ozarque's Journal

Linguistics; pragmatics; favors; afternote re telemarketers...
I've been enjoying your comments about strategies for dealing with telemarketers. On my own I wouldn't have perceived them as falling into the "asking for favors" pragmatics set, but now that you've pointed it out I realize that you're absolutely right, and that they're in that set twice over. Once because they're asking you to do the favor of listening to their spiel, and once because they're asking you to do whatever is the request included in that spiel.

I use two strategies when dealing with telemarketers...

When I immediately recognize them as telemarketers, I say, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I can save you some time. All of our charity budget here is reserved for Heifer International." [Which is almost true; it's reserved for Heifer and for strictly local charitable causes; I don't feel any obligation to explain about the latter.] So far, that has always brought the encounter to an amicable close.

When I don't realize they're telemarketers at first, so that they actually get a sentence or two into their pitch, I interrupt them with "Mercy, you must get so sick of having to say that over and over and over again, hour after hour!" I've done that hundreds of times, and only once has it led to a conversation, starting with the telemarketer saying "You know, I don't really mind it that much..." and going on from there at considerable length. [That conversation actually turned out to be very interesting.] All the other times, the telemarketer has started laughing, and was still laughing when I said "I'm going to hang up now" and followed through on that.

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Nonfiction online: "How Verbal Self-Defense Works" at http://people.howstuffworks.com/vsd.htm ; "Why Are Old Women Older Than Old Men And How Can We Fix That?" at http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/articlesElginOld.html ; Religious Language Newsletter archive at http://www.forlovingkindness.org . Fiction online: "We Have Always Spoken Panglish" at https://webspace.utexas.edu/bighamds/LIN312/Files/Elgin-Panglish.pdf ; "What The EPA Don't Know Won't Hurt Them" at http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/epa.htm ; "Weather Bulletin" at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Weather.html ; "A Quorum Of Grandmothers" at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/QuorumOfGrandmothers.html ; The Communipaths at http://www.jackiepowers.com/SuzetteHadenElgin/TheCommunipaths.html . More stuff at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/SiteMap.html ; LiveJournal blog index at http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=ozarque .