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Managing verbal and embodied conduct in telephone-mediated service encounters

  • Ann Weatherall
    ,
  • David M. Edmonds
Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Abstract

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.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding Chapter Peer-review

Original language

English

Publication milestones

  • Published - 31/12/2019

Publication status

Published - 31/12/2019

Volume

300

Publisher

John Benjamins Publishing Company, Netherlands

Publication series

  • Publication series name: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series

ISBN (Print)

9789027202123

ISBN (Electronic)

9789027262998

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/625682
  • Scopus: 85084466635

Host publication title

Technology Mediated Service Encounters

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