Call center timespace and working from home

Abstract

Ethnographies of Indian call centers highlight the space of the global call center and its separateness from domestic life. This separateness is manifested in a chronotope (depiction of place, time and personhood) which allows for the coordination of sociolinguistic practices between call center workers and their colleagues, both domestic and international. Learning to speak like a ‘professional’ is one reason that many people seek work in call centers. For many call center workers this register is learned on the job from colleagues, trainers and managers. Covid-19, a global pandemic which has forced many industries to take adaptive measures in the face of national lockdowns, has led to many workers suddenly working from home. On May 24th 2020, the Government of India ordered a 21-day nation-wide lockdown, limiting the movement of over a billion people and forcing call center employees to work from home. Drawing from interviews with call center employees impeded by the lockdown, along with an analysis of metalinguistic commentaries from call center trainers before the lockdown, I propose that call center timespace serves the purpose of coordination of sociolinguistic practices and the enregisterment of professional forms of personhood emblematically linked to an array of speech norms including but not limited to pronunciation, grammatical norms and the phrasing structure of customer service interactions. The newly mediatized formulations of workers in a work-from-home environment result in a clash between the chronotopes of home and office.