6.1 Introduction
The previous three chapters focused on commercial service encounters between buyers and sellers – native speakers (NSs) from the same regions – who met at designated locations to negotiate a sales transaction. This chapter analyzes the negotiation of service at a non-commercial setting: a US visitor information center on a university campus. Here I examine some of the interactional aspects between US clerks interacting with US visitors. I adopt the “local” view of linguistic variation (see Introduction and Fried Reference Fried, Fried, Östman and Verschueren2010) by looking at intra-linguistic variation among native speakers of English. Kecskes observed that in intracultural communication speakers “rely on prior knowledge and culture of a relatively definable speech community, which is privatized by individuals belonging to that speech community” (Reference Kecskes2013: 100). Following the work of Geluykens (Reference Geluykens, Geluykens and Kraft2008), although intracultural studies can be contrastive (i.e. comparing service encounters of two groups of NSs from the same region), this chapter takes a non-contrastive analysis by looking at the negotiation of service in intracultural encounters between clerks at the center and patrons who visit from other US regions. In these non-commercial encounters, the negotiation of service centers on the exchange of information (transactional talk) as well as on the maintenance of interpersonal relations (relational talk) for the successful outcome of the interaction (see Introduction, Figure 1, and Chapter 7 for details on relational talk). Further, the conversational participants, information-provider (clerk) and information-seeker (patron), engage mainly in task-oriented interactions, complemented by frequent episodes of relational talk, as evidenced both by the roles and frames they adopt (Goffman Reference Goffman1981; Goodwin Reference Goodwin, Slobin, Gerhardt, Kyratzis and Guo1996) and by the structure of the encounters. In these encounters, the negotiation of face (the need for association or dissociation) and im/polite (or appropriate/inappropriate) behavior is observed throughout, and relational talk is crucial with regard to the outcome.
This chapter is organized as follows: after an overview of research on intracultural service encounters (Section 6.2) and a description of the setting and data collection procedures (6.3), I offer a pragmatic analysis of some of the interactional resources used to negotiate a request for information at the following levels: actional (request for information), interactional (opening sequence, request–response sequence, dispreferred responses), and prosodic (intonation and duration) (6.4). In Section 6.5 I present the conclusions of this chapter.
6.2 Defining intracultural service encounters
The literature on intercultural pragmatics is, as the term would indicate, largely based on interactions between speakers from different cultures (e.g. Australians interacting with Mexicans in English) or in contexts in which a lingua franca is the basis for communication (e.g. interactions in English as a lingua franca between two non-native speakers of English in the workplace [Blum-Kulka et al. Reference Blum-Kulka, Blondheim, House, Kasper, Wagner and van Sterkenburg2008] or two non-native speakers of French [NSs of Wolof] in formal settings in Dakar, Senegal). In contrast, communication in intracultural settings looks at social interaction between speakers of the same language (that is, speakers from the same cultural group, not necessarily from the same language variety). Márquez Reiter and Placencia define intracultural variation as “the comparison of the features/patterns generated by a social group in two different situational contexts; for example, Montevideans in a requesting vis-à-vis apologizing situation” (Reference Márquez Reiter2005: 193). Márquez Reiter (Reference Marquez-Reiter2008) investigated intracultural interaction among Uruguayans (Montevidean service providers and customers) in mediated telephone service encounters. The study analyzed the interactional resources (e.g. openings and closings, repair mechanisms in apologies) and cultural patterns that emerged from the interactions.
In this chapter, intracultural service encounters involve face-to-face interactions between US clerks and US patrons who enter a visitor center to obtain information about either the nearby university or the city. The encounters represent interactions between native speakers of English who visit the center from different regions of the United States (though mainly from the Midwest [e.g. Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio]; North [e.g. Michigan and New York]; and, Southwest [California]). Thus, unlike Marquez Reiter's study (Reference Marquez-Reiter2008), which contrasted two companies from one social group of the same region (Montevideo, Uruguay), this chapter looks at the interactional practices of one cultural group with clerks and patrons (NSs of English at a visitor information center) from different US regional backgrounds. The language of communication is English.
6.3 Setting and data collection procedures
The data for this study consist of five hours of natural conversation collected at a US visitor information center (see Introduction, Table 1, for details of the corpus and data collection procedures). The visitor center, sponsored by a large Midwestern university, provides information to prospective students, their families, and the general public about courses of study (e.g. majors), housing, campus tours, local food options, along with general information about the city. There were four clerks: the director of the center and three college students (two males and two females). Clerks were either working or studying at the university at the time the data were collected. Most of the visitors were from different regions of the United States. For this chapter, I examined 87 complete encounters between NSs of US English (28,300 words). Of the 87 interactions, 56.3% (49/87) were conducted by female visitors and 43.7% (38/87) by male visitors.
Figure 6.1 displays the setting of the visitor information center with regard to the position of the clerk and the visitor, the location of the recording device, and a small sign informing the participants about the project.
Figure 6.1 Visitor information center setting
Unlike the service encounters in the market where simultaneous interactions often took place between two or more customers and one vendor) (Chapter 5), the data from the visitor center consists of one-to-one interactions between one clerk and one visitor. Since the interactions took place at the center, no background noise (or additional conversations) affected the quality of the recordings. Consequently, the data are also suitable for phonetic analysis to examine the pragmatic function of prosodic resources that convey interpersonal functions (e.g. high and low terminals [Culpeper Reference Coupland2011; Wichmann and Blakemore Reference Wichmann and Blakemore2006]).
6.4 Interactional resources during the negotiation of service
When visitors entered the center they engaged in various discourse practices with the clerk. For example, the encounters contained the following social actions: greeting and closing exchanges, various types of requests (e.g. information, action, and permission), dispreferred responses, clarification requests, and repair sequences. The clerk and the patron negotiated different types of face (e.g. independence and involvement), changed from one type of frame to another (e.g. transactional talk to joking frame), and alignment of the participants’ roles shifted throughout the interaction (Goodwin Reference Goodwin, Slobin, Gerhardt, Kyratzis and Guo1996; Goffman Reference Goffman1981) (see Introduction, Figure 1). Interactions ranged from four turns (transactional needs) to over 100 turns, including both transactional and relational talk. Changes of footing occurred in almost all of the interactions.
Example (1) shows an interaction between a female visitor and a male clerk (college student):
[1] Negotiation of service at a US visitor information center (female visitor; male clerk)
In this exchange, the visitor opens the interaction with a request for information, followed by the clerk's acknowledgment (lines 02–04). Notice the absence of a greeting exchange, which reflects a sociocultural expectation and a focus on task-orientedness in this US service setting. The first part of the interaction includes the negotiation of transactional talk through coordinated joint actions (negotiation of information) (lines 01–09). Then, the visitor shifts alignment to relational talk (small talk), which is reciprocated by the clerk (lines 10–22). In this exchange, relational talk establishes a rapport between the interlocutors, enhances solidarity politeness, and shows involvement with the interlocutor (Scollon and Scollon Reference Scollon and Scollon2001).
6.4.1 Opening the interaction
The opening sequence in the vast majority of the interactions at the visitor center consisted of a reciprocal greeting initiated by either the visitor or the clerk (e.g. ‘How can I help you?’). The visitor's or clerk's greeting functioned as a summons (Schegloff Reference Schegloff1968), an opening move that alerted the interlocutor to the beginning of the interaction. Examples (2) and (3) display two frequent formats of the summons–response sequence identified in the interactions:
[2] Summons–response sequence (female clerk; male visitor)
01 ((Visitor enters center)) 02 Visitor: Hello ↑ 03 Clerk: hello::→ 04 Visitor: where's the uh, closest restroom here please? 05 Clerk: there is no public restroom in the building, um.
[3] Summons–response sequence (female clerk; male visitor)
01 ((Visitor enters center)) 02 Clerk: Hello ↑ 03 Visitor: are there university offices upstairs? 04 Clerk: yes there is. Which office are you looking for, sir?
In the exchange in (2) the presence of the visitor and the greeting formula elicited the clerk's attention (lines 01–03). Notice that both greetings are not identical in prosody: the visitor's greeting, delivered with a brief and high terminal (↑), functions to secure uptake, while the clerk's greeting is realized with an elongated and a longer final syllable (→). This sequence is followed by the visitor's request for information and the clerk's response (lines 04–05). In example (3), the visitor's presence functions as a summons, followed by the clerk's greeting with a high terminal (lines 01–02). After alignment of the interactional roles, the visitor shifts to transactional talk, followed by the clerk's compliance (lines 03–04).
6.4.2 Pragmalinguistic variation in the request for information
This section examines pragmatic variation at the actional level (see Chapter 1, Section 1.4.6) with regard to the request variants produced by the visitor and presence or absence of internal modification (e.g. conditional, imperfect, diminutives, the form ‘please,’ or forms of address that express involvement) (see Chapter 1, Table 1.1). In this section I examine the requests produced by the visitors with regard to two criteria: the level of imposition of a request and the pragmalinguistic forms used to express a request.
In previous studies (e.g. Félix-Brasdefer Reference Félix-Brasdefer, Economidou-Kogetsidis and Woodfield2012b), requests are analyzed according to the level of imposition, ranging from low to high: request for information (e.g. ‘we were just wondering about the housing’), request for permission (e.g. ‘I just wanted to look around, can I bring my drink in?’), and request for action (e.g. ‘Do you have a copy of that Woodland campus brochure that was in the paper yesterday?’). In the visitor center's data, of the 87 encounters analyzed, requests for information predominated (49.4% or 43/87 requests), followed by requests for action (42.5% or 37/87), and finally requests for permission (3.5% or 3/87 requests). In four out of the 87 interactions (4.6%), the visitor did not make a request (e.g. ‘I'm just looking’). In the context of service encounters, requests for information and requests for action do not represent a face threat to the clerk. These requests are oriented to the institutional expectations of the setting, where visitors have the right to ask questions and the clerks have the responsibility to provide the information.
In addition to the level of imposition, pragmalinguistic variation was observed by means of the linguistic resources used to issue the request. Figure 6.2 shows the distribution of the eight variants that were employed to issue a request for service (87 interactions). It includes the first-initiated request produced by the visitor.
Figure 6.2 Use and non-use of visitor-initiated requests at a US visitor information center
The figure shows pragmalinguistic variation with regard to presence and absence of the linguistic and non-verbal resources used to express a request (eight variants). Of the 87 interactions, 6.9% (6/87) did not include a request. In these cases, the clerk's query, ‘Can I help you?’ was followed by the visitor's utterance ‘I'm just looking.’ While the visitors walked around the center to browse information, the clerk initiated the interaction to facilitate rapport (e.g. ‘Feel free to ask if you have any questions,’ ‘there are copies right there,’ ‘are you thinking about coming to this university?’) (see example 4g below). Of the seven linguistic variants, three predominated in the data: direct requests (interrogatives [36.8% or 32/87]), conventional indirectness (e.g. ‘Can/could I …?’ [19.5% or 17/87]), and ‘I'm looking for …’ (17.2% or 15/87). Three less frequent strategies included want statements (6.9% or 6/87), need statements (5.8% or 5/87), and hints (5.8% or 5/87). The least frequent request variant was one imperative (1.1% or 1/87). The results of a Chi-square test showed that the differences among these eight variants are significant, X2 (7, N = 87) = 65.77, p < .0001. That is, visitors are not selecting a request variant at random. They are choosing a direct question when asking for information at greater than chance levels.
In (4) I show examples of the eight types of requests identified in the visitor center data:
[4] First-initiated request issued by the visitor
a. Direct question (interrogative) Male visitor: Do you have a map ↑ of the area? any kind ↓ b. Conventional indirect Male visitor: I was trying to find out like – where I could sell my used books at ↓ c. Looking for Female visitor: I was looking for papers like this? ((points to paper)) d. Want statement Male visitor: …. so we just wanted to see = Male clerk: = excellent = Visitor: = how much information we can get and – all that kind of good stuff. e. Need statement Male visitor: I just needed to get directions to Columbus f. Hint Male visitor: → Hi, um, I read in the paper that you have maps that you can walk around campus and it'll tell ya – point out all the various tree species. Female clerk: yeah, here ya go. ((clerk delivers maps)) Visitor: thank you very much. g. No request ‘Just looking’ ((two female visitors enter center and start browsing papers on shelf)) Visitor : → I'm just kinda lookin’ Male clerk: OK Visitor: looking to see what, uh, this city has to offer Clerk: alright, there are copies right there ((points to copies)) h. Imperative Male visitor: I'd like to see that but I guess there's also the … like riding the buses a little bit = Male clerk: = OK, yeah Visitor: → so you tell me what I can do ↓
Non-conventional requests such as hints were interpreted by conversational implicature (Grice Reference Grice, Cole and Morgan1975) or pragmatic inference on the part of the clerk. In this institutional context, the visitor's declarative utterance (e.g. 4c [‘looking for’]) was interpreted as a request for action. Although direct interrogatives (e.g. ‘do you have campus maps?’; ‘do you have any recommendations or a restaurant guide?’) predominated in the data, they do not impose on the clerk's negative face (Brown and Levinson Reference Brown1987), nor were they perceived as impolite behavior. In this institutional context, direct requests, such as interrogatives, want (4d) and need statements (4e), and imperatives (4h), represent a sociocultural expectation of appropriate behavior.
With regard to internal modification, requests for information or action were infrequently modified by expressions to mitigate the request. Of the 87 interactions, 25% (22/87) included at least one instance of internal modification: the conditional (‘could you …?’ vs. ‘can you …?’), the past tense (‘I was wondering’ vs. ‘I wonder’), ‘please’ (‘where's the uh, closest restroom here please?’), and epistemic markers such as ‘I think’ or ‘I guess’ (‘uh, I'm looking for the:: I guess office for the campus bus – service?’). In the service encounters examined here, unmitigated requests represent neither an instance of impolite behavior, nor a face threat to the clerk.
Finally, no major differences were noted with regard to the gender of the visitor: male and female visitors employed direct and conventional indirect requests with almost equal frequencies. The only minor difference noted was in the use of the ‘looking for’ strategy which predominated among female visitors (12.6% or 11/87 interactions) and less frequently among male visitors (4.6% or 4/87). Neither the type of request nor the presence or absence of internal modification was conditioned by the gender of the visitor. In the next section I explain how these requests were negotiated in coordinated joint actions across multiple turns.
6.4.3 Negotiation of the request for service
In this section I offer a pragmatic-discursive analysis of the structure of the request–response sequence (interactional level, see Chapter 1, Section 1.4.6). In the visitor center, requests were carried out through a series of coordinated joint actions by the clerk and the visitor (Clark Reference Clark1996). In most of the interactions the initial request for information was accomplished across multiple turns, including clarification requests, instances of repair, or reformulated questions. These actions were negotiated and renegotiated by the clerk and the visitor in order to achieve a positive outcome. Requests (see Figure 6.2) were carried out either in one single turn or across various turn-constructional units (TCUs) (Sacks et al. Reference Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson1974). Example (5) shows the co-construction of a request–suggestion sequence:
[5] Request–suggestion sequence (female clerk; male visitor)
01 ((Visitor enters the center)) 02 Clerk: How can I help you? 03 Visitor: I'm trying to look for an organic place around here, food and stuff 04 Clerk: OK, have you tried Bloomingfoods? 05 it's like a grocery store 06 Visitor: yeah ↑ 07 Clerk: um yeah ↓ – if you just go right out here on Washington Avenue ↑ 08 and you go right down to tracks ↑ it's on the: uh= 09 Visitor: = yeah 10 Clerk: = right hand side and you'd go right between tracks 11 and I know there's an alley right on the 12 other side of tracks – if you go in the alley and hang a right ↑, 13 Bloomingfoods is right there. 14 Visitor: alright, thank you 15 Clerk: it's awesome, I recommend it. It's where I do my grocery shopping ((laughs)) 16 Visitor: ((laughs))
In this exchange, the request, a declarative assertion (‘trying to look for …’, line 03), is followed by an acknowledgment (‘OK’) and a suggestion (lines 04–05). Upon receipt of the clerk's suggestion (line 06), the clerk provides directions in two interventions (lines 07–08 and 10–13). The visitor complies with the suggestion through an acknowledgment token (‘yeah,’ line 09) and the acceptance of the suggestion (line 14). The end of this sequence (transactional talk) is followed by non-transactional talk (an expansion sequence). In this relational sequence the clerk offers a positive comment, and seeks common ground with the visitor (Clark Reference Clark1996) through mutual laughter (lines 15–16).
Example (6) displays the negotiation of repair and a delayed response.
[6] Request and delayed response (male client; female clerk)
((Student enters the center and looks at the clerk)) 01 Visitor: You still get those free stuff ↑ 02 → can I get some of the free stuff? 03 Clerk: you're a student ↑ 04 Visitor: huh ↑ 05 Clerk: are you a card student here? 06 Visitor: yes 07 Clerk: → oh OK. ((7 turns of business transaction omitted))
In this sequence (6) the visitor's request (lines 01–02) (first-pair part) is blocked with a counter (Schegloff Reference Schegloff2007), which delays or redirects the actions expressed in the second pair part. The counter (line 03) produces a repair sequence (lines 04–06): the visitor's clarification request (trouble source, line 04), the clerk's reformulation of the request and the visitor's response (lines 05–06). The second pair part that completes the initial request (turn 1, line 02) is delivered in the sixth turn (line 07).
In addition to single-turn requests, most visitors’ requests were designed with two or more TCUs across the request–response sequence, as in (7).
[7] Design of request for service (male clerk; female visitor)
01 Visitor: Hi, how are you? 02 Clerk: fine, how can I help you? 03 Visitor: → well, um, I'm looking for – there's a, um, some sort of a shuttle bus … 04 Clerk: mm-hmm 05 Visitor: → that goes from Indianapolis 06 Clerk: OK 07 Visitor: → bus schedule or something ↑ 08 Clerk: I don't know if it goes to Indianapolis. 09 The ones we have go up to Chicago airport.
After a greeting exchange and the clerk's offer of assistance (lines 01–02), the request was realized in three TCUs (lines 03, 05, 07), followed by the clerk's acknowledgment (lines 04 and 06) and response (lines 08–09).
In example (8) the request–response sequence was co-constructed by the two visitors (father and daughter) and the clerk.
[8] Co-construction of request with two-party visitors (male clerk, father [visitor 1], and daughter [visitor 2])
01 ((Visitors enter the center)) 02 Clerk: What brings you to the Visitor Center? 03 Visitor 1: → she is going .. 04 Visitor 2: [I'm … 05 Visitor 1: → [to be a senior this year and we are visiting colleges 06 for this last week so we just wanted to see = 07 Clerk: = excellent 08 Visitor 1: = how much information we can get and – 09 all that kind of good stuff. 10 Clerk: well, if you're a senior –um what we usually have 11 to give is our prospective high school packet 12 Visitor 2: OK ↑ 13 Clerk: and to be quite honest it has everything – on this wall so … 14 Visitor 2: OK, cool. ((4 turns omitted of business transaction) ((participants engage in relational talk with 95 turns))
In this exchange, the father (visitor 1) and the daughter (visitor 2) initiated the request (lines 03–04), but the request was completed by the father. After the father designed his request in three TCUs addressed to the clerk (lines 03, 05–06, and 08–09), the clerk responded to the daughter with two TCUs (lines 10–11 and 13), followed by the daughter's final response (line 14). Although most of the requests for service in the data were complied with by the clerk (information-provider), there were several instances of non-compliance that triggered the negotiation of dispreferred responses (initiated by the clerk), as shown in the next section.
6.4.4 Dispreferred responses in service encounters
In this section I focus on the sequential structure of dispreferred responses (actions of non-compliance) initiated by the clerk in response to the visitor's request for information. Dispreferred responses in English (colloquial) conversations are prefaced (or delayed) by various components (mitigated elements such as positive remarks [e.g. ‘it's a good idea, but …’], pro-forma agreements [‘yes, but …’], hedges [e.g. ‘probably,’ ‘maybe’], epistemic expressions [e.g. ‘I think’, ‘I believe,’ ‘I guess’], silence), and often include elaborations or accounts (Pomerantz Reference Pomerantz, Atkinson and Heritage1984; Schegloff Reference Schegloff2007). And, although a dispreferred response represents a threat to the interlocutor's positive face (dissociation of face) (Brown and Levinson Reference Brown1987), in the context of service encounters these responses do not seem to be perceived as impolite because the clerk's negative response is in accordance with the rules of the institutional setting, that is, a dispreferred response represents an appropriate response and is not viewed as a face-threatening act.
The dispreferred responses that I analyze in this section are responses to questions, mainly Yes/No interrogatives (YNIs), that account for preference organization (Raymond Reference Raymond2003). According to Raymond, the grammatical structure of YNIs reflects the grammatical structure of preference: type-conforming responses (the default response form) are preferred, while non-conforming responses (noticeable responses that avoid a preferred response) are dispreferred.
Of the 87 interactions analyzed, 12 included an initial dispreferred response. Of these, 10 were non-conforming responses to YNIs, one to a Wh-question, and one to a need statement request. Type-conforming and non-conforming responses have different sequential consequences. The former were often accomplished with a preferred and brief response (‘yes,’ ‘OK,’ ‘mmhmm,’ ‘uh huh,’ and other variants). In contrast, non-conforming responses required long investments of negotiation of face to express involvement or independence with the interlocutor (Scollon and Scollon Reference Scollon and Scollon2001). These were accomplished across various turns and signaled shift of alignment in response to the YNI (e.g. ‘no,’ ‘nope,’ and other variants).
The exchange in (9) shows a conforming-type response to a YNI (lines 03–04), which represents the preferred response in service encounters:
[9] Conforming-type response (male clerk; female visitor)
01 Visitor: Hi 02 I'm looking for a good sushi restaurant ↑ 03 do you have any recommendations or a restaurant guide? 04 Clerk: → m-hmm, yeah, we do have a restaurant guide here. 05 Visitor: Oh, right here, restaurant guide ↓
In contrast, non-conforming responses displayed variation in both the expressions used and their placement in the interaction. Of the 12 non-conforming responses, 8 included an explicit rejection (e.g. ‘no,’ ‘nope,’ ‘there's no public bathroom,’ etc.). Other non-conforming responses to YNIs included a combination of suggestions, offers, and accounts across multiple turns. In example (10) the clerk's dispreferred response includes two components in two turns: a blunt ‘no’ and a suggestion (lines 02 and 04).
[10] Non-conforming response to YNI (male clerk; female visitor)
01 Visitor: Are there restrooms downstairs in this building? 02 Clerk: → no 03 Visitor: [no ↑ 04 Clerk: [the only restrooms are in: Starbucks right next door. 05 Visitor: OK, thanks.
In this exchange the visitor confirms the clerk's negative response with a high terminal, which secures uptake (lines 03–04), followed by the visitor's acknowledgment and closing of the interaction (line 05). Example (11) shows a non-conformity response to YNIs, which has different sequential consequences than conformity-type responses.
[11] Non-conforming response to YNI + solution (female clerk; male visitor)
((14 prior turns of transcript omitted)) 01 Visitor: Do you have more football posters? 02 Clerk: → oh we are all out of them 03 Visitor: oh bummer 04 Clerk: ((lamenting)) I know::: I know. 05 Visitor: you got a little one there already so ... got the stadium in there too = ((pointing to object)) 06 Clerk: = jus-ye::eah. 07 I'd give ya this one but it's got holes in it. 08 Visitor: ((very softly)) so .. I usually make decorations out of it anyhow. 09 Clerk: well su: [::re. 10 Visitor: [I::ll put it to good use, so … 11 Clerk: I'm sure –you know what? I will go out tomorrow or 12 I will call them today and see if they 13 can bring us some .. so no:: problem ((29 turns of business and relational talk omitted)
In (11) the dispreferred action is a response to the visitor's YNI (line 01). It includes an account to avoid a direct rejection (line 02), followed by the visitor's disappointment and the clerk's empathy (lines 03–04). The visitor points to a poster using ostensive reference (Hanks Reference Hanks2009) with a deictic word and a gesture (‘there’ + points to object) (line 05). This action is interpreted by the clerk as an indirect request, followed by the clerk's acknowledgment (line 06). The clerk delivers a hypothetical offer which is accepted by the visitor, granted by the clerk, and acknowledged by the visitor (lines 07–10). This action is the result of a collaborative activity and accomplishment of referential practice (Hindmarsh and Heath Reference Hindmarsh and Heath2000) between the clerk and the patron, who arrived at a mutual resolution.
Finally, example (12) shows the negotiation of a dispreferred response that includes multiple insistences on the part of the visitor (→ signals the non-conforming response)
[12] Negotiation of a non-conforming response to a need statement (females)
01 Clerk: [Hi::: 02 Visitor: [hi::: 03 I need to get some more copies of these ((laughingly)) our town 04 Clerk: → well we'r– we can only give you one, because uh:: that's all we have. 05 and they're not giving those anymore 06 Visitor: oh cuz the guy told me to come here and get 'em. 07 I talked to Ron:: at the, Bloom magazine 08 Clerk: → no, it uh = 09 Visitor: = I need three copies: for two friends 10 Clerk: → ((sighs)) oh geez – we're just out of them. We-we're out – there is all = 11 Visitor: = well he just said, he just said go by the visitor's center 12 because we just delivered some there = 13 Clerk: = well, go on and take 'em – maybe they'll give us [some more 14 Visitor: [thank you:::= 15 Clerk: = but that's all.
In the exchange in (12) the visitor and the clerk engaged in a series of request–response sequences, including an initial request, various insistences, and dispreferred responses over multiple turns. The visitor's initial request (need statement) receives a negative response with an account (lines 03–05). In light of the clerk's dispreferred response, the visitor delivered three insistences (lines 06–07, 09, 11–12). The first two include two additional negative responses, a direct rejection (line 08) and an account (line 10). After the third insistence (lines 11–12), the clerk shifts alignment and accepts using two actions in two different turns (lines 13, 15). After the interlocutors complete the business transaction, there is a change of footing (Goffman Reference Goffman1981; Goodwin Reference Goodwin, Slobin, Gerhardt, Kyratzis and Guo1996) from transactional to relational talk, which is realized in 65 turns. Relational talk, occurring immediately after the transactional talk, functions to establish interpersonal talk and secures the positive outcome of the interaction (see Chapter 7 for an in-depth analysis of relational talk in service encounters).
In the context of service encounters, the structure of dispreferred responses is realized across multiple turns and with coordinated joint actions by the patron and the clerk. A dispreferred response is a reactive speech act in which the clerk (in the context of service encounters) provides a negative response due to a lack of the product. The response may include direct rejections, flat nos, accounts, mitigated expressions, and prefaced positive remarks. Non-conforming responses to a YNI do not threaten the addressee's negative face, since a dispreferred response is not interpreted as rude or inappropriate behavior. However, in cases where there is more than one insistence, dispreferred responses are negotiated over multiple turns in order to seek common ground and express involvement with the interlocutor (Scollon and Scollon Reference Scollon and Scollon2001), as in example (12). These actions need to be negotiated with appropriate use of politeness, referential practices, and supportive facework.
6.4.5 Prosodic analysis of requests for service
Prosody refers to a composite of autosegmental phonetic resources such as pitch (e.g. pitch range, pitch contour direction), timing (e.g. duration, pauses, rhythm), loudness, and voice quality (e.g. voice qualities such as creaky, breathy, harsh). Drawing on work from intonational phonology (Ladd Reference Ladd1996), I focus on pitch contour in high rising terminals (e.g. fall, rise, fall-rise, rise-fall) and on some aspects of duration. Prosody emerges in social interaction and it is “always co-constitutive in the expression and achievement of interactional meaning” (Selting Reference 271Selting, Barth-Weingarten, Reber and Selting2010: 6). From a Relevance Theory perspective (Wilson and Wharton Reference Wilson and Wharton2006), prosodic inputs express procedural meaning, which create affective or interpersonal meaning; for example, a declarative utterance (e.g. ‘You don't look good today’) delivered in a condescending and rude tone. The hearer's inference of these non-propositional effects of prosody may convey unfriendliness, condescension, or rudeness (i.e. cognitive effects in a context of available assumptions).
The pragmatic functions of prosody have been examined from different angles. Prosody can be realized in the form of high rising terminals in declaratives with a marked interpretation (Britain Reference Britain1992); an interpersonal interpretation of prosody in the analysis of impolite behavior (Culpeper Reference Coupland2011); or, high terminals interpreted as positive politeness markers to signal involvement with the interlocutor (e.g. exaggerated intonation or stress [Brown and Levinson Reference Brown1987]). Another pragmatic function comprises rising pitch in declaratives, imperatives, or wh-interrogatives to signal that the utterance is attitudinally marked (Arndt and Janney Reference Arndt and Janney1987).
I examine the following research question: in the context of intracultural service encounters at a visitor information center, what are the prosodic resources that visitors use when making a request for information? As I explained in Chapter 1 (Section 1.4.6), the acoustic descriptions were realized using the software program Praat (version 5.3.77, Boersma & Weenink Reference Boersma and Weenink2013). In the examples below, I illustrate the acoustic analysis of the visitor's request as follows. Each figure consists of three tiers: the first shows the fluctuations in air pressure, indicating the relative loudness (intensity) and duration; the second displays changes in pitch (fundamental frequency expressed in hertz) over time, giving an indication of the intonation contour of the utterance; the bottom tier represents the words that were spoken in the request.
Example (13) shows the initial exchange between a female visitor and a male clerk. The final rising terminal signals the (marked) affective interpretation in a declarative request to express tentativeness. In the next exchange, the visitor's request consists of two TCUs: the request is prefaced by a pre-sequence (line 01), followed by a mitigated ‘want statement’ (using the past tense) ending with high terminal (line 02):
[13] High rising terminal in a declarative request (female visitor; male clerk)
01 Visitor: I was looking for:: um a walking tour, 02 → I wanted to see the Thomas Hart Benton Murals ↑ 03 Clerk: oh:: ok. You can park and then walk. ((12 turns of transcript omitted)
The acoustic analysis of the main request (line 02) is shown in Figure 6.3 which illustrates some of the prosodic features of the visitor's request.
Figure 6.3 Acoustic analysis of a declarative request.
The declarative request in Figure 6.3 (‘want statement’) consists of 13 syllables, lasts 2.7 seconds, and ends in a high rising terminal (↑). It is delivered in two main tone groups (each containing a nucleus and unbroken rhythmical sequence): the first one (‘I wanted to see the::’) contains a nucleus stress in ‘I’ (184 herz), followed by low-high-low pitch contour, reaching a low terminal of 153 hertz. The second group shows an ascending intonational contour (‘Thomas Hart Benton Murals ↑’), reaching the highest final rising pitch in the last (elongated) syllable (Mural:::s ↑ [264 hertz]). The final rising terminal secures uptake and projects more information to come, as shown in the clerk's response (line 03). The combination of these prosodic inputs (i.e. pitch and duration) presents this request as more tentative and polite, creating a marked interpersonal interpretation for the hearer.
The next exchange (14) shows an instance of a low terminal in a conventional request, followed by the clerk's compliance:
[14] Low terminal in conventional request (male clerk; female visitor)
01 Clerk: Hi 02 Visitor: hi, 03 can you guys give us directions to TIS ↓ ((TIS is one of the University campus bookstores)) 04 Clerk: yeah, sure. ((six turns of transcript omitted))
The acoustic analysis of the main request (line 03) is shown in Figure 6.4, which illustrates some of the prosodic features of the visitor's request.
Figure 6.4 Acoustic analysis of a conventional indirect request for information
The request in Figure 6.4, lasting 1.87 seconds, is produced in ten syllables, and shows a descending intonation contour from high to low. The maximum pitch of the request includes the following information: ‘can you guys,’ which displays a high-low contour, with the nuclear stress in ‘you’ (583 hertz) and a low terminal pitch (477 hertz). The second part ‘give us directions to TIS’ shows a descending contour, from 275 (‘give us’) to a low terminal pitch of 192 hertz (‘…. to TIS ↓’). In this example, a falling tone assumes compliance and an expectation that a request will be fulfilled (Wichman Reference Wichmann2004), as shown in line 04 (example 14).
The last example (15) shows a Yes/No interrogative with a high-low terminal (̂):
[15] Yes/No interrogative with a high-low terminal (females)
01 Visitor: Hi 02 Clerk: how can we help you? 03 Visitor: → uh:: do you have a place for – flyerŝ ? 04 I – have a few classes ((laughingly)) and you have– 05 Clerk: I hate to say, I hate to say no, but you know what? you're about ((…)) = 06 Visitor: = oh 07 Clerk: → all of our counters are just full – if you have one, you can … 08 why don't you leave us one? 09 Visitor: OK 10 Clerk; yeah just leave us one and = 11 Visitor: = yeah 12 Clerk: and we'll see what we can do for ya 13 Visitor: that would be great 14 Clerk: OK thank you:: 15 Clerk2: thanks 16 Clerk: bye bye 17 Visitor: bye.
The acoustic analysis of the main request (line 03) is shown in Figure 6.5, which illustrates some of the prosodic features of the visitor's request.
Figure 6.5 Acoustic analysis of a Yes/No interrogative
In this example a patron enters the center to obtain permission to place flyers on the counter. The request lasts 2.1 seconds and is realized in eight syllables. The request for information displays a rise-fall pitch contour (̂) in two groups (line 03): the first lasts 0.91 seconds (‘do you have a place for’) and is followed by 0.18 second pause. The second part is realized slowly and softly, with an elongated syllable, and with a rise-fall pitch contour (f l y e r s ̂) (1 second). According to Quirk et al. (Reference Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik1985: 1600), a rise-fall contour may express tentativeness. In this example the descending intonation and the elongated syllable may also express a polite interpretation, as shown by the clerk who responds politely accepting the visitor's request (lines 07–08).
The production and interpretation of social action depends on both the meaning conveyed in the pragmalinguistic information of the request, and on the non-propositional meaning of some of the prosodic resources. The prosodic inputs analyzed in this section (e.g. final rising terminal [pitch] and elongated final syllables at the end of each tone group [duration]) present the request for information as both tentative and polite, creating a marked interpersonal interpretation for the hearer. According to Gumperz (Reference Gumperz and Tannen1981, Reference Gumperz1982, Reference Gumperz, Schiffrin, Tannen and Hamilton2001), the prosodic inputs, or contextualization cues, aid in the interpretation and negotiation of the request. The prosodic cues (from the visitor's request) allow the clerk to infer a marked affective meaning in the form of im/politeness, tentativeness, formality, or involvement with the interlocutor.
6.5 Conclusion
In this chapter I examined the interactional resources that allow the clerk and the visitor to negotiate a request for information in intracultural service encounters. In this visitor center, the language of communication is English between clerks and visitors from different regions of the United States. In this non-commercial setting, service encounters involve the exchange of information between a service provider (clerk) and a service seeker (visitor) (prospective students and their families). Although the focus of this chapter was on the interactional resources used to negotiate a request for information (transactional talk), relational talk (e.g. small talk) was also present in most of the interactions (see Chapter 7 for a comprehensive analysis of relational talk in service encounters). In addition to the interactional resources used to negotiate a request for service (e.g. request variants, openings, request–response, dispreferred responses), this chapter offered a pragmatic-discursive analysis of some of the prosodic resources used when producing a request, especially low and rising terminals (pitch), duration, and loudness of the request. It was noted that these prosodic inputs create a marked interpersonal or affective meaning to express politeness or tentativeness, more information to come, or to seek common ground (Clark Reference Clark1996). Following Gumperz (Reference Gumperz and Tannen1981, Reference Gumperz1982, Reference Gumperz, Schiffrin, Tannen and Hamilton2001), prosodic resources were analyzed as “contextualization cues,” which are interpreted as interpersonal markers of affective meaning, such as politeness or tentativeness.
The next chapter examines the pragmatic and discursive functions of non-transactional talk (relational talk) in different contexts of service encounters.
