‘Building rapport’ with customers across the world: The global diffusion of a call centre speech style1

This paper identifies a particular ‘rapport‐building’ speech style prescribed to call centre workers in four countries – Denmark, Britain, Hong Kong and the Philippines – irrespective of the language being spoken in the service interaction. It then compares Danish and British call centre workers’ compliance with the prescribed speech style and finds that Danish workers adhere significantly less to it than their British counterparts. It is suggested that this is attributable to the predominance of different politeness norms in the two cultures. The paper then discusses the indexicality of the prescribed speech style and argues that it is more commercially than culturally marked, despite the American origin of call centres. Overall, the paper draws attention to inadequacies in the paradigm focusing on the global spread of English, while lending support to recent theoretical suggestions to focus instead on how practices and styles are exported globally and potentially independently of language. Denne artikel identificerer en særlig ‘relationsskabende’ samtalestil som foreskrives til callcentermedarbejdere i fire lande – Danmark, Storbritannien, Hong Kong og Filippinerne – uafhængigt af hvilket sprog der benyttes i serviceinteraktionen. Herefter bliver danske og engelske callcentermedarbejderes brug af den foreskrevne samtalestil sammenlignet, og det vises at danske medarbejdere gør signifikant mindre brug af den end deres britiske modparter. Det foreslås at dette skyldes at der råder forskellige høflighedsnormer i de to kulturer. Artiklen diskuterer derefter indeksikaliteten af den foreskrevne samtalestil, og argumenterer for at den i højere grad er kommercielt end kulturelt kodet, på trods af callcentres amerikanske oprindelse. I sin helhed gør artiklen opmærksom på utilstrækkeligheder i det paradigme der fokuserer på hvordan engelsk breder sig globalt, mens den underbygger nylige teoretiske forslag om i stedet at fokusere på hvordan praksisser og stile eksporteres globalt og potentielt set uafhængigt af sprog.     

Youth,slang, and pragmatic expressions: Examples from Brazilian Portuguese1

This article draws on an ethnographic study of the stigmatized speech style of poor black male youth in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. These youth are said to speak gíria (‘slang’), and their speech is often described as incomprehensible to the Brazilian middle class. Speakers and listeners point to a wide range of pragmatic expressions as some of the most salient linguistic features associated with this speech style. This article presents examples from Brazilian Portuguese slang, in which youth draw on sound words, obscenities, address forms, and addressee‐oriented tags to create new pragmatic markers and forms of indefinite reference. It is argued that these pragmatic expressions offer multiple opportunities for speakers to convey stance, novelty, and style, social goals long associated with slang. This data suggests that we broaden the purview of slang beyond the lexicon to investigate the ways in which speakers actively innovate within the area of pragmatics.     

Infant Preferences for Structural and Prosodic Properties of Infant‐Directed Speech in the Second Year of Life

While a large literature discusses young infants' preference for an infant‐directed speaking style, few studies have explored preferences after the first year. The present work compares infants' preference for two different properties of IDS speech: prosodic changes (primarily pitch and pitch variability) and structural properties (utterance length; lexical repetition). We found that both 12‐ and 16‐month‐old infants continued to prefer listening to speech with the prosodic properties of IDS, but neither age showed any preference for speech with the lexical repetition and short utterances typical of IDS.     

Martha Stewart behaving Badly: Parody and the symbolic meaning of style1

This study addresses the issue of how to correlate social meaning with linguistic style through an investigation of the parodic speech genre. The analysis examines two parodies of lifestyle entrepreneur Martha Stewart and compares linguistic strategies used in parodies of Stewart to her own linguistic performance on her talk show. Features considered include phonological characteristics, lexical items, politeness strategies, and voice quality. A comparative quantitative analysis of aspirated and released /t/ as employed by Stewart and her parodist reveals that a variable feature of Stewart's style is rendered categorical in the parody. It is demonstrated that both parodies exploit elements associated with Stewart's ‘Good Woman’ image in order to expose Stewart as a ‘Bad Woman’, a reputation she earned for her 2003 insider trading conviction. This study suggests that parodic performance may serve to strengthen and even iconize indexical connections between stylistic variants and their social meaning in particular contexts.     

Coming out at work: performativity and the recognition and renegotiation of identity

This paper is about ‘coming out’ and the process of disclosure and non‐disclosure of minority sexual identity in organizations. The process of ‘coming out’ is important for the individual lesbian or gay man since it is concerned with the discursive recognition and renegotiation of their identity. The study uses storytelling and a double narrative approach, where 92 individuals were interviewed to produce 15 stories of coming out, which were used for discussion in focus groups. The research took place within 6 organizations – 2 emergency services, the police and the fire service, 2 civil service departments and 2 banks. A conceptual framework is developed to explain the process of disclosure, showing it to be a continuing process rather than a single event. The concept of performativity is used to explain how in coming out the discursive practice and the telling of sexuality performs the act of coming out, making it an illocutionary speech act, and one which is made as an active or forced choice. The performative and perlocutionary speech acts interact with available subject positions thereby impacting on the individual's subjectivity. Sexuality is an under‐researched area of diversity in work organizations, as well as being one of the most difficult to research, so the level of access afforded by this research and the framework it produces provides a significant contribution to our understanding of minority sexual identity at work.     

The Translation Methods that Zhang Peiji used in the Rhetoric Translation

Rhetoric plays a vital importance in the creation of prose and the beauty of article.Therefore,if the translated prose can't express the figure of speech correctly,it couldn't correctly describe the ideology and the artistic style of the writers.     

服务承诺和行风建设

以“小白热线”为榜样,把服务承诺和行风建设提高到新的水平。     

Mothers' Speech to Hearing‐Impaired Infants and Children With Cochlear Implants

This study investigated the effects of age, hearing loss, and cochlear implantation on mothers' speech to infants and children. We recorded normal‐hearing (NH) mothers speaking to their children as they typically would do at home and speaking to an adult experimenter. Nine infants (10–37 months) were hearing‐impaired and had used a cochlear implant (CI) for 3 to 18 months. Eighteen NH infants and children were matched either by chronological age (10–37 months) or hearing experience (3–18 months) to the CI children. Prosodic characteristics such as fundamental frequency, utterance duration, and pause duration were measured across utterances in the speech samples. The results revealed that mothers use a typical infant‐directed speech style when speaking to hearing‐impaired children with CIs. The results also suggested that NH mothers speak with more similar vocal styles to NH children and hearing‐impaired children with CIs when matched by hearing experience rather than chronological age. Thus, mothers are sensitive to hearing experience and linguistic abilities of their NH children as well as hearing‐impaired children with CIs.     

A Stylistic Analysis of “Blood,Sweat and Tears” Delivered by Winston Churchill

As we all know, public speaking is a very important style. Based on stylistics, this thesis will analyze stylistic characteristics in "Blood, Sweat and Tears" from two aspects: lexical features and syntactic features. Through analyzing the stylistic characteristics, we can have a better understanding of public speaking and it is useful for us to appreciate public speeches, and to give a public speech.     

Infant‐Directed Prosody Helps Infants Map Sounds to Meanings

Adults typically use an exaggerated, distinctive speaking style when addressing infants. However, the effects of infant‐directed (ID) speech on infants' learning are not yet well understood. This research investigates how ID speech affects how infants perform a key function in language acquisition, associating the sounds of words with their meanings. Seventeen‐month‐old infants were presented with two label‐object pairs in a habituation‐based word learning task. In Experiment 1, the labels were produced in adult‐directed (AD) speech. In Experiment 2, the labels were produced in ID prosody; they had higher pitch, greater pitch variation, and longer durations than the AD labels. We found that infants failed to learn the labels in AD speech, but succeeded in learning the same labels when they were produced in ID speech. Experiment 3 investigated the role of variability in learning from ID speech. When the labels were presented in ID prosody with no variation across tokens, infants failed to learn them. Our findings indicate that ID prosody can affect how readily infants map sounds to meanings and that the variability in prosody that is characteristic of ID speech may play a key role in its effect on learning new words.     

Prosodic cues of identity construction: Intensity in Greek young women's conversational narratives1

The present paper examines the discourse functions of intensity in the context of narrative direct speech quotations. We argue that differentiation in intensity functions as a contextualization cue signalling involvement as well as power negotiation. Intensity, therefore, seems to be an ambivalent signal acquiring its meaning in interaction with other contextual parameters. More specifically, we argue that a louder voice is preferred in in‐group talk representations as a contextualization cue of a high involvement style in conversations between intimate young peers. Lower intensity, on the other hand, is used by young female narrators in the representation of talk with authority‐out‐group figures, as a means of reducing the authority of the adult voices represented in their narratives. The qualitative analysis of our data is further supported by quantitative analysis. We conclude that intensity differentiation in the direct speech quotations of young female narrators functions as a contextualization cue signalling, on the one hand, their independence from adult authority and, on the other, their in‐group bonds.     

Counselor Involvement in Marriage and Family Counseling*

Using a communications framework, a rationale is suggested for determining when a counselor's use of four basic communication styles is likely to be helpful, neutral, or harmful. High disclosure counselor styles are generally seen to be less harmful than may have been previously supposed. Counselor involvement in the style of the high disclosure speech, which conveys an attitude of openness to the clients' reality, is seen as the most. effective form of confrontation. Withholding self by failing to use high disclosure styles, especially in the presence of high rapport, is considered less than satisfactory counselor activity     

Explanatory models for disability: perspectives of health providers working in Malawi

Health providers’ understanding of disability determines how disabled people are treated, and hence it is imperative to address conceptualisations of disability, as this will contribute to better opportunities and realisation of human rights for disabled people. This article will use data from a qualitative study exploring conceptualisations of disability by 22 health service providers from the total health care system in Malawi, including the professional sector (e.g. medical doctors and nurses) and the folk sector (healers and indigenous practices). We will discuss how these perceptions influence the lives of disabled people, using the case of a health service user with physical and speech impairment as an example. Our data show that health providers largely conceptualise disability according to the medical model for disability, contributing to the exclusion of disabled people. The bio-psycho-social model for disability, largely absent as an explanatory model for disability among our informants, is the most inclusive and rights based.     

Morphosyntactic development and educational style of parents in neglected children

This research analyses the morpho-syntactical competence of children in care and the educational style of their parents. The studies from the literature give no specific data concerning how the morphological and syntactic components are affected in children suffering from neglect. These studies point to important deficiencies in language development, but do not specify what such difficulties actually are. This research is carried out within the framework of the residential care children's homes in the region of Extremadura (Spain). The morpho-syntactic competence of the children and the parental educational style of a total of 74 children in residential care are analysed. The subjects are 41 males and 33 females, between 6 and 18 years of age. We apply the ‘Objective Language Criteria Test’ (BLOCScreening) to evaluate their linguistic development and the ‘Autoevaluative Multifactorial Child Adaptation Test’ (TAMAI) to determine educational style. The presence of difficulties in morphosyntaxis is evident. The children with a low dominion of morphology and syntax perceive a more punitive style in the parents. The difficulties in morphosyntax are manifested both expressive and receptive. Use short sentences to frequent omission of morphological markers. Comprehension problems are lower than those of expression, but it shows a erroneous understanding of some grammatical structures, and grammatical errors in spontaneous speech. Use fewer morphologically complex words in their narratives. Have difficulty in organising the content of the speech and the use of cohesive devices (using the precision and accuracy of the conjunctions used in compound sentences). We must stress the need to carry out early prevention and intervention programmes in order to promote an increase in both the quantity and the quality of language stimulation. From there, the need to set up intervention programmes that influence the linguistic competence of children who have suffered abuse.     

Winning the Baldrige Award: How the Henry Ford Health System Undertook a Five‐Year Improvement Process

Henry Ford Health Systems (HFHS) won the 2011 Baldrige Award, a major accomplishment. This achievement resulted from a systemwide focus on minimizing and controlling medical errors, a cultural shift to stimulate innovation and creative problem solving, and service excellence at every level. The five‐year effort centered on meeting Baldrige Award criteria, typically utilized in the for‐profit setting. When applied to the nonprofit sector, HFHS managed to reduce costs, reduce medication and treatment errors, introduce multiple creative clinical programs, and launch a new Ritz Carlton‐quality, hotel‐style service.     

Refocusing on the Parent: What are the social issues of concern for parents of disabled children?

A questionnaire was constructed to analyse the efficacy of service provision for disabled children from the parents' perspective, as well as the needs and issues pertinent to parents (Middleton, 1998, 1992). The familial and personal data identified deep parental concerns and fears regarding professional attitudes and dominance, neglect of parental knowledge, lack of counselling and therapy, coping in the future, support, and the child's aesthetics and body (Brown, 1998). Results indicate that professionals continue to control the parent-professional relationship, assuming the role of 'expert', rather than integrating and consulting parents in a negotiate decision-making process. Parental needs and issues are prescribed by professionals (Oliver & Barnes, 1998), thus marginalising and disempowering the parent (Appleton & Minchom 1991), and reducing opportunity for parental involvement and participation in an equitable 'partnership' relationship with professionals (Dale, 1996).     

A Case Study of Adaptation in a Nonprofit Human Service Organization

This paper demonstrates the applicability of political economy theory to understanding adaptation of human service organizations. Through the use of a case study, the paper demonstrates the adaptation that occurred over twenty years in a family service agency. The findings show an organization selecting a particular service niche in which to operate. The findings further demonstrate a specialized clientele, a diversified program style, marked stability in the organization's financial strategy, and a diversified financial style. The major tier of revenue groups was dominated by Purchase of Service Contracts (POSC) which demonstrated volatility in response to changes in the external environment. Implications are drawn from education and practice.     

Analysis of the Public Speech Given by British Prime Minister Cameron Persuading Scotland to Stay in the UK

Before the independenceof Scotland.prime minister Cameron gave this speech so as to persuade Scotland not splitting from the UK.Cameron' s speech is very exiting and appealing.This paper analysize his public speech from the stylistic perspectives to help us to have better understanding of its language features and give us further inspirations of the public speech.