The English of Philippine Call Centre Agents - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The English of Philippine Call Centre Agents

kbolton@cityu.edu.hkmweisser@cityu.edu.hk

Kingsley Bolton & Martin Weisser

City University of Hong KongSlide2

Outline

Project BackgroundData PreparationData AnalysisPreliminary Results

The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

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Project Background

initial research carried out by Bolton on High-level Proficiency in Second-language

Use

research programme at Stockholm University

interviews with call centre managers, trainers, & agents (CSAs)

collection of around 1,400 call centre dialogues

current research:

re-transcription & -organisation of dialogue data

enriching of data on the levels ofphonologysyntax/grammarsemantico-pragmaticpragmatics

The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

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Data Preparation (1)

automatic conversion of original transcriptionsextraction to plain text documentsconversion to simple DART XML formatmanual pre-editing by student helpers

correction of conversion errors

improvement of transcription consistency, e.g. punctuation, etc.

addition of pause measurements

addition of phonological/grammatical observations

The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

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Data Preparation (2) –

Original XML Format

The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

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Data Analysis (1)

automatic annotation in DART (Dialogue Annotation & Research Tool) ⇒

16,432

units/86 dialogues

annotation levels included

syntactic c-units: address,

decl

,

dm, yes, no, imp, q-wh, q-yn, frag(surface-)polarity

semantics (topics)semantico-pragmatics (modes)pragmatics (speech acts)

The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

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Data Analysis (2) –

Automatic Annotation Results

The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

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Data Analysis (3)

extraction of CSR-related informationsyntax–speech-act parings for interaction strategy analysisn-grams (1-8 words) for analysis of formulaic patternsgrammatical feature observations for identifying ‘non-native’ features

phonological feature observations

for identifying ‘non-native’

features

The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

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Preliminary Results – Phonology (1)

pronoun reduction (37): e.g. may

i

have

your first and last name

please

elision:

final fricatives, e.g. this might probably be familiar to yourself; and then you have to less 5 dollars and 99 cents for the home protection plan because this is free for 18 month

s

final

plosives (24):

that's righ

t

; but you will need to talk to our

technical

departmen

t

; you need to call us the 5th of A... the fifth of July so we can remove it from your

accoun

t

‘

eng

-dropping’ (5

), e.g.

what

type of shows or programs do you enjoy

watchin

g

The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

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Preliminary Results – Phonology (2)

devoicing:final

fricatives (8):

let me just advi

se

<comment type="

phon

"

sounds_like="ədvaɪs" content="final fricative devoiced" /> you that …; just give me one minute please; there was a refund submitted

dental fricative replacement: you can also make a debit or credit card payment

th

rough <comment type="

phon

" content="

t

ru

" />

unaspirated

initial plosives:

have you returned the equipment

t

o <comment type="

phon

" content="unaspirated initial plosive" />

us

The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

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Preliminary Results – Phonology (3)

epenthetic vowels:shwas

(69),

e.g.

as what ə you check

ə

;

you're eligible to get one plan from

Earthlink ə unreduced past tense morphemes: e.g. what's the last bill pai

d <comment type="phon"

sounds_like

="

peɪj

əd

" content="epenthetic vowel" /> please

contrastive

‘stress’

/strong forms (27

):

whole words, e.g.

because you just tell them that we will not be charging anything to them since you

are

the account holder; is there anybody there with

you

who can speak English

individual syllables:

and

i'm

calling from Satellite TV Pro

vi

der; there's no commitment here so you need not sign any

con

tract; as soon as we receive the uh rebate form that

i

advised you to down

load

(

uptalk

, rather than stress?)

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Preliminary Results – Grammar (1)

pluralsunmarked (28)incorrectly marked (2)

, e.g.

there is a 6 dollar

s

leasing fee monthly

unidiomatic (1): with regards to the breakfastauxiliary usemissing (3), e.g. and

we will Ø

giving

you a 5 dollar discount for uh 14

months

double (1):

and

uh

that'

s

will

be your partial charge from today up to the 4th of May

The English of Pilippine Call Centre Agents

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Preliminary Results – Grammar (2)

prepositionsadded, e.g. exit out

from that screen

unidiomatic

:

e.g.

the

promotion that we you can also take advantage

with; and this will allow us to replace your single tuner recordable receiver to; i can assist you

to that; how long have you been staying

with

this address

;

the reason why we're calling you today is uh to tell you today about this great offer

wherein

we

can provide you free

equipment, free installation, and

a

special

programming

discount

(22)

missing:

there are things that we can we can take care

of

over the phone

‘quantification’

non-count → count, e.g.

you already provided

those information online; however

you will need to replace one of your old

equipment

ə

incorrect comparison adverb:

that

will

be 10 dollars more

of what you're paying right

now

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Preliminary Results – Grammar (3)

determiner (non-)usemissing, e.g. can also be caused by

a

damaged cable

;

do you have

an

email addressquestion ‘inversion/embedding’, e.g. do you know how much is the John Brown University rate so i

could check here on my system

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Preliminary Results – Formulaic Expressions

in case ⇒

if that will be the

case

if in

case

this

⇒ that one, e.g. can you spell that one for me; let me just verify

that one for younon-contractions (192), e.g.

i

would like

;

i

will

;

that is

, etc.

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Interaction Analysis (1) – (

Im)Politenessabundance of terms

of address

893 (

9.435%):

mainly deferential (

Sir

,

Madam)frequent unusual placement (‘syntax-breaking’), e.g. but i do apologize │

Sir│if

you had

not

been provided the rebate form; you do not have the High Definition

uhm

eh capability at this

time

│

Sir

│with

the receiver that you

have

lack of (polite) indirectness

relatively high number of imperatives (~5%)

indirect imperatives, e.g.

and

i

want you to

tell

me if you see Main Menu on your

screen

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Interaction Analysis (2) –

(Non-)Initiativelow number of requests for directives: only .28%, e.g.

for which journey do you wish to purchase a ticket

;

would you like smoking or non

smoking

(examples from

T

rainline corpus)mainly responding discourse markers (DMs)acknowledging DMs 829 (8.759%) vs. initiating DMs 601 (6.35%)

agreeing DMs 66 (0.697%)

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Questions?

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References

Bolton, K. (2010). ‘Thank you for calling’: Asian Englishes and ‘native-like’ performance in Asian call centres. In A. Kirkpatrick (Ed.). The Routledge handbook of world Englishes (pp. 550-564). London: Routledge.Friginal

, E. (2009).

The language of outsourced call

centers

: A corpus-based study of cross-cultural interaction

. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John

Benjamins

.Lockwood, J., Forey, G., & Price, H. (2008). English in the Philippine call centers and BPO operations: Issues, opportunities and research. In M. L. S. Bautista & K. Bolton (Eds.), Philippine English: Linguistic and literary perspectives (pp. 219-241). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Weisser, M. (2010). Annotating dialogue corpora semi-automatically: A corpus-linguistic approach to Pragmatics. unpublished

Habilitation, University of Bayreuth.Weisser, M. (2011).

DART

–

the Dialogue Annotation and Research

Tool. Submitted to the

International Journal of Corpus Linguistics

.

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