it. It was beyond the intentions of this paper to ask whether there is any interactional preference for either solution. This practical problem and its interactional consequences are probably not unique to dispute resolution helplines. Rather it is likely inherent to all telephone-mediated interactions, institutional or otherwise.

5. Again, this is based on the details provided to conciliators.



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Acknowledgements We would like to thank the participating dispute resolution service for allowing us to record and use its calls as data. This research was funded and supported in various stages through grants made available to the first author from Victoria University of Wellington and the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme. Parts of this article have been adapted from the first author’s Master’s thesis (see Edmonds 2016). Finally, we thank the five anonymous reviewers and the editors of this collection for their valuable and incisive comments on earlier drafts of this chapter, which have greatly improved the final product. Any shortcomings remain our own.

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Appendix A.  Conversation analytic transcription conventions Temporal and sequential notation Notation

Description [

CON: CAL: CON: (.) (0.5), (1.4)

] word= =Word word=word

Overlap onset: where two (or more) speakers begin talking at once. Overlap offset: the end of overlapping talk. Equals signs indicate no pauses between speaker’s turns. Equals signs within same turn indicates no silence between words, a rush-through in speech. A micropause, less than 0.2 seconds. Silences timed to tenths of a second.

Characteristics of speech delivery Notation

Description

Wo:rd Wo:rd Wo::::rd Wor. ? , ¿ Word WORD ◦word◦ ↑ ↓ £word£ #word#

Upward intonation contour, sound moves down-to-up. Downward intonation contour, sound moves up-to-down. Extension of prior sound. The more colons, the longer the extension. Sound cut-off. Falling intonation. Rising intonation. Slight rise in intonation. Rising intonation that is in between a question mark and comma. Emphasis or stress on part of a word. Capital letters indicate louder talk (louder than simple emphasis). Words enclosed by degrees signs are spoken quietly Shift to a higher pitch. Shift to a lower pitch. Words enclosed by pound signs are spoken in a “smiling” voice Words enclosed by hash signs are spoken with a “creaky” voice.

Chapter 3.  Managing verbal and embodied conduct 95



Notation

Description

~word~ >word