Chapter 9. And the postcode darlin’ . Vocative variation in service encounters on the telephone in Northern England

Abstract

The chapter presents the results of an investigation of vocative use in telephone service encounters in the British housing market. The investigation is based on 300+ “mystery shopping” telephone calls placed with real estate agents servicing four socio-economically different areas of a city in northern England. The results show how the contrastiveness inherent in the address system is put to use in context-specific decisions about relationship and transaction management in telephone service encounters: Vocative use is nonreciprocal and restricted to estate agents. The frequency of vocative use as well as choice of vocative type by estate agents (first name, last name, honorific, endearment) is socio-economically stratified and sensitive to socio-ethnic group membership projected through callers’ accent and name. Variation in vocative type within individual calls allows the agent to explicate an asymmetrical role relationship for the purpose of transaction control.