How Can I Help You? Exploring Face in a Corpus of Telephone Interpreting

This study explores relational work in telephone interpreting interaction (English-Spanish) at the call center of an insurance company in Spain. Analysis focuses on the discursive construction of (im)politeness oriented to personal and professional face in a complaint call by an English-speaking customer, estimating its impact on rapport. The intensity of face threats and face-enhancing acts has been gauged on the basis of the amount of face-change predicated and the amount of face at stake in the interactive situation, considering the role played by behavioral expectations, face sensitivities and interactional wants, drawing on a rapport management model of (im)politeness. Results show that face change, i.e., the occurrence of inconsistencies between FTAs and claimed self-image, seems to depend less on formal linguistic aspects and more on interactants’ consideration of what is appropriate or inappropriate behavior, based on the frames that individuals have constructed through their own histories of social practice. Professional face overrides personal face for both the operator and the interpreter, whereas the customer orients to both their personal and professional faces, enhancing personal face and attacking professional face, in an attempt to achieve his goals.