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Mehdi Boussebaa uses “new colonialism” to describe a hierarchy in offshore call-centre work: Western clients set the preferred English-language standard, local supervisors enforce it, and workers are assessed partly on how closely their speech matches it. The argument comes from research in two call-centre organisations in Noida, India—not a representative survey of the country’s call-centre sector.
What “new colonialism” means in this argument
In Boussebaa and his co-authors’ analysis, language is not simply a practical tool for speaking with customers. It can also determine who is seen as competent, who receives rewards or promotion, and who remains lower in the workplace hierarchy. The standard is shaped by Western clients’ expectations of “pure English,” then applied within the local workplace.
The authors compare local supervisors who transmit and enforce those expectations to colonial-era “compradors”—intermediaries serving the interests of a more powerful outside party. This is an analytical analogy, not a claim that a call centre is literally a colonial government or that all outsourcing works this way.
What the Noida study examined
Boussebaa’s account, first published by The Conversation on October 21, 2014, and republished by Scroll.in on October 23, describes research in two call-centre organisations in Noida. Its underlying peer-reviewed study, “Englishization in offshore call centers: a postcolonial perspective,” was written by Mehdi Boussebaa, Shuchi Sinha and Yiannis Gabriel and published in the Journal of International Business Studies in 2014, volume 45, issue 9, pages 1152–1169, DOI 10.1057/jibs.2014.25.
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The case study offers a way to understand how language rules and workplace authority can interact. It does not establish how common the described practices are across Indian call centres today, and it supplies no nationally representative estimate or current prevalence figure.
How English can create workplace hierarchy
The client defines the desired voice
In the article’s account, Western clients set expectations for speech that sounds like “pure” English. That standard gives one variety of English greater workplace value than others, even though English is spoken in many varieties.
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Local supervisors apply the standard
Locally recruited supervisors assess workers’ language performance and may connect it to rewards and promotion. In the authors’ interpretation, this arrangement lets client expectations shape daily workplace decisions through local intermediaries rather than requiring constant direct intervention from clients.
Workers face both opportunity and constraint
English can offer access to call-centre employment and a route to advancement. At the same time, judging workers against a preferred accent or style can place pressure on them, subject their speech to scrutiny and mark some as less suitable for higher-status roles. Boussebaa’s article also describes long and unsocial hours, surveillance, abuse, racism and pressure to perform a Western identity. Those are claims in the article’s account, not measured conditions established for the whole sector.
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What “pure English” and “tainted English” imply
“Pure English” is the preferred norm in the article’s description; “tainted English” is its critical rendering of how speech influenced by workers’ mother tongues is judged. “Tainted” is not a neutral linguistic category or an endorsement of that judgment. The hierarchy arises when one way of speaking is treated as the legitimate standard and other varieties are treated as deficiencies.
Boussebaa’s article captures the tension this way: “The fact that their English remains ‘tainted’ by mother tongue influences sends an important and strong signal that they won’t be fully dominated, that they will always deviate from the norm of ‘pure’ English no matter how much time and effort is put into it.” In that sentence, “tainted” describes the standard’s judgment of workers’ speech; it does not mean their English is objectively inferior.
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How workers resist the norm
The article does not portray workers as entirely passive. Where possible, some switch to Hindi or use hybrid English, resisting the demand to speak only in the preferred form. Such choices can preserve a connection to local speech and identity, though the article does not present them as a guaranteed route to changing workplace rules or improving promotion prospects.
What response Boussebaa proposes
Boussebaa argues that English should be recognized as having many varieties and sounds rather than divided into “pure” and “tainted” forms. As he puts it: “If English is to be the globallingua franca, then, it’s time to accept the fact that it comes in many varieties and sounds.” This is his proposed response to the hierarchy he describes, not evidence that the organisations later changed their policies.
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