Cameron2000_Styling_the_Worker - d/3socio/4-3/cameron.3d...

# Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA.
Journal of Sociolinguistics 4/3, 2000: 323–347
Styling the worker: Gender and the
commodification of language in the
globalized service economy 1
Deborah Cameron
Institute of Education, London
This paper discusses some sociolinguistic characteristics of the speech style
prescribed to workers for interacting with customers in service contexts,
focusing in particular on the linguistic and vocal ‘styling’ prescribed for
operators in telephone call centres in the U.K. Attention is drawn to the
similarities between the preferred style of speech and what is popularly
thought of as ‘women’s language’. The intensive regulation of service work-
ers’ speech and the valorization of ‘feminine’ communication styles are
analysed in relation to changes occurring as a consequence of economic
globalization.
KEYWORDS: Language and gender, globalization, institutional talk,
call centres
INTRODUCTION
Sociolinguists are increasingly recognizing that the phenomenon of globaliza-
tion, a set of far-reaching, transnational, economic, social and cultural changes,
has implications for patterns of language-use, linguistic variation and change
(Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Fairclough 1992; Heller 1999). One aspect of
globalization on which a number of researchers have focused is the ‘new
work order’ (Gee, Hull and Lankshear 1996) in which new (‘post-Fordist’) ways
of working make new demands on the linguistic abilities of workers. Comment-
ators on this subject (e.g. many contributors to Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Gee,
Hull and Lankshear 1996; Gee 2000) place emphasis on the new forms of
linguistic and other agency that workers must in principle develop to meet the
demands of the new capitalism. There is also an argument, however, that new
linguistic demands on workers may in practice entail new (or at least, newly
intensified) forms of control over their linguistic behaviour, and thus a
diminution of their agency as language-users.
The question of control is raised explicitly in the literature of business and
management. In her book Corporate Speak: The Use of Language in Business , for

instance, Fiona Czerniawska (1998) explains that the adoption of new manage-
rial approaches in a context of intensified global competition has sharpened
awareness of language as a valuable commodity, potentially a source of
‘competitive advantage’, which therefore needs to be ‘managed’ rather than
simply left to take care of itself. Particularly in the service sector of the economy,
whose growth is one feature of globalization, one may observe an increasing
tendency for employers to regulate even quite trivial details of workers’ talk
(Cameron 2000; du Gay 1996).