Language Practices of Telephone-Level Bureaucrats. Analysis of a Gender Violence Helpline.

Our research departs from a sample on in-depth interviews in Spain with 42 phisicians, social workers, psychologists, nurses and administrative workers working in a telephone helpline aimed to deal with victims of gender violence. Although their work is constricted by several regional and state laws, we have observed that their daily practices show high levels of professional autonomy, which frequently differ substantially from those legal precepts governing the helpline settings. This workers should face -as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 1993)- to a number of tensions, observable through scripting of language practices. This practices are negotiated among groups of workers, team leaders and managers, showing relevant tensions between a strong sense of deontological professional exercise and external political rules.  We analyze how these tensions are objectivized in conversational scripts and in interactions with women who suffer gender violence.