The fastest growing sector within the IT software and services industry generating thousands of jobs with high paying salaries, the call center industry has been tagged as the “sunshine industry in the Philippines.” However, the industry has been highly criticized for its depersonalizing effects especially on the call center agents. Please see, for instance, the report by the Population Institute of UP.

A study by Prof. Aileen Salonga of the Dept. of English and Comapative Literature at UP Diliman focuses on the concept of agency in Philippine call center discourse. Agency is referred to as the people’s capability to act and lead meaningful lives. The study sees agency as situated, that is, people’s potential to act is always negotiated within structures in society. This means that, as social beings, the kinds of agency that people have are different because they act in different kinds of socio-cultural contexts and occupy different positionalities in society. For instance, someone who comes from a good school and has a good command of English will probably be able to do more than someone who comes from a low-ranked school and whose command of English is poor. This means that the former will have more potential to act, more agency, so to speak, than the latter.

Prof. Salonga’s study examines the call center workers’ negotiations of agency in the offshore call centers, specifically in how they use and make sense of their linguistic practices in the call center workplace. She conducted twenty interviews with call center workers, mostly customer service representatives. The narratives of the informants provided valuable insights into how they see the call center industry, call center work and call center talk, what they think of the linguistic practices required of them and what value they assign to these practices.

These stories were tales of how structure (in this case, the call center workplace) and agency (the call center worker’s potential to act) play off in the lives of call center workers as they negotiate the various constraints of the job in ways that would afford them a certain degree of control, purpose and meaning. They do this by ascribing meaning and purpose to their linguistic practices in the workplace, thus repositioning call center work from something that is depersonalizing and embarrassing to something that can be empowering. They reposition call center work in various ways. First, they see their work as call center agents as a real job, and this is exemplified in the kind of language that they use, which they label as both professional and businesslike. Second, they don’t see their work as demeaning, as they believe that they are the ones in control of the call. While they may have to be polite even to rude customers, they use language to guide and direct the flow of the call. Third, most of them feel that they have a more sophisticated sense of the world largely because they use English in their work and they get to communicate with people from all over the world.

Thus, in contradiction to the negative perception on call center agents, the informants in Prof. Salonga’s study are said to feel empowered by the linguistic practices in the call center workplace. However, this sense of empowerment needs to be treated with caution as well, because even if her informants talk about being empowered, this sense of empowerment is highly differential and very much situated within the call center agents’ varying socio-cultural texts and positionalities within the social structure.

By Gracious B. Romero

As Dulaang UP turns 30 years, it can boast of the best in theatre. Well-known directors such as Chito Roño, Aureaus Solito, Chris Millado, Joel Lamangan, and Floy Quintos,—to name a few. Seasoned performers like Shamaine Centenera, Irma Adlawan, including those who have crossed from stage to screen such as Eugene Domingo, Candy Pangilinan and Frances Makil Ignacio. Also, a good number now occupy executive and managerial positions at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), and theatre company such as the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA).

Dulaang UP is the first recognized and official performing theater group and drama laboratory of the Department of Speech Communication and Theater Arts, University of the Philippines Diliman. Dr. Alexander Cortez one of its founders and its current artistic director, makes available a comprehensive history of the travails and achievements of the drama group in his study: “Dulaang UP (19676-2006): theatre in the academe in the Philippine setting”.

The Silent Soprano. Directed by Dr. Cortez, this was shown in 2007. Ricardo “Batch” Saludo’s new musical centers on a domestic helper Margie, whose golden voice captivates Hong Kong songwriter, Ricky. Mesmerized though he may be by Margie’s singing, big time record producer George thumbs-down the idea of a Filipino maid singing Cantopop – until he comes up with a daring scheme to sell her to the fans. The audacious plan catapults Margie to stardom, but she must follow George’s draconian rules to keep her place at the top of the charts. (Photo and text courtesy of UP Dulaang UP Office)

A Video Clip from The Silent Soprano courtesy of UP Dulaang Office

A Video Clip from St. Louis Loves Dem Filipinos courtesy of UP Dulaang Office

By Gracious B. Romero