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Emergency calls constitute a social setting in which communication is a crucial professional practice, and crucially contributes to save lives (and in which, conversely, communication problems can cause death). The aim of these 2 sessions is to better pinpoint how and where communicative challenges are addressed by the professionals responding to emergency calls, as well as how and why communicative details can make a difference for the efficiency of help dispatch. The sessions will be based on 1. the rich tradition of studies of emergency calls in interactional linguistics and conversation analysis, as well as 2. on hands-on recordings of call (authentic data, some from historical events, such as the 911 call of Michael Jackson’s doctor when he died or calls for help from victims of the September 11 World Trade Center crash, some others from (im)famous cases of failures where misunderstandings caused mortal delays in the provision of assistance but also from ordinary cases in which there are less vital issues). We will identify the global organization of the calls, the various steps a call has to go through, the constraints that affect the progression of the call, and the possible loci of trouble, misunderstandings, disagreements and irritations. This will enable us to better understand how communication in emergency calls has both a very mundane dimension, shared with other ordinary forms of talk in interaction, and also technical and specific aspects, that make responding to calls a form of professional talk at work. |
