Baumgarten, N., Du Bois, I. and Gill, V. (2019) Patterns of othering minority groups in telephone gatekeeping encounters in the Sheffield property market. Journal of Language and Discrimination, 3 (2). pp. 120-149. ISSN 2397-2637
Abstract
Research into housing discrimination has pointed out the pivotal role of estate agents as gatekeepers to the housing market. Telephone mystery shopping experiments were carried out with British estate agents to investigate how different British majority and minority groups – indexed by accented speech and ethnic personal names – are treated in those housing gatekeeping encounters. While there was little evidence for overt discrimination, linguistic micro-analyses of the data revealed differential treatment of ethnic majority and minority groups during the call procedure. The differential treatment was found in the estate agents’ call handling behaviours and related to the degree of personalisation of the service encounter in the form of either giving or withholding opportunities for rapport building with the caller. The findings show that ethnolinguistic discrimination in estate agents’ service provision affects the gatekeeping process independently of its outcome, with implications for the notion of equitable access to services and community participation in the United Kingdom.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 Equinox Publishing. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in Journal of Language and Discrimination. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | UK housing market; gatekeeping; accent and name discrimination; rapport management; service encounters |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of Languages and Cultures (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number British Academy (The) IC\100094 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 20 Dec 2019 15:18 |
Last Modified: | 18 Dec 2021 01:38 |
Published Version: | https://journals.equinoxpub.com/JLD/article/view/3... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Equinox Publishing |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1558/jld.39978 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:154858 |