Journal of Language and Politics 6:1 (2007) 51-73

ISSN 1569-2159/ E-ISSN 1569-9862 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

Language, ideology and neoliberalism

Marnie Holborow
Dublin City University

When the ideas of capitalist globalisation appear to speak as one across the world, it is timely
to re-examine the interconnections between language and ideology. The global market and its
dominant neoliberal ideology, increasingly expressed in English, have led some to hold that
the language itself constructs the hegemonic order of global capitalism. Others have focussed
on language not only as the bearer of ideology but as part of the immaterial production of
capitalism. This paper discusses the way in which language and ideology interconnect but
argues that the ideology of neoliberalism cannot be adequately described as a discourse.
Instead, it is an ideology with specific historical roots and which, as a dominant ideology
makes itself felt in language, although not without contradictions. Two aspects of language
and neoliberal ideology are examined here: firstly the way in which the customer metaphor
has been adopted in different and unexpected settings and, secondly, how models of listening
and speaking in call centres are framed around neoliberal assumptions. Both processes aim to
impose a kind of “corporate speak” to reinforce neoliberal ideas as common sense, but both
also contain tensions because language is neither a straitjacket nor a settled ideological
product. This paper argues that language and ideology are not the same and that it is in the
dynamic of their interconnection that world views are both made and contested.

Keywords: call centres; “corporate speak”; customer; discourse; English; ideology;

market fundamentalism; metaphor; neoliberalism.

The ideology of the global market insinuates itself everywhere. At a macro

level, international reports, often emanating from the IMF, the World Bank
and the OECD, chime thick and fast with assumed notions about the need to
deregulate, to open up state companies and services to market competition, to
pursue further trade liberalisation. At a micro level, almost every company
website, mission statement and strategic plan pronounces that “demand” and
“competition” are synonymous with efficiency, cost-effectiveness and “best
practice”. This is the neoliberal world in which “free markets in both
commodities and capital contain all that is necessary to deliver freedom and
well-being to all and sundry” (Harvey 2003:201). The strains of the market
resonate not just through official documents, but at every meeting, in emails
and the language of individuals. Ironically, for an ideology so given to the

1
promotion of “choice”, it is expressed in a drab uniformity which would have
made a soviet bureaucrat blush.

Such strident sameness, so detectable in language, raises sharply issues

around the relationship between ideology and language, and specifically
between a dominant ideology and language. In what ways is English the
bearer of this ideology and part of US global dominance? Is language playing
a more salient, constitutive role in capitalism today? With ever greater use of
communication technologies to promote, sell and keep selling, has language
itself become a product in capitalist production? Is discourse the same as
ideology and, if not, how does ideology interact with language? These are the
concerns of this article. Through an examination of some specific
interconnections between neoliberal ideology and English, I hope to describe
something of how ideology works through language and, conversely, how
language can contest ideology.

I shall investigate two aspects of the language–ideology interconnection. The

first concerns the use of the “customer” metaphor and the second models of
listening promoted in call centres, both of which are activated by neoliberal
ideology. Before this, however, I will make some general remarks about
ideology and language and the debate around them and, briefly, chart the
contours of the ideology of neoliberalism.

Ideology and power in society

In recent times, discourse has come to be used in place of ideology. For

Foucault, whose influence in this area still remains considerable, the blurring
between ideology and discourse involved a shift away from the classical
Marxist understanding of ideology and, correspondingly, the downplaying of
the social and economic foundations of power in favour of “discursive
regimes” (Foucault 1979:36). Because this paper does not take this
interpretation, and because the concept of ideology is contentious, I will
define the way in which I am using the term. It revolves around three
strands:

1) Ideology can appropriately be described as meaning in the service of power

(Thompson 1990:7). It is a set of ideas that emerges from specific social
relations and supports the interests of a particular social class. Thus rather
than being the expression of what is objectively true, ideologies are true
according to particular standpoints; therefore ideology is a concept that
cannot easily be stripped of its negative sense. I use the term here in
conformity with a broadly Marxist position that ideology is representation as

2
in a camera obscura whereby things appear in a slanted fashion, “upside
down” (Marx and Engels 1974:47), distortions that suit the interests of its
promoters1.

2) The bias of an ideology gives rise to contradictions within the ideology

which become manifest at different levels. First, the vision of the world that
an ideology presents can clash with what is actually happening and this can
lead to its seemingly accepted status being questioned. Secondly, there are
competing and different ideologies that exist in society which means that even
dominant ideologies do not always hold sway and, depending on the weight
of other forms of social contest, are open to being opposed in unpredictable
ways (Gramsci 1971:333). Far from ideologies constituting a kind of social
cement or a social given, they can fall victim to their own inconsistencies, and
like the globalisation anti-globalisation case, implode into their opposites.

3) Language, particularly, because it is everywhere in society and a highly

sensitive indicator of social change, is an immediate (although not the only 2)
way of grasping ideology. An examination of the workings of ideology in
language highlights just how unpredictable this process is and that far from
language being ideologically predetermined, its speakers, as social actors in
their own right and faced with different social developments, may at the same
time accept some aspects of the ideology and challenge others.

Language and ideology

Language and ideology overlap in so many ways that it is difficult to say

where one begins and the other ends. Both represent reality, both are
symbolic, both interpret the world. Although some language is patently more
ideological, all language has the potential to be ideological (Volosinov
1973:10). Because ideology crystallizes in language, ideology can appear as if
frozen in language. Repeated from the lofty heights of the media and
positions of power, these ideological representations can acquire the status of
natural truths and common sense. This was the significant insight that
Gramsci made when he identified that this uncritical acceptance was part of
how ruling ideas won consent, or hegemony. In particular, language could
give specific expression to a whole ideology, bestow a new twist to
established ways of thinking which then becomes taken for granted, almost
self–evident (Gramsci 1971; 323-325; 418-425).

1
For a fuller account of Marx’s view of ideology see Holborow 1999
2
Roland Barthes’ depiction of ideology in visual representation is a powerful case in point (Barthes
1973)

3
Others have expressed this sedimentation of ideology in language in a
different way. Lakoff and Johnson have described how widely used
metaphors often mask the social impetus of their original adoption and thus
become invisible envelopes of ideology. They give the example of the now
widely used metaphor “Labour is a resource”. The metaphor equates human
work with a natural resource which places the speaker inadvertently in a
position which ignores the quality of labour and sees labour like oil - the
cheaper the better (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 236-237). These metaphors are
social standpoints and can be true or false according to where you are
standing. The wider the usage, the less salient is the metaphor and the more
its meaning appears “natural”. As we shall see, within neoliberal ideology,
certain metaphors obtain with varying degrees of acceptance.

However these interconnections do not mean that language and ideology are
the same. Every sign is subject to ideological evaluation and critique and
language and use of words can become hotly contested. Raymond Williams
described something of this process when he identified how in the
development of a language, “ in certain words, tones and rhythms, meanings
are offered, felt for, tested, confirmed, qualified, changed”(Williams 1976:12).
Writing at a time of social upheaval, he could see how language did not
simply reflect the processes of society but that within language itself, some
important social historical processes occurred. He selected certain
“keywords” in post-second world war Britain which he saw as particularly
ideologically sensitive and which encapsulated this dynamic. Both continuity
and discontinuity and also deep conflicts of value and belief could be found in
words such as consumer, conventional, intellectual, interest, peasant, progressive
and that these processes involved not only the study of meaning but also the
study of social values and conceptions. Analysis in this frame could give that
“extra edge of consciousness” against the shaping of meaning by a dominant
class. Williams explains:

This is not a neutral review of meanings. It is an exploration of the

vocabulary of a crucial area of social and cultural discussion , which has

been inherited within precise historical and social conditions and which

has to be made at once conscious and critical – subject to change as well as

to continuity – if the millions of people in whom it is active are to see it as

active: not a tradition to be learned, nor a consensus which [….] has a

natural authority ; but as a shaping and reshaping in real circumstances

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 and from profoundly different and important points of view; a vocabulary

to use , to find our own ways in to change as we find it necessary to

change, as we go on making our own language and history.

(Williams 1976:24) [emphasis in the original]

This questioning of the ideological meaning of words can take place over long
periods of time or can be concentrated into shorter periods, especially when
social upheavals and crises break down normal assumptions. Williams’s
observations sprang from the social turmoil after the second world war and
his insights about consensus and contention around language have, as we
shall see, particular resonance again.

A number of things follow from the fact that language and ideology are
distinct from one another. Firstly, it is not possible to impute ideological
meanings to language per se. Because ideology can be distilled in language
does not mean that it is indefinitely, or that language is irrevocably locked
within a certain ideological encasing. Many valuable contributions to
foregrounding the ideological in language have fallen, sometimes
unwittingly, into this determinist mould. One of the first to lay bare the
ideological role that English played for first the British Empire and then for
US imperialism was Robert Phillipson (1992). He locates “Englishization” and
linguistic imperialism as part of the project of globalisation order that has
increased the global gap between the haves and the have-nots and he sees
English as an instrument in global dominance (Phillipson 2004). He accepts
that this hegemonic ordering could be challenged but focuses on a challenge
outside English rather than within it. His suggestion that Esperanto could
provide a neutral medium confirms negatively how much he sees English as
particularly value–laden. He even ascribes to English a certain character.
English has specific pull factors for young speakers, who, he claimed, saw
English as representing consumerism and what he calls hedonism
(Phillipson 2003:65).

This viewpoint underestimates the dynamic of language and the roles of

speakers in its making. “Linguistic imperialism” may highlight the reality of
US global domination, but it also glosses over tensions and challenges that
make themselves felt within a language. Opposition to language dominance,
Phillipson proposes, should take the form of promotion of other and minority
languages, as if languages themselves are ideological standpoints. No one
could fail to recognise the fact that real language choice hardly exists

5
anywhere in the unequal world of today; nor could anyone deny the ongoing
need to defend the right for everyone to speak their own language. But that
battle does not necessarily challenge the global elites who ride the tiger of
world English today. As transnational corporations know all too well,
“localisation” can easily live with globalisation. Seeing shifts into other
languages as an act of resistance can overlook - as nationalist ideology often
has - that not every speaker of a dominant language is in a position of power
and minority languages can also be exclusionary and enforced by elites.
Opposition to the system and contesting dominant ideology takes different
forms worldwide and is not dependent on using a particular language. Many
have chosen, or felt obliged, to express their resistance in English.

Secondly, language by its nature cannot be said to be another product in the

system. It has been argued, for example, that language in global markets
today, has become a central part of economic production. The renowned
critics of globalization, Michael Hardt and Tony Negri (2005) maintain that
language itself maintains social hierarchies - within and across communities
“as a relationship between power and knowledge” (205,132). They argue that
language has become part of what they call immaterial production which has
become “internal to labour” by creating “new means of collaboration” and
“external to capital” because it is created outside direct production processes
(2005, 147). Norman Fairclough makes a similar case, if less strongly, that “
language is becoming more central and more salient in New Capitalism”
because “the system is information-based, depends more on communication
technologies and because brands and branding determines economic success”
( Fairclough 2002: 163-66).

It is easy to see why these ideas about the weight of language in the global
economy have some appeal: not only has communication between people
changed beyond all recognition over the last two decades but also those at the
head of governments and corporations constantly promote the idea that we
are living in a post-industrial “information” age where spin, branding, and
communication override everything else. But the notion that language in
global capitalism has been transformed into a product like any other
overlooks the dependence of the system on real products for its profits
underestimates the fundamental social role that language has always had.
Language has been a vital component in human labour from earliest times
and, as one memorable account shows, language interacts dialectically with
social organization; it is made by the social environment and it also helps to
transform it (Beaken 1996). Language-mediated production systems, from this
point of view, are not all that new. Capitalism production has at different
times required an expansion of specialised skills amongst its workers. In the

6
nineteenth century this consideration gave an impetus to the provision of
universal primary education in Britain and in some parts of its Empire.
Literacy on a mass scale became another part of labour power in the new
methods of production and produced new ways of life and new forms of class
division. The “knowledge” economy we are seeing today is a difference of
degree not of kind. I will return to the discussion of the role of language in
global capitalism today when I examine the language used in call centres.

It would seem that Hardt and Negri’s claims for “the immaterial paradigm of
production” are more indicative of a persistent philosophical idealism than an
understanding of capitalist production. They locate the origin of their model
in Foucault’s writings (Hardt and Negri 2005: 142). Discourse thus assumes a
pivotal role as a “disciplining” mechanism, as various “regimes” that order
society and as the only way of apprehending reality. Foucault refused a place
for ideology in his schema because he wanted to avoid the Marxist frame
which would link the ideological properties of discourse to the economic base
(Foucault 1979:36). However, philosophically, there are very good reasons to
maintain the connection and distinguish between the different sorts of power
that emanates from each. What is imagined and what is lived are not the
same, in the sense that the idea of gravity never drowned anyone, as Marx
once wryly remarked (Marx and Engels 1974: 37-41). Such distinctions are not
just fanciful philosophizing; without them, inventions such as the “smooth
space” of a “deterritorialised” Empire can assume such gargantuan
dimensions that the more mundane reality of bread, and guns, can be left out
entirely - as Hardt and Negri tend to do in their analysis (Hardt and Negri
2000)3.

While ideology may help to tie people to the power structures of society, the
manufacture of consent is only one aspect of how capitalism governs, and not
even the determining one. Those in power rule by both force and consent, a
fact which is often left out in accounts of discourse and society, as Blommaert
reminds us (Blommaert 2005: 167-169). The power of discourse is not of the
same order as the power of capital both in terms of experience and effect and
forgetting this fails to identify the driving force of the system as a whole, the
drive for profits (Jones, 2004).

Making discourse primary in society – what might be termed discourse

overstretch - can too often give the impression that power relations are
expressed as surely in texts as in the real world. The presence of larger social
forces and the reality of conflicting social relations can become lost in an ever
diminishing field of enquiry which focuses on the textual and formal features
3
See Boron 2005 for a critique of Hardt and Negri on these grounds.

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of language. I argue here that the notion of ideology, as distinct but also
interacting with language, allows us to better understand the dynamic of
social relations of which the makers of language are part. Ideology, in the
Marxist sense, with its constant reference to wider social power, helps
maintain this vital proportionality and therefore remains an indispensable
tool in any critique of power in society.

The Ideology of Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism, a term only relatively recently used in anglophone circles, is

also described as the “Washington consensus” which shows the weight of the
US in its making. It is an ideology that can be summarized thus:

“ an array of market orientated principles designed by the government

of the United States and the international financial institutions that it

largely dominates and implemented by them in […] stringent structural

adjustment programmes. The basic rules, in brief, are: liberalize trade

and finance, let markets set price (“get prices right”), end inflation

(“macroeconomic stability”) privatize. The Government should “get out

of the way”…..

(Chomsky 1999: 19-20)

As the US sociologist, Michael Mann points out, what the “rest of the world
calls neoliberalism” the US calls ‘encouraging the world toward more open
trade’, preferably that which favours the US, in the belief that growth flows
from freeing up markets” (Mann, 2003:57). Harvey, in his invaluable history
of neoliberalism, describes it a “ a theory of political economic practices that
proposes that human well being can best be advanced by liberating individual
entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework
characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade”
(Harvey 2005:2).

Neoliberal ideas, it should be remembered, did not so overwhelming

convince when they first appeared. Their origins can be traced to a small
group of passionate advocates who in the 1940s coalesced around the
Austrian political philosopher, Friedrich von Hayek. The group shared a
nostalgia for classical nineteenth century ideals of laissez-faire

8
entrepreneurialism which, Hayek believed, had been effaced under the state
control of both nazi and communist totalitarianism (Hayek 1979).
Individualism and its making of a “spontaneous”, rather than planned, social
order was the fount of social and economic progress. (1979 12-13). The worst
affliction for Hayek, articulated in his famous Road to Serfdom written in 1947,
was twentieth century “statism” in which individual ingenuity was crushed
and the “worst” people came out on top (1979: 100-14). His ideas remained
obscure until economic crisis struck in the 1970’s when they found new
powerful patrons in the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, the Heritage
Foundation in Washington and particularly the University of Chicago, where
Milton Friedman was drawing up pure neoliberal models for the economies
of South America (Harvey 2005:74). Neoliberalism moved centre stage this
side of the Atlantic with Thatcher’s government and her dictum that there was
no such thing as society only individual men and women. Soon after, under
Reagan, Washington channelled the new thinking through the global conduit
of the IMF and required Mexico to implement neoliberal reforms in return for
debt rescheduling. Thereafter, neoliberal orthodoxy became the norm for the
various shock therapy programmes imposed by the IMF in many of its 184
members scattered across the global south. Meanwhile, in western countries,
as part of an attempt to restore previous profit levels, neoliberal policies were
driving through privatization programmes which converted state services
into private assets, to be invested and speculated in for profits. Thus the
neoliberal world order took shape.

One of the first to describe modern-day neoliberalism as a coherent ideology

and to see its workings through language was the French sociologist, Pierre
Bourdieu. He saw the new thinking was ‘destroying collective structures
which may impede the pure market logic’ and the free market was acquiring
the status of unassailable scientific theory. Its advocates – which he saw in the
case of France as an unholy alliance of political, administrative and business
elite - presented free market economics as a kind of incontestable logic whose
dictates of flexibility, competitiveness and rampant individualism brooked no
opposition. It was a ‘strong discourse’ an ‘infernal machine’ whose necessity
imposes itself across society, even on those who stand to lose from its
imperatives (Bourdieu, 1998). Earlier than other critics of capitalist
globalisation, he saw how French capitalism was restructuring, and its new
elites embracing economic liberalism. They claimed it was the necessary
condition of political liberty despite the fact that neoliberal policies were
restricting people’s choices not expanding them (Bourdieu, 1999). He argued
that a section of the dominant class were tied closely to corporate interests
and together they imposed a unique form of French neoliberalism through
state dirigisme (Lane 2000: 166-192).

9
Bourdieu stressed the weight of the neoliberal consensus within what he
called symbolic capital. Interestingly, for one so critical of market
fundamentalism, he sees expressions gaining legitimacy through a kind of
linguistic market (Bourdieu 1992: 106-159). But he stressed how neoliberal
logic could be contested and, returning to an older tradition amongst French
intellectuals, reengaged with the struggles against privatization and labour
deregulation in France. He reaffirmed the important political role of
academics in taking a stand against the facile identification between economic
liberalism and political liberty, and the fake universalism of the “new
neoliberal doxa” which, in reality, serves the interests of the dominant
class. (Bourdieu, 2003:23).

The Workings of Neoliberalism in Language

The way in which ‘corporate-speak’ has seeped down into various

communicative events has been well documented (Cameron, 2001; Fairclough
2003; Blommaert, 2003; Heller 2003). Hall, referring to the ‘new
managerialism’ has showed how it becomes the conduit for neoliberal ideas
in institutions and the ideology that turns citizens into consumers (Hall 2003).
His view is that people have been inculcated to a new culture- change, a new
kind of common sense “so that slowly but surely everybody … becomes
his/her own kind of ‘manager’ (Hall 2003). Others remain sceptical that the
“new managerialism” has gained consensus. An interesting study of ‘new
managerialism’ in higher education concludes that it is not accepted en bloc or
uniformly, even if its language is adopted. The authors show that amongst
academics, who increasingly find themselves becoming accountants and
fundraisers, they nevertheless remain unconvinced that market
fundamentalism is appropriate in the university (Deem and Brehony 2005).
Fairclough also makes the point that much of the manager discourse remains
at the official rather the informal level and few actually adopt the language as
their own (Fairclough 2002:195).

However these studies focus only tangentially, if at all, on the bigger global
and economic context of neoliberalism. Because their focus is an ideological
understanding of the phenomenon of ‘new manageralism’, they also
concentrate little on how language comes to absorb this ideology. It would
seem that the interconnections between language and ideology can only be
fully grasped both through reference to the wider context of neoliberalism
and closer examination exactly how the ideology takes shape in language.

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Hasan (2003) takes just this approach, with some interesting insights. She
shows how the semantic shift from global , with its straightforward meaning
of “concerning or including the whole world” to globalisation which now
included “lower costs of production”, “expansion of companies “ and
“appropriate take-overs” coincided with the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin
Wall and the opening up of the new markets to global capitalism (Hasan 2003
434-5). In the same article she identifies processes of meaning shift that reveal
ways in which ideology becomes consensual in language. Re-semanticisation,
which was used in the context of world Englishes and the ways in which they
adapted to different cultures, she sees as a key process whose boundaries here
are set by power and the control of wealth. It involves a play on evaluative
and connotative aspects of language which make new meaning associations.
Liberalization of trade, for example, not only confers all the positive evaluations
of liberal (freedom, tolerance and moderation) to trade but also, she shows,
enacts semantic reversal in so far as global trade is stripped of its self-interest
and becomes , as if magically, in the interest of others (Hasan 2003:441).

The Customer Frame

The concept of re-semanticisation captures well how ideological shifts gain

currency. The prevailing tenet of neoliberalism is the notion that the market is
the just arbiter of social production and how the invisible hand of supply and
demand is what orders our world. For those of us in higher education, we
experience the language of the market being applied ubiquitously across all
education and research activity. “The market place” and “quality
assessment”, courses being “competitive”, teaching being “quality proofed”,
lecturers work being “ benchmarked”, universities “service providers” and
needing to achieve high “market visibility” and research being about patents,
income generation and property rights are all now part and parcel of
university life and language, officially at least. Re-semanticisation here
involves extending the field of particular word clusters whose super-ordinate
is normally business or industry to the academic world.

The way “customer” is used in new settings contains both re-semanticisation in

that the term is stretched beyond its usual commercial transaction context and
also metaphor in that new subjects are likened to a customer. “Customer”, in
these usages, is endowed with a semi-reverential status, whose supposed
needs and endless desires become the guiding light of progress and efficiency.
Almost everybody in every sphere of activity becomes a “customer”.

11
 For example, it is not uncommon in educational settings for students to be
referred to as “customers”, and not always in quotes. The identification
between what was a traditional customer in receipt of a good in exchange for
money and a student in a learning institution is a metaphor redolent with
ideology. It evokes superficially positive factors, in this case of putting the
student first and responding to what she or he might want. But the terms of
reference that the metaphor evokes are patently false. It is worth examining
how this particular meaning transfer comes about and what ideological
slippages and distortions it involves.

Students cannot be customers because degrees are not quite, in fact, bought
and sold and the student does not always have the last word – not because
universities are authoritarian (which they may well be) but because education
is not that sort of transaction. The rounded experience of teaching and
learning is not just about product transference from lecturer to student but (as
anyone engaged in it will know) about reciprocity, reference to a larger world
and many other things besides. Behind this ideological metaphor lies
something else which does not make the apparent centering on the student
innocent. It reflects new funding mechanisms which have increasingly been
displaced from the institution to the individual student. In Britain and
Australia this has taken the form of the introduction of fees; where I teach,
Ireland, it has taken the form of funding being allocated on the basis of each
student enrolled. The use of the student-customer may be seen as a part, not
of a genuine desire to prioritise students’ interests or rights, but of the reality
of decreasing state funds which result in institutions chasing every student
and going to all lengths to persuade them to register and stay registered. The
metaphor appears innocently apt, but it suggests how deeply the neoliberal
agenda has penetrated education. By the same stroke, paradoxically, the
student/customer metaphor dumbs down the educational experience. The
conversion of education into a service, learning into a product and a degree
into a cash transaction is not without its ironies in our much heralded
“knowledge” economy. From an ideological point of view, it shows how the
intended positive re-semanticisation of customer can have the opposite effect
and actually connote a much diminished picture of the learning process.

When one looks further across the social arena, one finds “customer”
metaphor cropping up in even more unexpected places. The asylum seeker
process in Ireland, under the Office of the Refugee Application Commissioner
insists strenuously that it is customer-orientated. In 2002, the office launched
its Customer Service Action Plan in which it listed its customers as:

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 ∙ Individual asylum seekers
∙ Dependents of asylum seekers
∙ Refugees who are seeking reunification with family members
∙ Legal representatives of asylum seekers
∙ The Government
∙ The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform
∙ Other Government Departments and Statutory Agencies
∙ The general public and their elected representatives
∙ Non-Governmental organisations
∙The United National Higher commissioner for refugees
∙ The Staff of the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner

(Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner 2002:4)

The Office admitted that its customer base was somewhat broad and that its
“stakeholders” rather diverse (ibid: 4). None of the parties in the asylum
seeking process is excluded from the designation of customer and no
distinction is made between those agents who grant asylum and those who
are subjected to it. Yet it is the Government, in the form of the Minister of
Justice, that has the final say about whether one of the many failed asylum
seekers will be deported. This involves the forcible removal of the person by
the Irish police, often early in the morning, often restrained and sometimes
physically carried on to specially hired planes4. Such practices, if proof is
needed, leave no doubt as to the fact that some “customers” of the
immigration office have very much more power than others.

The following year the Office addressed its asylum seeker “customers”
under its Customer Charter. It is worth producing some sections of this
unique document in full.

Customer Charter
At the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, we are committed to delivering a high-quality service
to our customers. This charter sets out the standards of service you can expect from us.
Our Commitments
Quality service for all
We are committed to making sure that our services take into account the needs of all our customers whatever
their background, and in particular, the needs of those groups identified in equality legislation.
• Our office will be open from 8.45 am to 4.00 pm Monday to Friday (apart from public holidays).
• We will try to keep waiting times in our reception areas to a minimum.
• If you have an appointment we will see you promptly when you arrive.
• We will deal with you politely and as quickly as possible.
• We will keep our reception and waiting areas clean and tidy, and will improve our facilities where
necessary.

4
See the account in Metro Eireann, an Irish publication dealing with asylum issues , Jan 2004 Vol 5,
Issue 1.

13
 • If you need an interpreter, we will provide one.
• We will continue to review and improve our access for our customers with disabilities.
Documents
• We will produce all documents (such as forms and information leaflets) in as user-friendly a format
as possible and in an appropriate range of languages.
[………]
Complaints
You have a right to complain if the service you receive from us does not meet the standards set
out in this charter, or if you believe that any action or decision that we have taken is not in line with
our rules, practice or policy. If you want to make a complaint, please write to our Customer Liaison
Officer (see section 12 for details).
For all complaints we receive, we will do the following:
• Acknowledge them by letter within five working days of receiving them.
• Investigate them thoroughly.
• Send you a full reply within 20 working days or, if this is not possible, send you an explanation of our
current position and what we will do next.
You will find a copy of our complaints procedure on our website (www.orac.ie) or you can contact
our Customer Service Centre by phone or e-mail(see section 12 for details).
Please note that this complaints procedure does not cover our decisions about asylum applications or how we
arrive at these decisions. If, after your interview, your application is unsuccessful, you can appeal to the
Refugee Appeals Tribunal.
Listening to you
As well as consulting NGOs, we will hold customer surveys at least twice a year to get your comments and
views. These surveys will form part of our process to improve and, where necessary, change our service
delivery so that we continue to meet our customers’ needs.
If you want to take part in our surveys, please write to our Customer Liaison Officer (see section 12 for details).
Confidentiality
We will keep confidential any personal information you give us.
We may pass your information to other government agencies in line with the Immigration Act 2003 so that they
can perform their legal duties. We may also pass your information to the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees in line with the terms of the Refugee Act, 1996 (as amended), and to other countries using the
Dublin II Regulation or Dublin Convention. The Dublin II Regulation and Dublin Convention provide the legal
basis for deciding which EU Member State is responsible for examining an asylum application made in another
Member State (including Iceland and Norway).

Office of the Refugee Application Commissioner 2005

The reality of the asylum seeker process in Ireland needs to be described for
the full ideological value of the customer metaphor in this context to become
apparent. Just 5% of all applications for refugee status are granted, on the
Office’s own admission (ORAC 2004: Appendix 2). These low levels of success
in the overall function of the Office make something of a nonsense of the
Office’s concern for its “customers”. All the “customer services” on offer –
“listening to you”, right to complain and consultation – overlook the
overriding one that isn’t - securing refugee status. When one also considers
that the Irish refugee appeals procedure has been singled out for lacking in
transparency and accountability (Coulter 2005) the supposed concern for a
Customer Charter – down to its tone, every detail and blind naivety –appear
all the more absurd.

In fact, the customer metaphor is not naïve. “Customer” equalizes everyone;

applying it beyond those involved in a purely commercial transaction to other
groups of people distorts social relations and effaces social power. The
oppressive state of affairs which sees individuals having to move from one

14
end of the globe to another (often as a result of global neoliberal strategies of
market restructuring) and, once having arrived in a strange land, to be
subjected to rigorously strict immigration laws is blithely smoothed away in
the customer designation. The fact that a state agency should employ such an
approach falsifies things further. The Refugees Office’s presentation of itself
as just another service-provider, in line with neoliberal dictates of the
corporate model, serves to mask the harsher reality of the coercive arm of the
state. The language of the glossy brochures soon fades into insignificance
when the “customer” in question is dragged out across the tarmac in
handcuffs, and deported. This constant threat in the background is another
reason why “customer” jars so, confirming that here, at least, the metaphor
fails to gain “common sense” status. Indeed it appears as a strong case of
neoliberal overkill. This example is also instructive regarding the distinction
between dominant ideology and language use. The customer metaphor may
be part of the neoliberal consensus at official levels but few, not those working
in the office nor those who it is supposedly describing, would take it as
seriously as do the writers of these mission statements. It is very unlikely that
an asylum seeker would describe herself or himself as a “customer” – proof
enough of the failure of this ideology to connect and of the gap between
dominant ideology and those subject to its dictates.

Marx’s description of ideology entailed two crucial aspects: dominant

ideologies reflected the interests of the ruling class and that in this respect
they consisted of a distorted view of the world. Applying the workings of the
market to asylum- seeking, through the apparently anodyne use of
“customer”, shows both processes at work. It is in the interests of those who
seek to tightly control the granting of asylum to cover over its exclusionary
policy by a focus on “customer” relations. How asylum seekers are treated
and the number and nature of deportations have become live political issues 4.
As part of a strategy to assuage public opposition, the treatment of asylum
seekers is presented as supposedly irreproachable while side-stepping the real
issues of deep institutional discrimination (Loyal 2003). This is not a case of
discrimination in discursive negative stereotyping; nor will it be erased
through applying “rules of ethical discourse” (Reisigl and Wodak 2001:60-71).
This is a kind of discrimination in reverse, an ideological representation
whose effacing of social conflict is so exaggerated that it fails to be perceived
as true. Even through their own customer awareness prism, the Refugee
Office recognizes something of this dilemma as the quaint “Please Note”
addendum after the Complaints section makes clear: complaints about the
decision to refuse asylum – something that we know over 90% of these
“customers” will experience – are ruled out.

15
Thus we see here how the simple overplaying of customer is deeply
ideological. It may meet the template of neoliberalism, in its mimicry of
private corporations and the transposing of market conditions to new areas.
The irony is that in the state’s enthusiasm to refashion its way of doing
business, it exposes inadvertently its own absurd falsification.

Customised talk

Neoliberal ideology interconnects with language not only through choice of

metaphors but also through promoting styles of language interaction.
Speaking styles have become a perceived key component of selling techniques
with their own particular contribution to the dictates of the market. Branding,
new ways of reaching customers, aggressive after-sales follow-up,
presentation, visibility absorb ever-growing expenditure from multinational
corporations (Klein 2000). Emphasis on this sphere of activity has become an
important tool in the promotion of the neoliberal view of things.

Its premise is that the market works according to its own rules, and operates a
“free” market whose only limits are those of supply and demand. The
exclusive concern with communication techniques with potential customers
ignores the plethora of conditioning factors in this supposedly free-wheeling
purchasing world. Tariffs, influence, subsidies, protections, economic
leverage, the protective arm of the state, all the conditioning factors that
actually decide the success of the selling of goods, and whose goods are sold,
are absent from the neoliberal scheme of things5. The ideology is presented
in simple terms and part of the appeal is to present a straight line from the
individual consumer to the overall workings of the economy, both stretching
towards an endless horizon of ever-greater consumerism. In this scheme of
things individualism and individual interaction is at a premium.

Call Centres — or Business Process Outsourcing Providers as they prefer to be

known — take the inculcation of speaking styles in their employees very
seriously. Cameron, investigating this phenomenon, has shown how
transnational corporations have attempted to standardise styles of speech
(Cameron 2002). Styles previously reserved for personal communication – the
use of first name, affirming and encouraging, closing social distance – have
shifted into public discourse, as Fairclough (1995) has pointed out. Service
providers, selling face to face or on-line adopt what is conventionally

5
A description of the way in which the US state intervenes very aggressively in the running of markets
is given in Arrighi 2005; 27-30.

16
considered to be the discourse of interpersonal relationships in an effort to
establish stronger affective links with their customers.

The way that language is placed at the service of selling is ideologically

instructive. One such international provider based in Dublin, with its motto
We Think like a Customer, requires its multicultural workforce to do the same 6.
Their customer care training sessions ask them to think of their own good and
bad experiences as a customer and then to describe business-friendly
techniques in dealings with customers. Everything is in the language, the tone
and the ‘way you listen’, as the extracts from one such learning module makes
clear:

Listening for customer clues

● Understanding and being understood
● Be Business friendly
● Don’t get desensitized
● Don’t argue; solve the problem
● Smile
● Show empathy

Three goals of listening:

● Hear the customer
● Understand the customer
● Relate to the customer

The ‘ASAP’ technique

● Apologise sincerely and follow up with action
● Show empathy with the customer
● Accept ownership
● Prepare to help

Projecting warmth on the telephone. stipulating personality styles to keep the

customer satisfied, has reached proportions in this service industry that has
led some to define these aspects of work as “emotional labour” (Bunting
2004:62). This is serious corporate speaking styles, developed on the basis of
keeping the customer “loyal”. The acceptance that the customer category
applies equally to us all, that customers in a market demand absolute
subordination to their needs and that call centre assistants must be moulded
into that attitude, indeed should “take ownership” for a process that is not
theirs to own – all these reveal other ideological aspects of the customer
phenomenon.

6
I have not identified the name of the Dublin call centre whose materials I reproduce here as those
employees I spoke to specifically asked me not to. It would seem that procedures and work patterns
described here resemble other call centres world-wide; the accounts of Bunting (2004) and Seabrook
(2003), which I refer to, describe similar conditions and employee reactions.

17
Trainees are asked to identify with their customers in a way that converts the
employee/ customer relationship into a horizontal, harmonious, indeed a
fundamental social relationship. No detail is spared in the objective of
successful selling, down to actual words to be used. Interestingly, these
language directions take the form of issuing formulae which the employee has
to adopt and they are given to native and non-native speakers of English
alike.

Avoid ‘Trigger’ phrases Instead, say…….

‘ I’m sorry but …’
‘I don’t know…’
‘ It’s company policy,
sir/ma’am’
‘You should have….’.
‘I suppose I can but that
would require too much
paperwork’
‘That’s incorrect. Someone
gave you the wrong
information. Who told you
that?’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘I’m not responsible for
what other people promise.’
J ‘What I/we can do is…’
J ‘That’s a good question. I’ll find out for you.
May I put you on hold while I get that
Information?’
J ‘That’s a tough one. Let’s see what we can
do.’ (Avoid using ‘ sir’ or ‘ ma’am’)
J ‘I have updated information for you’
J ‘I’ll need a couple of minutes to help you
with that.’
J ‘The person who helped you before
must not have had the complete
information available.’
J ‘The best way for me to help you is to put you
in touch with/direct you to…’
J ‘Thank you. I appreciate you feedback on what
we’ve been doing right ….and wrong.’

The smiling face symbol simplistically underlines the message to be driven

home, and distinguishes “good” from “bad” in its own inimitable branding
style. This is speaking as if you are smiling. If anything would appear to be
linguistic indoctrination, this would.

However, the template runs into contradictions. Politeness to the customer

has to be weighed against productivity and how many calls an employee can
make in a working day. In the call centre from which this manual was taken,
if the employee took longer than seven minutes to satisfy the customer, the
client companies would interject on the line and tell the employee that her
time was up. This cannot do much for the supposedly sacrosanct courtesy to
the client. It also highlights that courtesy does not extend to supervisor-
employee interactions (if such interjections can be called thus).

The models of speaking presented are meant to appear spontaneous and

warm yet they are rigidly standardized, down to what words to use, and in
practice require a suppression of sincerity and naturalness on the employee’s

18
part, in order to clock up the required number of calls. Tight monitoring is as
much part of the work routine as speaking nicely to customers. Ticker boards
above the customer service representatives’ heads show the number of calls to
be answered supervisors can see exactly what every employee is doing.
Bunting, in her account of call centres in Britain, describes just how intense
this monitoring can be, with a second lateness from a break being recorded on
their screens by a red flashing light (Bunting 2004:66). This is intense
discipline which for all its advanced technology has much in common with
the intense levels of exploitation to be found in sweatshops in China or East
Asia. Such rigid monitoring and grinding supervision do not lead to
deference. Not surprisingly the employees themselves remain quite
disengaged, even cynical, about the rules laid down (Bunting 2004:65).

Growth of the communication industry and call-centres that have led some to
believe that the production of images and styles take us into a “post-
industrial” world in which “postmodern” communication takes on a life of its
own. Hardt and Negri, reformulating in academic terms a popular idea, assert
that linguistic and economic performativity are similar and language part of
“immaterial labour” in today’s world. They stress that this immaterial
production is somehow outside the traditional capitalist production and has
its own dynamic (Hardt and Negri 2005:201).

Although language is used and inculcated in people for the purposes of

selling, this does not in itself make language a product nor its speakers
collaborating independently or in a way “external to capital”. Advertising,
branding, call centres, styles of selling, and customer care service are
conducted in the service of actually selling something – a product or good.
Rather than these uses of language escaping the system, having their own
autonomy, as Hardt and Negri claim, these new forms of regimented
communication – both electronic and verbal – are organised very tightly
under the control of capitalist global production to serve its competitive
needs. One non-native speaker who worked in the Dublin call centre in
question made available the training manual only with trepidation because
employees are asked to keep training modules strictly confidential, on pain of
dismissal. Complaints about productivity targets being imposed are met with
similar rejection. “Accepting ownership” of the customer calls is encouraged
but the same degree of inclusion is not afforded to their employees as
evidenced by the outright rejection on the part of management of any union
representation.

19
Here is an extract of an account given to me by one of the non-native English
speakers who worked in the Dublin call centre which shows how employees
are not taken in by the corporate identity nor the language of the market that
they are obliged to speak. It also captures something of the anger that the
employees feel.

- you have to be “online” (ready to take incoming calls) at a

precise time, according to your designated shift:
- from 7am to 11pm depending on the market you work for, but of
course, some markets / call centres would make you work
24h/day!!!
- a 7 days/week obligatory shift is provided with a week’s
notice, which means it’s hard to plan ahead any weekend away
from town!
- It takes at least 15 minutes to log on to the different types
of databases – most of them require plenty of different
passwords you are asked to remember by heart. Thus you have to
be in at least 30 minutes before the actual starting of your
shift… voluntarily […]
- You are “given” two 15-minute-breaks/day (you cannot take them
when you want to for it comes with your shifts), and you have
another 30-minute-break for lunch.
- There’s a dress code but it’s not implemented! This is great!!!
- Most of the employees take this job hoping they won’t stay more
than 3 or 4 months because the alienating aspect of it is
acknowledged and feared – but one quickly ends up staying for a
whole semester or more!
- To prevent stress-damage I’d say 50% of us smoke and the other
50% eat junk snacks. Some do both!
- There’s a very good atmosphere among workers (esp. among
expatriates) who want to enjoy the few “free” moments they have
during the day […]

High levels of staff turnover reflected the frustration expressed here. This
particular employee was quite cynical about any loyalty to the company,
particularly when the company had threatened several times to close down
and open up under another name. From this account, and others, the dull
monotony of the phone assembly line is the overriding sentiment and not
compliance or acceptance of the customer philosophy.

20
For all the strenuous attempts at ideological inculcation through linguistic
uniformity, the ideology is seen as simply “as part of the job”. Seabrook
finds the same phenomenon in call centres in India and describes that
company philosophy is not passively accepted, despite considerable training
and preparation. In the hundreds of call centres in Kerala, Karnataka or the
periphery of Delhi, according to Seabrook, the indoctrination mechanisms
reach new extremes. The new ‘ cyber-coolie labour’ force is told to keep up
with the latest episode of Coronation St. or East Enders to make their
customers believe they are speaking from around the corner rather than
another continent. But this alienating pretence breeds hate and resentment.
Seabrook relates how one call centre, worker, Tushar, a 27 engineering
graduate, lets loose some of the anger bubbling under the surface:

‘You feel high. The salary is good and you feel part of the

modern world, but you don’t realise how much working in a

foreign language takes it out of you. You try not to miss a

single word of what people are saying. They expect you to be

familiar with their culture but they don’t care a damn about

yours. It is racist. In the end you get to resent it, and you hate

them’

(Quoted in Seabrook, 2003, p.25)

Not surprisingly, the language used here, like the reaction above of the
Dublin call centre, is particularly forthright and very different here too, one
would assume, to the ‘smiling language’ of the call centre training manual.

Conclusion

Much of the opposition to neoliberalism that has come to the fore in recent
times has sprung from the recognition that the neoliberal order does not do
what it promises and does not represent the world as it is. On a smaller scale

21
neoliberal ideology and its workings in language contains the same
contradictions.

The nature of the interaction between ideology and language is complex. The
socially interactive nature of language means that language cannot be said to
simply absorb ideology. Our two examples shed light on two aspects of the
dynamic between language and ideology.

1) Ideological metaphors, however widely they are reproduced, are not

given, ideologically speaking. The “customer” metaphor, which
encapsulates the market philosophy of neoliberal ideology, is used
much more in official documents than it is spontaneously in people’s
speech. Our examination of its use in the asylum seeker context
uncovered its incongruity in this setting and the barriers to this
metaphor acquiring “common sense” status. There is a certain duality
here: of a top-down process in which “customer” is promoted in
brochures and official documents and an “on the ground” reality
where it simply does not appear appropriate to refer to asylum seekers
as customers. “Customer” in the university setting shares some of this
top-down characterization. Identification with it, I argue, remains weak
in so far as it fails to reflect accurately the student experience and
because of this, “ customer” is understood to be part of a kind of
“official speak” rather what people would use naturally themselves.

2) Even where language is moulded and modeled to suit the market

ethos, ideological commitment to it remains low. In our second
example, we found that there was a considerable gap between the
“speak as if you are smiling” of the training manual and the actual
attitudes of the customer service operators. The desire for both
customer satisfaction and higher levels of productivity leads to
contradictions that threaten to undermine both the stated goals of
satisfaction to the customer and loyalty to the company.

More generally, this investigation would support the contention that ideology
is distinct from language. The notion that ideology can be collapsed into
discourse implies that language is the determining prism through which
ideological awareness passes. It also elevates discourse/ideology to the status
of a social agent in its own right, with no explanation of where that power
originates. On the other hand, the workings of ideology in language that we
have identified here – re-semanticisation and the use of metaphor - allow for the
more creative and unpredictable elements of language to be foregrounded.
They reveal how some neoliberal assumptions are not accepted as “common

22
sense”, and can be contested. The site of this resistance is not within
discourse itself , as Foucault would claim, but arises from the contradictory
nature of the ideology within society at large and speakers themselves can
perceive this to be case.

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Author’s address
Marnie Holborow
School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies
Dublin City University
Dublin 9
Ireland

Email: marnie.holborow@dcu.ie

About the Author

Marnie Holborow is a lecturer at the School of Applied Language and
Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University. She teaches on undergraduate

25
Exchange Programmes with European and Asian universities and on a taught
Masters Degree in Intercultural Studies. Her research interests are language
and ideology and world Englishes.

26