CWRaymond2014

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CWRaymond2014
BibType ARTICLE
Key Raymond2014
Author(s) Chase Wesley Raymond
Title Negotiating entitlement to language: Calling 911 without English
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Interactional Linguistics, Emergency Calls, Language Choice, Entitlement, discourse/social interaction, conversation analysis, requests, language contact, institutional talk
Publisher
Year 2014
Language English
City
Month
Journal Language in Society
Volume 43
Number 1
Pages 33–59
URL Link
DOI 10.1017/S0047404513000869
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

When individuals in the United States dial the emergency service telephone number, they immediately encounter some version of the English-language institutional opening “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”. What happens, though, when the one placing the call is not a speaker of English? How do callers and call-takers adapt to overcome this added communicative barrier so that they are able to effectively assess the emergency situation at hand? The present study describes the structure of a language negotiation sequence, which serves to evaluate callers' entitlement to receive service in a language other than the institutional default—in our case, requests for Spanish in lieu of English. We illustrate both how callers initially design requests for language, as well as how call-takers subsequently respond to those differing request formulations. Interactions are examined qualitatively and quantitatively to underscore the context-based contingencies surrounding call-takers' preference for English over the use of translation services. The results prove informative not only in terms of how bilingual talk is organized within social institutions, but also more generally with regard to how humans make active use of a variety of resources in their attempts to engage in interaction with one another.

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