Instrumentalizing Voice

This article applies Bakhtin’s ideas of “dialogics” and “speech genres” and Bourdieu’s approach to the “linguistic field” in a study of the “instrumentalization” of voice in interactive voice response (IVR) telephony. The article examines two dimensions of voice as it appears in IVR services: technician-led installations and voice branding “on-hold messaging.” It is argued that technician-led installations of IVR are essentially monologic in character. In contrast, voice branding agencies’ IVR reveals a more dialogic form of voice. The article is based on data collected from telephone and face-to-face interviews with staff in both sides of IVR and from an examination of six IVR services of major UK companies. The article assesses the social indexing of recorded voice in IVR by drawing out how particular “speech genre” functions of IVR prompts coincide with accent, gender, and age.