Pragmatic Variation in Service Encounter Interactions across the Spanish-Speaking World 1138479594, 9781138479593

Citation preview

Routledge Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics

PRAGMATIC VARIATION IN SERVICE ENCOUNTER INTERACTIONS ACROSS THE SPANISH-SPEAKING WORLD Edited by J. César Félix-Brasdefer and María Elena Placencia

 i

Pragmatic Variation in Service Encounter Interactions across the Spanish-Speaking World

Pragmatic Variation in Service Encounter Interactions across the Spanish-​ Speaking World expands the study of service encounter interactions into new face-​to-​face and digital contexts and new (sub)varieties of Spanish. The chapters examine pragmatic variation in a range of contexts, representing ten countries and twelve (sub)varieties of Spanish. Part I explores macrosocial factors such as region, gender, age, and social class, while Part II focuses on microsocial and situational factors. Part III concludes the volume with theoretical and methodological contributions to the field. This volume will be of particular interest to advanced students and researchers of Spanish and Linguistics. J. César Félix-​Brasdefer is Professor of Linguistics and Spanish at Indiana University, USA. María Elena Placencia is Reader in Spanish Linguistics at Birkbeck, University of London, UK.

ii

Routledge Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics Series Editor: Dale A. Koike, University of Texas at Austin

The Routledge Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics series provides a showcase for the latest research on Spanish and Portuguese linguistics. It publishes select research monographs on various topics in the field, reflecting strands of current interest. Titles in the series: Collocations and Other Lexical Combinations in Spanish Theoretical, Lexicographical and Applied Perspectives Edited by Sergi Toner and Elisenda Bernal Gallen Current Research in Puerto Rican Linguistics Edited by Melvin González-​Rivera Lexical Borrowing and Deborrowing in Spanish in New York City Towards a Synthesis of the Social Correlates of Lexical Use and Diffusion in Immigrant Contexts Rachel Varra Biculturalism and Spanish in Contact Sociolinguistic Case Studies Edited by Eva Núñez-​Méndez Lusophone, Galician, and Hispanic Linguistics Bridging Frames and Traditions Edited by Gabriel Rei-​Doval and Fernando Tejedo-​Herrero Pragmatic Variation in Service Encounter Interactions across the Spanish-​Speaking  World Edited by J. César Félix-​Brasdefer and María Elena Placencia For more information about this series please visit: www.routledge.com/​ Routledge-​Studies-​in-​Hispanic-​and-​Lusophone-​Linguistics/​book-​series/​ RSHLL

 iii

Pragmatic Variation in Service Encounter Interactions across the Spanish-​Speaking World Edited by J. César Félix-​Brasdefer and María Elena Placencia Series editor: Dale A. Koike Spanish list adviser: Javier Muñoz-​Basols

iv

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, J. César Félix-​Brasdefer and María Elena Placencia; individual chapters, the contributors The right of J. César Félix-​Brasdefer and María Elena Placencia to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Félix-Brasdefer, J. César, editor. | Placencia, María E. (María Elena), editor. Title: Pragmatic variation in service encounter interactions across the Spanish-speaking world / edited by J. César Félix-Brasdefer and María Elena Placencia. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, [2019] | Series: Routledge studies in hispanic and lusophone linguistics Identifiers: LCCN 2019005254 | ISBN 9781138479593 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781351065382 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Spanish language–Economic aspects. | Sociolinguistics–Spanish-speaking countries. | Language and culture–Spanish-speaking countries. Classification: LCC PC4074.77 .P73 2019 | DDC 306.442/61–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019005254 ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​47959-​3  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​351-​06538-​2  (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK

 v

Contents

List of contributors  Acknowledgments  Introduction 

viii xi 1

PART I

Pragmatic variation according to macrosocial factors 

13

Regional affiliation 1 Regional pragmatic variation in small shops in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville, Spain 

15

J. C É SAR F É L IX - ​B R A SD EFER A N D A LLI SO N B. YATE S

2 Corner-​store interactions in Cartagena and Bucaramanga: A variational pragmatics study 

35

RE B E C A BATALLER

3 “No gracias amigo”: Refusals of bargaining offers in e-​service encounters in Mercado Libre Ecuador and Mercado Libre Venezuela 

55

MARÍ A E L E NA PLAC EN C I A A N D C A R MEN  G ARCÍA

Gender 4 Gender variation in address form selection in corner-​store interactions in a Nicaraguan community  J E F F   MI C H N O

77

vi

vi Contents

5 Gender variation in the perception of appropriate behavior in hotel service encounters in Spain 

99

LU C Í A F E RNÁ N D EZ- A ​ MAYA A N D MARÍ A D E LA O H ER NÁ N D EZ- L ​ Ó PEZ

6 The role of gender in Mexican e-​service encounters 

115

L AU RA M.  MER I N O H ER NÁ N D EZ

7 Forms of address and gender in Costa Rican service encounters 

130

J ORG E MU RI LLO MED R A N O

Age 8 Pragmatic variation by age in women’s use of post-​refusal small talk during service encounters in Rosario, Uruguay  150 H E AT H E R R .  K A I SER

9 Verbal humor and age in cafés and bars in Seville, Spain  169 MAN U E L PA D I LLA  C RU Z

Socioeconomic status 10 Socioeconomic variation and conflict in Spanish retailer-​consumer interactions on Facebook 

189

PAT RI C I A B O U - F ​ R A N C H A N D PI LA R G A RCÉ S -​C ONEJ OS BL IT VICH

PART II

Pragmatic variation according to microsocial and situational factors 

207

11 Interpersonal work in service encounters in Mercado Libre Argentina: A comparison between buyer and vendor patterns across two market domains 

209

H E B E P OWELL A N D MA R Í A ELENA PLAC ENCIA

12 The effects of social distance in service encounters in Puerto Rican panaderías  J UAN M.  E SC A LO NA  TO R R ES

230

 vii

Contents vii PART III

Theoretical and methodological issues 

249

13 Rethinking pragmatic variation: The case of service encounters from a modified variational pragmatics perspective 

251

K L AU S P.  S C H N EI D ER

14 Pragmatic variation in service encounter complaints: Some methodological issues 

265

RONAL D G E LUY K EN S

Index 

278

viii

Contributors

Rebeca Bataller is a Spanish language teacher in the Department of World Languages at the Masters School, USA. She currently teaches upper-​ and lower-​level Spanish language courses. She holds a PhD in Spanish at University of Iowa, USA. Her research interests include Spanish interlanguage pragmatics, variational pragmatics, and the acquisition of Interlanguage Pragmatics in the study abroad setting. Patricia Bou-​Franch is Professor of Linguistics in the Institute of Applied Modern Languages (IULMA) at the Universitat de València, Spain. She is interested in digital discourse, cross-​cultural pragmatics, (gender) identity and im/​politeness, on which she has published extensively. She is coeditor of Spanish in Context. Juan M.  Escalona Torres is a PhD student in Hispanic Linguistics at Indiana University, USA. His research interests include sociolinguistics, particularly as it pertains to language variation and change at the interface of semantics and pragmatics. J. César Félix-​Brasdefer is Professor of Linguistics and Spanish at Indiana University, USA. His research interests include pragmatics, discourse analysis, instruction of pragmatics, im/​politeness, and intercultural pragmatics. He has published several books and edited volumes. He recently published a textbook on pragmatics, discourse, and variation: Pragmática del español: context, uso y variación (2019, Routledge Press). Lucía Fernández-​Amaya is Lecturer in English at Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain. She holds a PhD in English Linguistics from the University of Seville. Her research interests and publications focus on pragmatics and translation, cross-​cultural pragmatics, politeness, and the language of service encounters. Pilar Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich is Professor of Linguistics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. She is interested in im/​politeness models, genre and identity theories, and traditional and digital media on which she has published and lectured extensively. She is coeditor of the

 ix

Contributors ix Journal of Language of Aggression and Conflict. She sits on the board of various international journals and is co-editor in chief of the Journal of Language of Aggression and Conflict (John Benjamins). Carmen García is Emeritus Professor, Arizona State University, USA. She has extensively published in the areas of Spanish pragmatics, Spanish pragmatic variation, and intercultural communication. She has coedited, with María Elena Placencia, Research on Politeness in the Spanish-​Speaking World, La conversación de contacto en español, and Estudios de variación pragmática en español. Ronald Geluykens is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Oldenburg, Germany. His research interests include cross-​ cultural pragmatics, interactional sociolinguistics, and the discourse/​ syntax interface. María de la O Hernández-​López is Lecturer in English at Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain. Her research interests revolve around cross-​cultural communication, service encounters, im/​ politeness and interpersonal communication. Her recent publications include the coedited volume Technology Mediated Service Encounters (John Benjamins, 2019)  and a research project on the eWOM and the sharing economy business. Heather R. Kaiser is Lecturer in Spanish at Samford University (Birmingham, Alabama, USA) and holds a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of Florida. Her research concerns pragmatics, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics in the Spanish-​ speaking world, primarily in Uruguay. Laura M.  Merino Hernández is a PhD student in Hispanic Linguistics at Indiana University, USA. Her research interests include syntax, particularly its intersection with semantics and pragmatics. Jeff Michno is Assistant Professor at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, USA. His research focuses on social and pragmatic variation in situations of language, dialect, and culture contact. His most recent work examines contact scenarios rooted in globalization and tourism, including the rural Nicaraguan community described in this volume. Jorge Murillo Medrano is Profesor Catedrático, Departamento de Lingüística, Universidad de Costa Rica. His research areas include discourse analysis and pragmatics of Spanish, especially in topics related to discourse markers, the use of personal pronouns, and im/​politeness. Manuel Padilla Cruz is Profesor Titular de Filología Inglesa at Universidad de Sevilla, Spain, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on English as a second language, English for the Tourism Industry, and pragmatics and discourse analysis. He has examined a variety of communicative phenomena from cognitive and social pragmatic perspectives.

x

x Contributors María Elena Placencia is Reader in Spanish Linguistics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests lie in variational and intercultural pragmatics, and digital discourse analysis. She has published extensively on a range of topics such as im/​politeness, the pragmatics of service encounters, address forms, and complimenting behavior online. Hebe Powell is a PhD student at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests lie in variational pragmatics in Spanish with a particular focus on rapport management and user perceptions of (in)appropriate online behavior on the e-​commerce site Mercado Libre, Argentina. Dr.  Powell works as a freelance translator alongside her studies. Klaus P. Schneider is Professor of Applied English Linguistics at the University of Bonn, Germany. His current research focuses on pragmatic variation across languages and cultures, pragmatic competence and pragmatic assessment, metapragmatics, and perceptions of (im)politeness. He is coeditor of the handbook series Handbooks of Pragmatics (De Gruyter Mouton, 2010–2019). Allison B.  Yates has a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish, International Studies and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from Indiana University. Her research interests include pragmatics and sociolinguistics. She currently works at Greenheart Travel, a Chicago-​based cultural exchange organization as the high school abroad and short-​term programs manager.

 xi

newgenprepdf

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge all those who have offered their help on this edited volume. We especially thank all the contributors that made the publication of this volume possible. We would also like to thank the reviewers of the different chapters for their helpful and constructive comments: Laura Callahan, Lucía Fernández-​Amaya, Nydia Flores-​Ferrán, Catalina Fuentes Rodríguez, Beatriz Gabbiani, Carmen García, Andrea Golato, Heather Kaiser, Zulma Kulikowski, Karen Lopez Alonso, Irene Madfes, Rosina Márquez Reiter, Catalina Méndez-​Vallejo, Jeff Michno, Gerry Mugford, Jorge Murillo Medrano, Hebe Powell, Alex Quintanilla, Elena Ruzickova, and Diane Uber. Finally, a special “thank you” goes to Professor Dale Koike, Series Editor, Samantha Vale Noya, and the Routledge team (Laura Sandford, Leigh Westerfield, Anitta David, and Rosie McEwan) for their help throughout the publication process and the preparation of this volume. Thanks to Sam Tett and Carlos Zevallos for their careful reading of some chapters of the volume. Last but not least, we thank our families for their patience throughout the conceptualization and realization of this project.

xii

 1

Introduction

1  Focus and scope of the volume This volume focuses on service encounters (SEs) in the Spanish-​speaking world. SEs are everyday interactions in which some kind of commodity, be it goods, information, or both, is exchanged between a service provider (e.g., clerk, vendor) and a service seeker (e.g., customer, visitor). SEs constitute commonplace activities in which we engage face-​to-​face, over the phone, and increasingly through the Internet, in order to purchase products and obtain services and information. Their pervasiveness in everyday life, both on-​and off-​line, makes them fertile ground for analysis from a pragmatic and sociolinguistic perspective. The volume includes 14 papers that address different aspects of pragmatic variation in both commercial and noncommercial SE settings. Ten different countries are represented in the empirical studies covered in this volume (Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, and Venezuela). Further, 12 (sub)varieties of Spanish are represented in this volume, including varieties not previously examined in the context of SEs (e.g., Nicaraguan and Puerto Rican Spanish). Likewise, a range of settings are covered (e.g., cafés, bars, corner stores, markets, call centers, online marketplaces, etc.), including settings not previously studied (e.g., retailer-​consumer interaction through stores’ Facebook pages [Chapter 10]). The volume includes 12 empirical papers (Chapters  1-​12) as well as two papers dedicated to theoretical and methodological issues (Chapters 13 and 14). The empirical papers look specifically at aspects of intralingual pragmatic variation in the realization of different types of SEs in the Spanish-​ speaking world. Intralingual pragmatic variation (see, e.g., Félix-​Brasdefer & Koike, 2012; Placencia, 2016a) comprises variation in language use in relation to micro-​(e.g., social distance, power) and macrosocial factors (e.g., age, gender, regional affiliation, socioeconomic status) (Barron & Schneider, 2009; Schneider, this volume; Schneider & Barron, 2008), as well as to situational factors such as commercial (e.g., grocery or clothing stores), noncommercial (e.g., institutional call centers), or market domain contexts (e.g., food products

2

2 Introduction vs. electronic devices). The study of intralingual pragmatic variation examines the interplay between each of these factors. The main focus of analysis within variational pragmatics—​a discipline of relatively recent creation (Schneider & Barron, 2008; see also Schneider, this volume)—​is the study of pragmatic variation in relation to macrosocial factors. This is the perspective adopted in the majority of the empirical papers in the present volume. The SE genre encompasses both the transactional (buying and selling) and the relational dimension (interpersonal talk, small talk) (see, e.g., Félix-​ Brasdefer, 2015, 2017; Placencia, 2004, 2005, 2007; Placencia & Mancera Rueda, 2011; see also Kaiser, Padilla Cruz, and Powell & Placencia, this volume). The papers in this collection examine different dimensions of transactional and nontransactional talk during the negotiation of service, and the ways in which macro-​and microsocial and situational factors impact communicative language use. Two primary methodological frameworks are adopted by the empirical studies in this volume: variational pragmatics and rapport management. Within variational pragmatics, Schneider and Barron (2008) distinguish the following “levels” of analysis: formal, actional, interactional, topic, and organizational. In the study of rapport management, Spencer-​Oatey (2000, 2008) proposes the following “domains” of analysis: illocutionary, stylistic, participatory, discourse, and nonverbal. These two classifications serve as the basis for a number of studies in this volume (Chapters 1-​12). Finally, in relation to regional variation, Schneider and Barron (2008) distinguish between various levels of analysis: the national (with reference to Clyne’s [1992] notion of pluricentric languages with more than one national variety), the subnational (internal varieties of a given language), and the (sub)local (e.g., variation between different districts within the same town). Variational pragmatic studies in the Spanish-​speaking world have attended primarily to the national level (see, e.g., Placencia, 2011, for an overview), albeit to a relatively limited number of language varieties. While attention to the subnational level has been scant (Bataller, 2015; Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015 [Chapter 4]; Placencia, 2008a), one of the papers in this volume focuses on this underresearched area, thus contributing to its development: Bataller (Chapter 2) looks at two subvarieties of Colombian Spanish (Bucaramanga and Cartagena de Indias).

2  Rationale While there is a growing body of work among Hispanists on SE interactions (see Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015, for an overview), with initial studies dating back to the late 1990s (see, e.g., Placencia, 1998, 2001; Rigatuso, 2000), studies that approach SEs from a variational pragmatics perspective are not very numerous (see also Placencia, 2011, and Schneider & Placencia, 2017, for overviews). Those that do exist include the examination of pragmatic variation in relation to gender (Félix-​Brásdefer, 2012), regional affiliation (Bataller, 2015;

 3

Introduction 3 Márquez Reiter & Placencia, 2004; Placencia, 1998, 2005, 2008a), and ethnicity (Placencia, 2001, 2008b). However, given the large number of varieties (and subvarieties) of Spanish and the multiple potential contexts of study, not to mention the new modes of SE interaction that have emerged in recent years, facilitated by new technologies (see, e.g., Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich, Fernández-​Amaya, & Hernández-​ López, 2019; Placencia, 2015, 2016b), it can be argued that research in this area is still lacking. The present volume aims to expand the study of this area with a collection of papers on SEs in Spain and Latin America, covering a range of varieties of Spanish and contexts, including varieties and contexts not previously examined. These studies advance our understanding of the transactional and relational dimensions of SE interactions across contexts and regions of the Spanish-​ speaking world in face-​ to-​ face, telephone-​ mediated, and online settings.

3  Perspectives adopted and macro-​and microsocial factors examined The majority of the empirical studies in the present volume adopt a variational pragmatics perspective, while also examining the interplay of a particular macrosocial factor (or factors) with microsocial and/​or situational factors (Schneider, this volume; Schneider & Barron, 2008). Three of the papers analyze pragmatic variation according to regional affiliation: Félix-​ Brasdefer and Yates look at small-​store interactions in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Seville (Chapter 1); Bataller examines corner-​store interactions in two varieties of Colombian Spanish (Chapter 2); and Placencia and García discuss e-​SEs in an online marketplace in Ecuador and Venezuela (Chapter 3). The connections between language use and gender are examined in four chapters: Michno looks at interactions in corner stores in a Nicaraguan community (Chapter 4); Merino Hernández examines e-​SEs in northern Mexico (Chapter 6); Murillo Medrano analyzes face-​to-​face and telephone-​mediated SEs (in call centers) in Costa Rica (Chapter  7); and Fernández-​ Amaya and Hernández-​López look at perceptions of appropriate behavior among Spaniards relating to hotel reception-​desk SEs (Chapter 5). Two chapters take a look at small talk and the impact of the macrosocial factor of age, which has not been previously analyzed in the study of SE interaction: Kaiser (Chapter  8) analyzes the use of post-​refusal small talk in one variety of Uruguayan Spanish (Rosario) in relation to three age groups (young, middle, and older participants); and Padilla Cruz (Chapter 9) examines the use of verbal humor between baristas and customers of two different age groups (i.e., university students in their late teens and adults over 40 years old). Bou-​Franch and Garcés-Conejos Blitvich (Chapter  10) consider socioeconomic variation in the realization of retailer-​consumer interactions on Facebook. This factor has not, as far as we know, been previously explored in studies on SEs. Finally, two papers consider microsocial and situational

4

4 Introduction factors: Powell and Placencia look at variation in relation to user category (vendor or customer) and market domain (pets and toys) in e-​service encounters in Mercado Libre Argentina (Chapter 11); while Escalona Torres examines the effects of greater or lesser social distance between servers and customers in panaderías (café stores) in Puerto Rico (Chapter 12).

4  Methods employed and methodological issues The papers in this volume employ a range of data sources. The majority base their analyses on naturally occurring data obtained through either recordings of face-​to-​face interactions or the observation of communication online. Additionally, Chapter 9 employs field notes from nonparticipant observation, and Chapter 5 obtains perception data by means of a Likert-​scale questionnaire. With respect to context, 11 of the 12 empirical papers employ naturally occurring interactional data from commercial (e.g., grocery store, clothing stores, bars, online marketplaces) and noncommercial (e.g., a call center) service encounters. Chapters 13 and 14 discuss theoretical, methodological, and ethical issues of data collection, as well as data analysis. With respect to ethical issues in data collection, Schneider (2018, pp. 74-​80) reviews four principles that researchers need to consider prior to and during data collection in controlled and uncontrolled settings: (i) the principle of welfare (i.e., do not harm, protect participants’ well-​being); (ii) the principle of autonomy (i.e., respect and protect the autonomy of the individuals participating in their research, obtaining participants’ consent when researchers wish to collect data by observation or by participation); (iii) the principle of privacy (i.e., “Surreptitious recording is considered unethical because it impinges on participants’ basic rights of freedom and autonomy” p. 79); (iv) the principle of indebtedness (i.e., the researcher’s ethical responsibility to return the favor in some way that benefits the participant or the community). In Chapter 14, Geluykens discusses ethical issues for gathering data in controlled and uncontrolled settings. All authors included in Chapters  1-​12 either explain in some detail the procedures by which they obtained permission to gather data, or they worked within contexts in which permission was not necessary (e.g., in online interactions of public access; see below). Even when using publicly available data, however, researchers protected the privacy of the participants by replacing names with pseudonyms, for example, and deleting any information that may serve to identify the users (see Chapters 3, 10, and 11). All authors in the present volume follow ethical procedures according to their institutions and to the service encounter setting. For example, in order to abide by the conditions of the Institutional Board Review (IRB) of Human Subjects, authors were expected to request permission from their institutions if the data were to be collected through audio recordings (see, e.g., Félix-​ Brasdefer & Yates, Chapter 1; Murillo Medrano, Chapter 7). Once approval at the institutional level is obtained, researchers are usually expected to request

 5

Introduction 5 permission from the owner of the corresponding service encounter setting. If granted, it is customary when recording in face-​to-​face contexts to place a small sign over the counter stating the aim of the project and informing the customer that the interaction is being recorded or observed for research purposes (see, e.g., Félix-​Brasdefer & Yates, Chapter  1; Escalona Torres, Chapter 12). Customers also need to be given the option to opt out by asking the service provider to stop the recording or to delete the interaction. Since all the service encounters occurred in public settings, the data were considered public and nonconfidential. If the researcher is not present during the data collection process, the customers’ and vendors personal information is not requested. However, even if the researcher is present, it can be difficult to obtain such information as service providers expect minimum disruption during the data collection process. The same can be said about customers who are often in a hurry and do not want to be disturbed. Nonetheless, unless the interactions have been video recorded, it is advisable for the researcher to be present to observe the interactions and take notes, which will help him/​her better understand certain aspects of the interaction (e.g., when there are silences, etc.). With online data, most researchers do not request approval from their institutions (IRB) because this data is often available to the public, as in the case of the data analyzed in Placencia and García (Chapter  3), Bou-​ Franch and Garcés-​Conejos Blitvitch (Chapter 10), and Powell and Placencia (Chapter 11). In fact, Page, Barton, Unger, and Zappavigna (2014) note that it is the researcher’s right to analyze online data with reference to two contingencies: “whether the material is made publicly available and [whether it is] considered to be free from privacy restrictions” (p. 64). In Bou-​Franch and Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich’s case (Chapter 10), for example, the two Facebook pages analyzed had their privacy settings set to public access and thus the data were obtained without consent from the customers.

5  Organization of the volume and contents of the individual chapters It should be noted, first, that most of the empirical chapters deal with the interplay between micro-​and macrosocial factors; however, we have organized them according to their main focus of analysis. The volume is thus organized into three main sections: Part I contains studies dealing with macrosocial factors (region, gender, age, socioeconomic status); Part II is comprised of studies that examine one or more microsocial and/​or situational factors (for example, the interplay of situation and social distance); Part III closes the volume with two papers addressing theoretical and methodological issues in service encounter research. Part I, “Pragmatic variation according to macrosocial factors,” includes 10 chapters. The first three look at regional affiliation. In Chapter 1, entitled “Regional pragmatic variation in small shops in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville, Spain,” Félix-​Brasdefer and Yates investigate regional variation in

6

6 Introduction two levels of pragmatic analysis: actional (variation of the request for service and internal modification) and stylistic (variation of pronominal and nominal forms (tú/​vos [T]‌, usted [V]). Results from the face-​to-​face interactions showed evidence of regional variation with regard to the type of request for service (direct requests [Seville], assertions [Mexico City], and ellipticals [Buenos Aires]), the presence or absence of internal modification, and the preference for T over V by vendors and customers. In Chapter 2, “Corner-​store interactions in Cartagena and Bucaramanga: A variational pragmatics study,” Bataller examines variation at the subnational level in two regions in Colombia, Cartagena de Indias (Caribbean coast) and Bucaramanga (eastern Andean region), and looks at two of the domains from Spencer-​Oatey’s (2000, 2008) rapport management framework. With respect to the illocutionary domain, the author found that, while both groups preferred direct request strategies, these strategies predominated among customers from Cartagena, who also showed a lower frequency of internal modification such as politeness markers and lexical downgraders. At the stylistic level, customers from Cartagena showed a preference for (T) and casual nominal address terms, while customers from Bucaramanga preferred the deferential form V, and the use of formal nominal address terms. Also focusing on national varieties, Placencia and García’s paper, “ ‘No gracias amigo’: Refusals of bargaining offers in e-​service encounters in Mercado Libre Ecuador and Mercado Libre Venezuela” (Chapter 3), analyzes regional variation in the realization of refusals of bargaining offers in two subsidiaries of Mercado Libre—​an online marketplace—​in Ecuador and Venezuela. They found both similarities and differences across data sets. For instance, vendors in both locations showed a preference for explicit refusals and mitigating strategies; however, Ecuadorean vendors used the latter more frequently. The differences identified are interpreted with respect to some dimensions of cultural variation. Four chapters look at the effect of gender during the negotiation of service. In Chapter 4, entitled “Gender variation in address form selection in corner-​ store interactions in a Nicaraguan community,” Michno analyzes pragmatic variation in pronoun and vocative use. The face-​to-​face interactions were analyzed for pronominal use according to the gender of both customer and vendor. Findings showed that address form selection by both vendor and customer was primarily conditioned by customer gender, with significantly higher use of usted during interactions with female customers, and of vos with male customers. Request type is also shown to have influenced pronoun selection, but only among female customers. In Chapter  5, entitled “Gender variation in the perception of appropriate behavior in hotel service encounters in Spain,” Hernández-​López and Fernández-​Amaya explore gender variation in Spanish guests’ perceptions of receptionists’ behavior at hotel reception desks in different regions in Spain. The authors found some differences between male and female guests’ expressed preferences. For instance, a much higher proportion of the men in

 7

Introduction 7 the study rated having a good sense of humor as important. However, there were more similarities than differences: both men and women in the study highly valued the use of politeness strategies conveying deference, but they also attributed some importance to solidarity politeness strategies. In Chapter 6, entitled “The role of gender in Mexican e-​service encounters,” Merino Hernández looks at the impact of gender in online vendor offers in a Facebook community in northern Mexico. The author found that two strategies are used to make online offers: elliptical (i.e., omitting any explicit indicator that an item is being sold) and explicit (i.e., involving a clear “for sale” indicator) offers. Of these, the explicit offers are the most frequent. In terms of internal modification, both male and female vendors use capital letters, but while women tend to do so in order to intensify one aspect of the product being sold, men more often use capital letters to emphasize the entire post. Women used more internal modification (e.g., emoticons, capital letters), whereas men employed more greetings and/​or address forms. In Chapter  7, entitled “Forms of address and gender in Costa Rican service encounters,” Murillo Medrano takes a fresh look at variation in the use and alternation of pronominal (tú, vos [T]‌, usted [V]) and nominal forms in two corpora of service encounter interactions in Costa Rica: one institutional (call centers) and one commercial (grocery store). Results showed that the telephone interactions, which were more task oriented and dominated by the transactional function, followed an institutional script with a distanced, polite form of address, using V.  In the grocery store interactions, on the other hand, there was evidence of a marked tendency to reinforce interpersonal relationships, alternating between usted and vos. In both settings, women tended to use polite forms and more formal vocatives than men, and they received, in general, much more formal address than male customers in return. Two chapters in this section examine variation according to age. In Chapter 8, entitled “Pragmatic variation by age in women’s use of post-​refusal small talk during service encounters in Rosario, Uruguay,” Kaiser looks at refusal strategies among Uruguayan women belonging to three different age groups: younger (25 and under), middle (26-​40) and older (41-​61). The author focused on their use of small talk after a refusal (post-​refusal small talk) as a mitigating strategy. She found that women in the middle group used this strategy most, followed by the older women, who employed it more often than the younger group. Kaiser also looked at the effects of the educational level of the participants in her study, as well as of the gender of the women’s interlocutors. In “Verbal humor and age in cafés and bars in Seville, Spain,” Padilla Cruz (Chapter  9) examined variation in the use of verbal humor according to age in interactions between customers and baristas in Seville. Padilla Cruz found that humor serves the same social functions across data sets; however, he also found some differences relating to the number and types of humor manifestations produced by younger and older participants, and to the location of the humorous exchanges within the interaction.

8

8 Introduction Chapter  10 concludes Part I by looking at the impact of socioeconomic status, a factor that has been underexplored in variational pragmatics. In their chapter, entitled “Socioeconomic variation and conflict in Spanish retailer-​ consumer interactions on Facebook,” Bou-​ Franch and Garcés-​ Conejos Blitvich examine the effect of socioeconomic factors in service encounter interactions on Facebook. They analyze conflict exchanges in interactions between retailers and customers found on the Facebook pages of two Spanish department stores catering to customers of different socioeconomic status (+/​-​ prestige). They found both similarities and differences across stores. Part II, “Pragmatic variation according to microsocial and situational factors,” includes two papers. In Chapter  11, entitled “Interpersonal work in service encounters in Mercado Libre Argentina: A comparison between buyer and vendor patterns across two market domains,” Powell and Placencia examine situational variation in the realization of openings and closings and the use of address forms in SE interactions in an online marketplace. The study was based on data extracted from two market domains: “pets” and “toys.” While the authors found more similarities than differences across the two domains, they identified some clear differences in the way buyers and sellers structured their posts. This section closes with Chapter 12, entitled “The effects of social distance in service encounters in Puerto Rican panaderías.” In this chapter, Escalona Torres analyzes the use of pragmatic strategies in service encounter interactions in Puerto Rican panaderías (café stores), taking into account the degree of social distance or familiarity (+/​-​FAM) between storekeepers and customers. He focused on three domains of analysis (Spencer-​Oatey, 2008): illocutionary (request type), discourse (opening sequences), and stylistic (vocatives and pronominal forms). He found a preference for direct requests, personal names, diminutives, and rapport-​building talk in residential stores. Interactions in the commercially-​ situated store, where relationships with customers are transient, showed less personalized strategies. Finally, Part III, “Theoretical and methodological issues,” closes the volume with two chapters that address theoretical and methodological issues regarding interactions in service encounters. In Chapter 13, entitled “Rethinking pragmatic variation: The case of service encounters from a modified variational pragmatics perspective,” Schneider offers modifications and extensions of its two components—​the variational and the pragmatic—​with a particular focus on the levels of pragmatic analysis. The author advocates for the interdependence of all levels of analysis, such as formal, actional, interactional, topic, and organizational (Schneider & Barron, 2008). Further, a top-​down approach is advocated for considering the discourse position of speech acts in a communicative event, the respective subtype of this act with its specific realization, and the discourse history, such as previous events, and the relationship between service provider and customer. In the final contribution (Chapter 14), entitled “Pragmatic variation in service encounter complaints: Some methodological issues,” Geluykens analyzes the use of the mixed-​method approach

 9

Introduction 9 for examining pragmatic variation in the context of service encounters. The author focuses on complaint strategies in role plays, telephone call centers, and fly-​on-​the-​wall documentaries. Given the context-​sensitive nature and variability of complaints, it is suggested in this chapter that variation should also be analyzed in terms of the communication medium employed (face-​to-​face, telephone, computer-​mediated), using authentic data. The author concludes that a multimethod approach should be employed in order to triangulate the data using experimental and nonexperimental methods, combining quantitative and qualitative research methods. Overall, the present volume aims to expand the study of service encounter interactions into new varieties of Spanish, using innovative methodological frameworks that examine pragmatic variation and new face-​ to-​ face and digital contexts. The chapters in this volume highlight pragmatic variation at the national and subnational levels conditioned by macro-​(region, gender, age, socioeconomic status) and/​or microsocial and situational factors. Finally, this volume makes methodological contributions to the study of SEs through both the empirical works that adopt different perspectives and the theoretical and methodological chapters at the end of the volume.

References Barron, A., & Schneider, K. P. (2009). Variational pragmatics: Studying the impact of social factors on language use in interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 425-​442. Bataller, R. (2015). Pragmatic variation in the performance of requests: A comparative study of service encounters in Valencia and Granada (Spain). In M. Hernández-​ López & L. Fernández-​ Amaya (Eds.), A multidisciplinary approach to service encounters (pp. 113-​137). Leiden/​Boston, MA: Brill. Clyne, M. (1992). Pluricentric languages –​Introduction. In M. Clyne (Ed.), Pluricentric languages: Differing norms in different nations (pp. 1-​9). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2012). Pragmatic variation by gender in market service encounters in Mexico. In J. C. Félix-​Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues (pp. 17-​48). Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The language of service encounters: A pragmatic-​discursive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2017). Service encounters. In B. Vine (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language in the workplace (pp. 162-​174). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C., & Koike, D. A. (2012). Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts. In J. C. Félix-​Brasdefer & D. A. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts. Methodological issues (pp. 1-​15). Amsterdam/​ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich, P., Fernández-​Amaya, L., & Hernández-​López, M. (Eds.). (2019). Technology mediated service encounters. Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Márquez Reiter, R., & Placencia, M. E. (2004). Displaying closeness and respectful distance in Montevidean and Quiteño service encounters. In R. Márquez Reiter &

10

10 Introduction M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Current trends in the pragmatics of Spanish (pp. 121-​155). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Page, R. E., Barton, D., Unger, J. W., & Zappavigna, M. (2014). Researching language and social media: A student guide. London: Routledge. Placencia, M. E. (1998). Pragmatic variation: Ecuadorian Spanish vs Peninsular Spanish. Spanish Applied Linguistics, 2, 71-​106. Placencia, M. E. (2001). Inequality in address behavior at public institutions in La Paz, Bolivia. Anthropological Linguistics, 43, 198-​217. Placencia, M. E. (2004). Rapport-​ building activities in corner shop interactions. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8, 215-​245. Placencia, M. E. (2005). Pragmatic variation in corner store interactions in Quito and Madrid. Hispania, 88, 583-​598. Placencia, M. E. (2007). Entre lo institucional y lo sociable: conversación de contacto, identidades y metas múltiples en interacciones en la peluquería. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana (RILI), V, 1(9), 139-​161. Placencia, M. E. (2008a). Pragmatic variation in corner shop transactions in Ecuadorian Andean and Coastal Spanish. In K. P. Schneider & A. Barron (Eds.), Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages (pp. 307-​332). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Placencia, M. E. (2008b). “Hola María”: racismo y discriminación en la interacción interétnica cotidiana en Quito. Discurso & Sociedad, 2(3), 573-​608. Placencia, M. E. (2011). Regional pragmatic variation. In G. Andersen & K. Aijmer (Eds.), Pragmatics of society (pp. 79-​113). Handbook of pragmatics 5. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Placencia, M. E. (2015). Address forms and relational work in e-​commerce. In M. Hernández-​López & L. Fernández Amaya (Eds.), A multidisciplinary approach to service encounters (pp. 37-​64). Leiden: Brill. Placencia, M. E. (2016a). Variación pragmática. In X. Gutiérrez-​ Rexach (Ed.), Enciclopedia de lingüística hispánica (Vol. 1, pp. 797-​808). London/​New York, NY: Routledge. Placencia, M. E. (2016b). Las ofertas en el regateo en MercadoLibre-​Ecuador. In A. M. Bañón Hernández, M. Espejo Muriel, B. Herrero Muñoz-​Cobo, & J. L. López Cruces (Eds.), Oralidad y análisis del discurso. Homenaje a Luis Cortés Rodríguez (pp. 521-​544). Almería: Editorial Universidad de Almería (EDUAL). Placencia, M. E., & Mancera Rueda, A. (2011). Vaya, ¡qué chungo! Rapport-​building talk in service encounters: The case of bars in Seville at breakfast time. In N. Lorenzo-​Dus (Ed.), Spanish at work: Analysing institutional discourse across the Spanish-​speaking world (pp. 192-​207). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rigatuso, E. M. (2000). “Señora (…) ¿No tenés más chico?” Un aspecto de la pragmática de las fórmulas de tratamiento en español bonaerense. Revista Argentina de Lingüística, 16, 293-​344. Schneider, K. P. (2018). Methods and ethics of data collection. In A. H. Jucker, K. P. Schneider, & W. Bublitz (Eds.), Methods in pragmatics (pp. 37-​93). Berlin: De Gruyter. Schneider, K. P., & Barron, A. (2008). Where pragmatics and dialectology meet: Introducing variational pragmatics. In K. P. Schneider & A. Barron (Eds.), Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages (pp. 1-​32). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

 11

Introduction 11 Schneider, K. P., & Placencia, M. E. (2017). (Im)politeness and regional variation. In J. Culpeper, M. Haugh, & D. Z. Kádár (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im)politeness (pp. 539-​570). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Spencer-​Oatey, H. (2000). Rapport management: A framework for analysis. In H. Spencer-​Oatey (Ed.), Culturally speaking: Managing rapport through talk across cultures (pp. 11-​46). London: Continuum. Spencer-​Oatey, H. (2008). Face, (im)politeness and rapport. In H. Spencer-​Oatey (Ed.), Culturally speaking. Culture, communication and politeness theory (pp. 11-​ 47). London: Continuum.

12

 13

Part I

Pragmatic variation according to macrosocial factors

14

 15

1  Regional pragmatic variation in small shops in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville, Spain J. César Félix-​Brasdefer and Allison B. Yates

1.1  Introduction This chapter focuses on regional pragmatic variation during the realization of the request for service in naturally occurring interactions in small shops in three varieties of Spanish, namely, Mexico City; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Seville, Spain. From a regional perspective, sociolinguistic differences have been observed at other levels of linguistic analysis across varieties of Spanish (phonology, lexicon, morpho-​syntax) (e.g., Blas-​Arroyo, 2005; Díaz-​ Campos, 2011), and little has been investigated with regard to similarities or differences in the norms of interaction by contrasting ways of speaking among Mexicans, Argentineans, and Spaniards. Mexico shows a complex dialectal regional distribution, ranging from four general regions (North, Central, Coastal regions, and the Yucatán Peninsula) to at least ten regional dialects. Mexico City belongs to the same dialectal region as Central Mexico and shows regional differences at the phonological and lexical levels (e.g., Lipski, 1994; Martín Butragueño, 2014). Buenos Aires Spanish belongs to Rio de la Plata Spanish, spoken on the southeast coast of South America. While many studies have given emphasis to the phonological, morphological, and lexical characteristics of Argentine Spanish (Lipski, 1994) and the alternation between voseo and ustedeo in Argentine Spanish (Kaul de Marlangeon, 2011), few have focused on the pragmatic uses of these characteristics in Argentinean service encounters in boutiques (Ferrer & Sánchez Lanza, 2002) and small shops (Yates, 2015). Finally, Seville Spanish is spoken in the autonomous community of Andalusia, which comprises one of the eight provinces of Southern Spain. Given the linguistic diversity of Andalusian Spanish, two main dialectal regions are identified as East and the West, and Seville belongs to the East region (García Moutón, 2014). Adopting a variational pragmatics approach with a focus on region, we take a fresh look at the pragmalinguistic resources that Mexicans, Argentines, and Spaniards of the aforementioned regions use during the negotiation of service (Barron & Schneider, 2009; Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015; Schneider, 2010; also, Schneider, this volume). Of the different levels of pragmatic analysis (formal, actional, interaction, stylistic), we focus on two: actional and stylistic. While

16

16  J. César Félix-Brasdefer and Allison B. Yates the actional level looks at the realization of the request for service (head act and internal modification), in the stylistic level we focus on the selection of the pronominal forms tú/​vos (T, “you-​informal”) and usted (V, “you-​formal”) and the use of nominal forms when addressing the vendor or the customer. For a review of service encounter interactions at other levels of analysis and in diverse contexts, see Félix-​Brasdefer (2015, 2017), Márquez Reiter and Bou-​Franch (2017), and Schneider and Placencia (2017). This chapter is organized as follows. First, we provide a selective account of studies that examine intralingual variation across varieties of Spanish (Section 1.2). Second, we describe the data collection method used, including a description of the data (face-​to-​face interactions), the stores in each region, and data analysis (Section 1.3). Then, we present the results and discussion (Section 1.4). The chapter closes with concluding remarks and future directions (Section 1.5). The following convention superscripts are used in the examples: Tú =  T, Vos =  vos, Usted =  V, Diminutive =  D). In Spanish, vos (Argentina) and tú (México and Spain) (T, second person singular-​informal) convey familiarity and solidarity, where usted (V) is used to show deference and respect.

1.2  Theoretical framework With regard to requests, most research in cross-​cultural pragmatics adopts Blum-​Kulka, House, and Kasper’s (1989) classification of direct and indirect requests. Unlike other languages (e.g., English) where conventional indirectness represents the predominant strategy during the realization of the request for service, interactions in Spanish service encounters are mainly realized by means of direct strategies (Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015 [­chapters  3, 4, and 5]; Placencia, 2008). Contrary to conventional indirectness (e.g., ¿Me puede vender un kilo de tomates? ‘Can youV sell me a kilo of tomatoes’), direct requests are realized by means of the following variants: performative (e.g., Le pido que me venda… ‘I request youV sell me…’), want need statements (e.g., Quiero/​ necesito… ‘I want/​need’), elliptical requests (e.g., Un pan, por favor ‘bread, please’), assertions regarding the hearer’s course of action (e.g., Me da… ‘YouV give me’), or direct questions that are interpreted as a request for action by the interlocutor (e.g., Customer: ¿Tiene café? ‘Do youV have coffee?’ Vendor: Con o sin azúcar? ‘With or without sugar?’). Implicit requests are also common in service encounter interactions: The customer selects the product, shows it to the vendor and pays. Furthermore, the request head act can be modified internally by means of expressions such as the diminutive, a politeness formula, and epistemic verbs (e.g., Creo/​pienso/​parece ‘I think/​believe/​guess’) as well as the conditional and the imperfect to express distance and politeness. In this section we provide a selective account of empirical studies that have examined pragmatic variation in the context of service encounters in face-​to-​ face interaction in naturalistic contexts. Given that the present study focuses on the actional and stylistic levels, we will limit the discussion below to these

 17

Regional pragmatic variation in small shops 17 two levels. For a general overview of pragmatic variation across the Spanish-​ speaking world in different contexts, see Félix-​Brasdefer (2015, 2017), García and Placencia (2011), and Márquez Reiter and Placencia (2005, ­chapter 5). 1.2.1  Pragmatic variation in service encounter interactions Research on service encounters has contrasted a few varieties at the national level. For example, Placencia (2005) examined 148 interactions in four small shops, two in Quito (68 interactions) and two in Madrid (80 interactions). Although customer requests reflected an overall preference for direct requests in both regions, Quiteño participants showed a preference for imperatives (60%), Madrileño customers displayed a preference for ellipticals (una barra de pan ‘a baguette’), followed by imperatives (Deme una barra de pan ‘GiveV me a baguette’) and assertions (e.g., Me da… ‘YouV give me…’). Differences were noted in the presence of internal modification of the request. Ecuadorean customers modified their requests with different forms, including the use of diminutives, politeness forms, hedges, and verbs (e.g., Una barrita, regáleme pancito, tenga la bondad una lechecita ‘A baguetteD,’ ‘giftV me breadD,’ ‘have the kindness for some milkD’). Instances of regáleme pancito por favor (‘GiveV [lit. ‘give as gift’] me breadD please’), where both lexical downgrading and the diminutive were also used. Internal modification of requests in Madrid was infrequent. Placencia (1998) also found a preference for higher levels of directness among the Spaniards than among the Ecuadoreans, who preferred indirect (and a more deferential style) strategies to negotiate service at hospital reception desks and with clients. In a different service context, Márquez Reiter and Placencia (2004) analyzed 56 sales interactions (clothing and accessory shops) in Montevideo, Uruguay, and in Quito. The results were analyzed with regard to closeness (directness) (Montevideans) and respect strategies (Quiteños). Three studies have examined pragmatic variation at the subnational level. Félix-​Brasdefer (2015) analyzed 400 interactions in small shops in two Mexican regions: 200 in Mexico City (central Mexico) and 200 in Guanajuato (north of Mexico City). Results showed that customers from both regions preferred assertions (Me da/​me pone… ‘YouV give me/​put’), followed by imperatives. Differences were also noted with regard to the type of direct requests; while elliptical requests predominated in Guanajuato, implicit requests—​in which the customer picks the product, shows it to the vendor, and pays—​were more frequent in Mexico City. In a different context, Placencia (2008) looked at pragmatic variation in two regions of Ecuador using 171 interactions (Quito [68] and Manta [103]). Direct requests predominated in both regions with a few differences; while Quiteño customers preferred imperatives, Manteño participants displayed a similar preference for imperatives and elliptical requests (e.g., Deme pan ‘GiveV me bread’ vs. Pan por favor ‘Bread please’). With regard to internal modification of the request, Quiteño customers used more expressions to soften the request (e.g., diminutives, politeness formula,

18

18  J. César Félix-Brasdefer and Allison B. Yates lexical downgrading, and hedging) than Manteños, who infrequently modified the request for service. Finally, Bataller (2015) compared the norms of interaction in two varieties of Southern Spain, one from Valencia (53, Valencian Spanish) and the other near Granada (57, Andalusian Spanish) for a total of 110 interactions. With regard to the request for service, customers from both regions showed a preference for direct requests; those from Valencia employed elliptical requests, while in the Granada region customers selected both elliptical requests and imperatives (e.g., Échame un vasito de vino blanco ‘PourT me a glassD of white wine’). Internal modification of the request for service was almost absent in both regions, with the exception of a higher frequency of diminutives among the customers in the Granada region. A few studies have examined service encounter interactions in individual regions, five in Latin America and one in Spain. Félix-​ Brasdefer (2012) examined 244 audio-​recorded interactions in a Southern Mexican open-​air market (Yucatan). Customers from this Mexican region showed a preference for imperative (Dame… ‘GiveT me…’) and elliptical requests (Un kilo de plátanos ‘a kilo of bananas’), followed by implicit and assertion requests (e.g., Me da tres kilos de frijol negro ‘YouV give me three kilos of beans’). Internal modification of the request was infrequent. At the stylistic level, most interactions were realized with the informal pronominal forms “tú” (T), especially in male (customer)-​male (vendor) interactions, while in female (customer)-​male (vendor) interactions, the formal form of respect “usted” (V) was used to express deference and distance. In the Cuban context, Ruzickova (2007) collected 124 interactions in a variety of service situations in Havana, Cuba, such as a post office, police station, library, and a pizza stand. This study found a preference for conventionally indirect requests (e.g., ¿Me puedes hacer el favor de buscar el libro? ‘Could youT do me the favor of looking for the book?’) over direct requests (e.g., Busca ahí el nombre ‘LookT for the name there’). However, gender differences were noted: While male customers preferred indirect over direct requests, female customers showed a balanced preference for both direct and indirect requests. Further, Vélez (1987) analyzed 40 store encounters in San Juan, Puerto Rico. These data showed a strong tendency toward implicitness in speech on the part of interlocutors, possibly due to the fact that Puerto Ricans rely on nonverbal cues such as gestures, facial expressions, and intonation to support a request. In addition, the Puerto Rican data displayed a preference for elliptical requests (i.e., verbless requests) and unfinished sentences. At the stylistic level, Puerto Ricans showed a preference for informality through the pronominal form “tú,” diminutives, and endearment terms. Escalona Torres (this volume) also examined data in Puerto Rican small shops (panaderías) and found a preference for direct requests along with a preference for the informal pronominal form, reinforcing solidarity. Further, Ferrer and Sánchez Lanza (2002) examined the expressions used to negotiate a request for service and forms of address in Argentinean boutiques (Rosario, 30 audio-​recorded interactions and observations). In this Argentinean context, the request for service was predominantly realized by

 19

Regional pragmatic variation in small shops 19 means of assertions with busco (‘I’m looking for’), necesito (‘I need’), and vengo a buscar (‘I’m here to look for’), for example, Busco unas sandalias negras (‘I’m looking for black sandals’) or Necesito una sombra para los ojos (‘I need eyeshadow’). Indirect requests were frequent (¿Me puedes atender, por favor? ‘Can youT help me, please?’). Placencia and Mancera Rueda (2011) looked at the realization of rapport-​ building talk in bars in Seville, Spain. The data included 140 interactions, including bars where customers frequently visited (70) and bars where the customer and the bartender had infrequent interaction (70). Although the requests for service were direct and mitigated (e.g., Dame un cafélito para llevar cuando tú puedas ‘GiveT me a coffeeD to go when you can’), the data showed that during the negotiation of service (frequently visited bars) both the customer and the bartender engaged in individualized creative forms expressing humor and teasing activities such as ‘piropos,’ flirting (e.g., Female customer: Ponme un bombón’ ‘giveT me a bombón [coffee with condensed milk]’), Bartender: Bombón, lo que tú eres, morena ‘A pretty girl (lit. ‘a chocolate’), that’s what youT are, morena [referring to the woman]’). Finally, with regard to the use of pronouns in Spanish (stylistic level), Blas Arroyo (2005) noted the distinction between the use of usted/​V and the informal-​you (tú/​T) in Peninsular Spanish as a tool to demonstrate relations of power and solidarity (stylistic variation). The pronouns selected, by both the person who employs the pronoun and the person who receives the pronoun, establish these power structures, which are based on social factors, such as age, profession, gender, and socioeconomic status. The address form chosen can determine beliefs regarding solidarity, inferiority, distance, and superiority. However, during the negotiation of service, the interlocutors may alternate between the informal-​you and the formal-​you. In such cases, contextualization cues or “hints” (Gumperz, 1982) are necessary as the vendor or the customer may alternate between the T or V forms, showing distance or solidarity in different moments of the conversation (e.g., low or high intonation, nonverbal signals, code-​switching, or signals regarding the positive or negative outcome of the interaction). For instance, in Argentinean public service encounters, Ferrer and Sánchez Lanza (2002) noted alternation of the T/​V pronouns by the same person: The vendor opened the interaction with the formal V (¿En qué la puedo ayudar? ‘How can I  help youV?’) and then switched to the informal V (vos) (La querés chica [billetera, ‘purse’] o preferís las grandes? ‘Do youvos want a small one or do youvos prefer big ones?’). The aforementioned research shows that although Spanish-​ speaking customers use direct requests during the negotiation of service, the selection of the strategies is conditioned by the region when contrasting varieties of Spanish from Latin America and Spain (national level) and within varieties of the same country (subnational level). Also, the presence or absence of internal modification differs across varieties, with higher indices of internal modification across varieties of Latin American Spanish. The present study furthers our understanding of norms of interaction by comparing how speakers of

20

20  J. César Félix-Brasdefer and Allison B. Yates three regions make a request for service (actional level) and which pronominal and nominal forms they use to negotiate the request (stylistic variation). The present study examined the following research questions. In the context of sales transactions in small shops: RQ1: What request strategies do customers from Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville select to negotiate service? RQ2: What nominal and pronominal forms do customers and vendors from Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville select during the negotiation of service?

1.3  Method 1.3.1  Setting The data for the present study were collected in situations through natural audio-​recordings at six different corner stores: two in Mexico City, two in Buenos Aires, and two in Seville, Spain. The stores typically had one or two vendors at a time and sold everyday items such as gum, candy, chocolate, hot dogs, ready-​made sandwiches, bread, drinks, cigarettes, and recharges for prepaid cell phones. The products were displayed in front of the register and, with the exception of hot dogs and cigarettes, customers grabbed the product they wanted to buy and presented it to the vendor. The corner stores were located off busy metropolitan streets. All transactions included cash monetary exchanges. 1.3.2  Data collection The recordings were done during peak hours, including at lunch and the end of the workday when many customers frequented the stores. Due to the goal-​ or task-​oriented nature of the setting, many transactions happened simultaneously and vendors informally chatted with friends (who were not customers) while working. There was usually loud music playing in the background that obstructed portions of the data. Many of the recordings were incomprehensible due to background noise, including public transportation, sirens, and loud music. Prior to data collection, the authors requested permission from the vendors to record the sales transactions. The vendors granted permission to gather the data, and a small digital recorder was placed on the corner of the counter, along with a small sign explaining the purpose of the data collection. Some owners who granted permission to record the sales transaction decided not to place the sign. If the customers asked about the recording device, the vendor explained that it was for a research project. Since the service encounter data are considered public, the customers focus on the transaction with occasional small talk. For the present study, all transactions were anonymous and the researchers did not have access to the customers’ nor the vendors’ personal

 21

Regional pragmatic variation in small shops 21 information. The researchers were not present during any of the recordings and did not take notes on observations. A total of 360 transactions were collected: 130 in Mexico City, 130 in Seville, and 100 in Buenos Aires (audio-​recorded interactions). The data were transcribed according to a modified version of the transcription conventions in Jefferson (2004).1 Although the distribution of customers and vendors included males and females, here we focus on the effect of regional differences. There was a similar distribution of male and female customers, while most vendors were female. The data were coded by the authors. 1.3.3  Data analysis For each research question, the data coded by the researchers were analyzed through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). For the first research question that focused on the actional level (regional variation of the realization of the request for service), the data were analyzed according to the classification of direct and indirect strategies originally proposed in Blum-​ Kulka et al. (1989), and revised for the context of service encounters in Félix-​ Brasdefer (2015, p. 45). Direct requests included performative statements (Te pido que me desT… ‘I ask that youT give me’), imperative forms, want statements, assertions (Me daV /​me poneV… ‘YouT give me/​put’), ellipticals (Un litro de leche, por favor ‘A liter of milk, please’), implicit requests (customer picks up product and pays), and direct questions that are interpreted as the request for service, followed by the provision of service (Customer: ¿Cigarros, tenés? Vendor: Aquí los tiene Customer: ‘Cigarettes, do you have?’ Vendor: ‘Here they are’). Conventional indirect requests were infrequent in the data and included the query preparatory type (¿Me puede vender dos barras de pan? ‘Can youV sell me two baguettes?’). Additionally, internal modification was embedded in the request for service, including the diminutive, the politeness marker “please,” and the conditional and imperfect to express distance and politeness. For the second research question (“What nominal and pronominal forms do customers and vendor use to negotiate the request for service?”), attention was given to the address forms (nicknames, formal address forms) as well as the selection of pronominal use T/​V (tú/​vos versus usted) chosen by both the vendor and the customer during the negotiation of the request. We also analyzed instances of pragmatic variation with regard to alternation of the T/​ V forms during the negotiation of service.

1.4  Results and discussion 1.4.1  Distribution of the variants of the request for service This section presents the results for Research Question 1 with regard to the pragmalinguistic resources used to express the request for service. Figure 1.1

22

22  J. César Félix-Brasdefer and Allison B. Yates 60%

50%

47.7%

46.9%

40% 32%

30% 25.4% 19.2% 16%

2.3% 1.5%

on

in ven di t re io ct na ne l ss

it ic pl C

ire D

Buenos Aires

Im

tic lip

tio

n

al

0%

ct

As

d ee N

es

rti se

em at st

ta ts an W

on

t en

en m te

ra pe Im

Mexico City

8%

1.5% 0.8%

1% 0% 0%

t

e tiv

e iv at

8%

2% 2.3%

1% 0% 0%

rm rfo Pe

10.8%

10%

El

10.8%

10%

18%

14%

qu

20%

0%

20.8%

Seville

Figure 1.1 Frequency distribution of the variants of the request for service in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville

displays graphically the distribution (frequencies) of the realization of the customer requests for service in small shops in Mexico, Buenos Aires, and Seville, and Table 1.1 shows the results in percentages and frequencies (Mexico [n = 130]; Buenos Aires [n = 100]; Seville [n = 130]). In all three regions, the request for service was at times prefaced by a brief greeting sequence (Hola-​ Hola ‘Hello-​Hello,’ or Customer: ¿Qué tal, mi vecino? ‘What’s up, neighbor?’ Vendor: Hola, ¿Qué tal? ¿Cómo te va? ‘Hello, what’s up? How’s it going?’) or a greeting followed by the customer request for service (Customer: Hola, me das/​me pones…. ‘Hello, youT give me/​put’). However, most transactions were initiated with the request for service, omitting the greeting sequence. As shown in Figure 1.1 and Table 1.1, the request for service was realized by means of nine variants, used with various degrees of preference across the three regions. The request represents the first request for service produced by the customer to initiate the transaction. The subsequent request(s), which completed the negotiation of service, were not included in the present analysis. Customers from Buenos Aires used all nine variants, Mexican customers used seven variants, and the Spanish customers used six.

 23

Regional pragmatic variation in small shops 23 Table 1.1 Distribution of the variants of the request for service in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville (Mexico  =  130; Buenos Aires  =  100; Seville = 130)

Performative Imperative Want statement Need statement Assertion Direct question Elliptical Implicit Conventional indirectness Total

Mexico City

Buenos Aires

Seville, Spain

0% (n = 0) 10.8% (n = 14) 2.3% (n = 3) 0% (n = 0) 46.9% (n = 61) 1.5% (n = 2) 10.8% (n = 14) 25.4% (n = 33) 2.3% (n = 3) 100% (n = 130)

1% (n = 1) 16% (n = 16) 2% (n = 2) 1% (n = 1) 14% (n = 14) 8% (n = 8) 32% (n = 32) 18% (n = 18) 8% (n = 8) 100% (n = 100)

0% (n = 0) 47.7% (n = 62) 10% (n = 13) 0% (n = 0) 19.2% (n = 25) 0.8% (n = 1) 20.8% (n = 27) 0% (n = 0) 1.5% (n = 2) 100% (n = 130)

The preference for the type of request for service was conditioned by the region. The Mexican customers chose an assertion as the most frequent request (46.9%; 61/​130), followed by implicit requests (25.4%; 33/​130), elliptical (10.8%; 14/​ 130), and imperatives (10.8%14/​ 130). Spanish customers selected imperatives as the most frequent request type (47.7%; 62/​ 130), followed by elliptical requests (20.8%; 27/​130) and assertions (19.2%; 25/​130). The Argentinean customers selected elliptical requests most frequently (32%; 32/​100), followed by implicit requests (18% 18/​100), imperatives (16%; 16/​ 100), and assertions (14%; 14/​100). There were also differences in some less frequently used request types. For example, the strategy of a want statement was more frequently used by the Spaniards (10%; 13/​130), as opposed to the Mexicans and the Argentineans who used it infrequently (2%; 3 and 2 cases, respectively). Indirect requests, realized by means of the query preparatory (Me puede vender… ‘Can youV sell me …’), were almost absent in all three groups, with the exception of the Argentineans, who used it more frequently (8%; 8/​100) than the other two groups (2% or less of the time [3 cases by Mexican customers and 2 by Spaniards]). The Mexican and Argentinean customers chose an implicit request more frequently than the Spanish customers. Finally, direct questions were interpreted as a request for service by the vendor. This strategy was more frequent among the Argentinean customers (8%; 8/​100) than the Mexicans and the Spaniards who used it 1.5%

24

24  J. César Félix-Brasdefer and Allison B. Yates (2 and 1 cases, respectively) or less of the time. The direct question (yes/​no interrogatives) is also interpreted as a request for service on the part of the interlocutor. This is an instance of questions following questions (Merritt, 1976); for example, Customer: ¿Tiene aceitunas? ‘Do youV have olives?’; Vendor: ¿Cuántas quiere? ‘How many do youV want?’ Overall, the findings of the present study coincide with the previous research reviewed in Section 1.2. The request for service is predominantly realized by means of imperatives, elliptical requests, and assertions. With regard to the Spanish data, customers from Seville preferred imperatives, followed by elliptical requests. In Placencia’s (2005) study in Madrid, however, ellipticals predominated, followed by imperatives. The results from another Andalusian region in Granada (Bataller, 2015) coincide with the findings from the present study in that customers from Seville (West Andalusian region) also prefer imperatives and ellipticals, while customers from Valencia (East Andalusian region) prefer elliptical requests, similar to the Madrid data (Placencia, 2005). In contrast to the Seville data, in which requests were more direct (imperatives, want statements), customers from Mexico City and Buenos Aires selected requests with lower degrees of directness, such as assertions (e.g., Me da… ‘YouV give me’) and ellipticals (verbless requests). In their data from Argentinean boutiques, Ferrer and Sánchez Lanza (2002) found that the customer’s request for service and the vendor’s response were realized indirectly to highlight high degrees of politeness, including the preference for opening and closing sequences to express solidarity and deference. 1.4.1.1  Internal modification of the customer’s request Internal modification of the request for service was absent for the most part in all three regions. Table 1.2 shows the distribution of the expressions commonly used to modify the request in each region. Four types of internal modifiers were observed: the politeness formula (‘please’ por favor or Mexican variants porfa, porfis), the diminutive(D) (bolsita, ‘bagD’ kilito ‘kilogramD’), the conditional (¿Me podría vender…? ‘Would youV sell me…?’), the imperfect (¿Podía darme… ‘Could youV give me…?’), or two or more internal modifiers (¿Tendría un paquetito de café, por favor? ‘Would youV have a packetD of coffee, please?’). As shown in Table 1.2, although internal modification was infrequent in the three regions, its use in customer requests in Seville was the least frequent (16%; 21/​130), followed by the Mexicans (25%; 33/​130) and the Argentineans (23%; 23/​100). The politeness formula was more common among Mexican customers (17.7%; 23/​130) than among the Argentineans and the Spaniards (5% or less). The diminutive was more frequent among the Argentineans (15%; 15/​100) and infrequent among the Mexicans and the Spaniards (4.6%; 6/​130). These results coincide with previous studies in that speakers from Mexico (Mexico City) or of Andean Spanish (Ecuador) use a higher frequency of internal modification than speakers from regions in Spain, in particular, the use of the diminutive and a final rising intonation (↑) (prosodic downgrader)

 25

Regional pragmatic variation in small shops 25 Table 1.2 Internal modification of the request for service in small shops (Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville)

Zero modification Politeness formula (variants of ‘please’) Diminutive Conditional Imperfect Two or more Total

Mexico City

Buenos Aires

Seville

74.6% (97/​130) 17.7% (23/​130) 4.6% (6/​130) 0% (0/​130) 0.8% (1/​130) 2.3% (3/​130) 130

77% (77/​100) 5% (5/​100) 15% (15/​100) 1% (1/​100) 0% (0/​100) 2% (2/​100) 100

83.8% (109/​130) 4.6% (6/​130) 4.6% (6/​130) 3.8% (5/​130) 0.8% (1/​130) 2.3% (3/​130) 130

in assertions (e.g., Me da medio litro de leche↑ ‘YouV give me a liter of milk↑’) (Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015 [­chapter 4]; Placencia, 1998, 2005, 2008). Examples (1-​3) display the predominant strategies used by the Mexicans, Argentineans, and Spaniards during the negotiation of service. It should be noted that after the initial request for service, customers employed different types of requests throughout the transaction. The examples also show the presence or absence of internal modification. The internal modifiers are underlined (↑ indicates final rising intonation). Mexican customer requests (Mexico City shop). (1) Assertion and imperative requests: male customer, male vendor (Mexico City) 1 CUSTOMER: No tiene Knor Suiza?   ‘Don’t youV have chicken bouillon?’ 2 VENDOR: Sí, aquí está   ‘Yes, here it is’ 3 CUSTOMER: Me da un paquetito por favor.   ‘YouV give me a little packet please.’ 4 VENDOR: ((hands in product)) 5 CUSTOMER: ¿No tiene así del paquetito bonito?   ‘Don’t youV have the pretty packetD like this?’ 6 VENDOR: ¿Paquetito bonito?   ‘Pretty packetD?’ 7 CUSTOMER: O deme unos 5, ¿cuánto es?   ‘Or giveV me five, how much is it?’ 8 VENDOR: Treinta y ocho cincuenta   ‘Thirty eighty fifty’

26

26  J. César Félix-Brasdefer and Allison B. Yates 9 CUSTOMER: Por favor, cóbrese, gracias amigo   ‘Please, youV take it out of this, thanks 10 VENDOR: ¡ÁndeleV!   ‘OkayV.

friend’

(2) Argentinean customer requests (Buenos Aires)

a. Elliptical request: male customer, male vendor

1 VENDOR:

Hola ‘Hi’ 2 CUSTOMER: Carga virtual (Elliptical request)   ‘Cell phone credit recharge’ 3 VENDOR: Claro   ‘Of course’ b. Imperative: male customer, male vendor 1 VENDOR:   2 CUSTOMER:  



¿Cuánto le cargás? ‘How much do youvos want to put on it?’ 15 pesos ponele. ‘15 pesos, putvos on it.’

c. Direct question: male vendor, male customer.

1 CUSTOMER: Hola, ¿Camel blanco tenés?   ‘Hi, Do youvos have white Camels?’ 2 VENDOR: De 10   ‘A box of 10’ 3 CUSTOMER: De 10 ↑   ‘A box of 10’↑ 4 VENDOR: Tres con setenta y cinco   ‘Three seventy-​five’ 5   ((Customer gives vendor the money)) 6 CUSTOMER: Gracias.   ‘Thanks.’

(3) Spanish customer requests (Seville)

a. Imperative requests: female customer, female vendor

1 CUSTOMER: Dame uno de estos, ponme uno.      ‘GiveT me one of these, putT one for me.’ 2 VENDOR: Venga, llévate los dos, están muy buenos.      ‘ComeV on, take them both, they’re really good.’



b. Assertion and imperative requests: female customer, male vendor

1 VENDOR: Hola      ‘Hello’

 27

Regional pragmatic variation in small shops 27 2 CUSTOMER:  Hola,

me da seis de la oferta de esta, y me pone dos bolsas,      por favor.      ‘Hello, youV give me six of these ones on sale, and youV put me two bags, please.’

c. Imperative requests: female customer, female vendor

1 VENDOR: Hola, guapetona      ‘Hello, beautiful’ 2 CUSTOMER: Dame dos bolsas.      ‘GiveT me two bags.’



d. Assertion and imperative requests: female customer, female vendor

1 CUSTOMER: Y ahora me das otros dos chorizos más      ‘And now youT give me two more chorizos’ 2 VENDOR: Ya no hay de ese      ‘There aren’t any more of those’ 3 CUSTOMER: Dame ese trocito de ternera, bueno,      échame ese trocito con el otro.      ‘GiveT me that little piece of veal, well,      throwT in that little piece with the other.’ 4 VENDOR: Ya está, hasta mañana      ((hands-​ in product))      ‘Here you go, see you tomorrow’ 5 CUSTOMER: Adiós.       ‘Bye.’

As seen in examples (1-​3) above from Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville, the use of internal modification of the requests was infrequent, most noticeably in the data from Spain, which also had a preference for imperative requests (displayed in ­example  3, transactions a-​d). Though also infrequent in the data overall, Mexican speakers utilized the diminutive in their requests, such as asking for paquetito (packetD) while making an assertion and an imperative request (­example  1, transaction a). Finally, e­ xample  2 shows Buenos Aires speakers’ request strategies and their infrequent use of international modification. In ­example 2 transaction c, the Argentinean customer employs a direct question (a strategy nearly absent in the Mexico City and Seville data) with no internal modification. 1.4.2  Stylistic variation This section presents the results for the second research question with regard to stylistic variation in nominal and pronominal forms used among customers and vendors during the negotiation of service.

28

28  J. César Félix-Brasdefer and Allison B. Yates 1.4.2.1  Nominal forms During the negotiation of service, both customers and vendors used a variety of nominal address forms to reinforce the interpersonal relationships between them, and the forms varied for each region. Address forms were used to demonstrate either familiarity or respect for an older person. In all three regions both customers and vendors used first names (Juan), nicknames (Marilore, flaco ‘slim’), diminutives (Clarita, ‘little Clara,’ Pablito ‘little Pablo’), and terms of endearment (amiguita, ‘little friend (friend D),’ vecinita ‘little neighbor’ (neighbor D), as shown in Table 1.3. While terms of endearment were used in transactions in all three regions, the use of these forms was most varied in Buenos Aires, where the frequent use of many different terms appeared in interactions. The vendor in Buenos Aires also used different terms than the customer, which is similar to the data in Mexico City and Seville. Similar nominal forms were used in Ecuadorean Spanish in corner-​store transactions (Placencia, 2008) such as ‘Doña Rosa’ (Doña Rosita ‘Doña RoseD’), señora Mariíta ‘Mrs. MariaD’, Niña ‘little child’, first names and nicknames (Luis or Paquito/​Paco, Santiago/​Sebas) or titles such as señor ‘mister.’ 1.4.2.2  Pronominal forms Table 1.4 shows the selection of pronominal forms (T/​V) used by customers and vendors among the Mexicans (tú/​usted), Argentineans (vos/​usted), and Spaniards (tú/​usted). As shown in Table 1.4, during the negotiation of service, customers and vendors negotiated the sales transaction using three forms: tú or vos (T), usted (V), or zero pronoun; the frequency of these forms was conditioned by region. Customers from Mexico City predominantly used the T form (49.2%; 64/​130) over the formal V form (26.2%; 34/​130), while the vendor selected the formal form V (37.7%; 49/​130) over the T form (13.8%; 18/​130) when addressing the customer. In contrast, customers and vendors from Buenos Aires and Seville predominantly used the informal T form (vos or tú) over the V form. These findings indicate that the Mexican vendors show a preference for deference or respect in addressing the customer, while the customer choses informality to address the vendor. The results from the Argentinean and Spanish data indicate that both customers and vendors show solidarity over deference during the negotiation of service, as also found in previous studies among Spaniards (Placencia, 1998) and Argentineans (Ferrer & Sánchez Lanza, 2002). Further, with regard to the zero pronoun variant (Table 1.4), the vendors from Seville did not mark the transaction with either T or V when responding to the customer’s request most often: zero pronoun used by vendors and customers: Seville (Vendor [89.2%]; Customer [30%]); Mexico City (Vendor [48.5%]; Customer [24.6%]); Buenos Aires (Vendor [32%]; Customer [22%]).

 29

newgenrtpdf

Table 1.3 Nominal forms used in small shop transactions in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville Mexico City

Buenos Aires

Seville

Address forms used by vendor

Address forms used by customer

Address forms used by vendor

Address forms used by customer

Address forms used by vendor

Address forms used by customer

First names (some with diminutives Pedro, Pablito ‘PabloD,’ ‘Gabrielita ‘GabrielaD’) Señor, señora señorita (‘Mr., Mrs., Miss’) (variant: señito, seño) Joven (‘Young man’)

First names (some with diminutives)

Capo (‘Boss’)

Capo (‘Boss’)

Guapa (‘beautiful’ [female])

Señor, señora señorita (‘Mr., Mrs., Miss’)

Señor, señora señorita (‘Mr., Mrs., Miss’)

Señor, señora Señorita (‘Mr., Mrs., Miss’)

Yanqui (‘Yankee’)

Guapetón(a) (‘Very beautiful (handsome)boy/​girl’)

Joven (‘Young man’)

Maestro (‘Teacher’)

Papá (‘Dad’)

Campeón (‘Champion’) Chicos (‘Boys’)

Amigo (‘Friend’) Chico (‘Boy’)

Caballero (‘Gentlemen’) Mi alma (‘My soul’) First names (Sonia)

Chico (‘Boy’)

Vecino (‘Neighbor’)

Hija (‘Daughter’)

Jefe(a) (‘Boss’) Hijo(a) (‘son’ [male/​female]) Amigo(a) (‘Friend’ [male/​female]) Güero(a) (‘Blond’ [male/​female])

Loco (‘Crazy guy’) Amigo (‘Friend’) Negro (‘Black guy’) Querido (‘Love’) Papa (‘Dad’)

30

30  J. César Félix-Brasdefer and Allison B. Yates Table 1.4 Distribution of pronominal forms in service encounter interactions (Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Seville) Mexico City (tú/​usted)

Buenos Aires (vos/​usted)

Seville (tú/​usted)

Customer

Vendor

Customer

Vendor

Customer

Vendor

Zero pronoun 24.6% (32/​130)

48.5% (63/​130)

22% (22/​100)

32% (32/​100)

30% (39/​130)

89.2% (116/​130)

T (tú/​vos)

49.2% (64/​130)

13.8% (18/​130)

75% (75/​100)

60% (60/​100)

58.5% (76/​130)

8.5% (11/​130)

V (usted)

26.2% (34/​130)

37.7% (49/​130)

3% (3/​100)

8% (8/​100)

11.5% (15/​130)

2.3% (3/​130)

In Spanish, vos and tú (second person singular-​informal) convey familiarity and solidarity, where usted is used to show distance and respect. In the majority of the Argentinean interactions, pronouns or you-​informal conjugations were used, showing a tendency toward both the vendor and the customer using the informal-​ you vos pronoun. Whereas in Mexico (Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015) and Quito, Ecuador (Placencia, 2005), vendors and customers show more preference toward the formal-​you (V, deference), the Argentinean data of the present study are similar to those in other service encounter contexts such as Argentinean boutiques (Ferrer & Sánchez Lanza, 2002), where the T form (vos) predominated, demonstrating affiliation (T, solidarity). Further, pronominal use in the data from the three regions showed alternation between T → V or V → T forms. Following Blas-​Arroyo (2005), alternation of pronominal forms represents instances of contextualization cues or signals in the discourse. That is, customers and vendor may switch from the T → V or V → T during the course of the interaction to convey a perlocutionary effect (e.g., frankness, completion of transaction, mutual agreement). In example (4) from the Buenos Aires data, the vendor alternates between the formal-​you and finishes with the informal-​you. (4) Variation on the pronominal level. (male vendor and male customer) (Buenos Aires) 1 CUSTOMER: Hola     ‘Hi’ 2 VENDOR: Hola     ‘Hi’ 3 CUSTOMER: Claro   ‘Claro’ ((Phone card)) 4 VENDOR: ¿Compañía?   ‘Company?’

 31

Regional pragmatic variation in small shops 31 5 CUSTOMER: Claro   ‘Claro’ ((Phone Company))   6 VENDOR: → ¿Cúanto le carga señor? (formal-​you ‘usted’)   ‘How much do youV want to put on it?’ 7 CUSTOMER: Treinta   ‘thirty’ 8 VENDOR: Muy bien   ‘Alright’ 9 VENDOR: Treinta pesos en Claro, muy bien, ¿numerito por favor?   ‘Thirty pesos in Claro, okay, numberD please?’ 10 CUSTOMER: 156213… 11 VENDOR: 6213… 12 CUSTOMER: 13… 0149 13 VENDOR: Repito. ¿62..13..01..49?   ‘I’ll repeat: 62, 13, 01, 49?’ 14 CUSTOMER: Sí     ‘Yes’ 15 VENDOR: Claro, ¿$30.00?   ‘Claro,  $30?’ 16 CUSTOMER: Sí     ‘Yes’ 17 VENDOR: → $31.00 sería, ¿sabés?   ‘It’s going to be $31, do youvos know?’ 18 CUSTOMER: $31.00, ¿por qué?   ‘$31,  why?’ 19 VENDOR: Así se hace la carga, ¿la hago?   ‘That’s how you do the recharge, do I do it?’ 20 CUSTOMER: No, no, dejá chau   ‘no, no, leavevos it, bye’

In e­ xample  4, the vendor shifts from a formal address form (line 6)  to an informal (line 17) at strategic moments during the transaction. The vendor’s pronominal variation can be interpreted first as a desire to show distance and respect, indicate with both the use of the formal-​you and the address form señor (‘sir’). However, in line 17, the vendor must explain to the customer that recharging his prepaid cell phone will be more expensive due to the use of a machine. The strategic use of vos (informal pronoun) in line 17 can be interpreted as the vendor’s request for compliance, putting the vendor and customer on a level of familiarity in which extra costs can be negotiated. Nevertheless, the mitigation fails as in line 20 the customer abandons the transaction. Pragmatic variation at the pronominal level, as shown in Blas Arroyo (2005) and Kaul de Marlangeon (2011), describes the alternation between the informal-​you and the formal-​you with the same person in the same conversation (as in ­example 4). The pragmatic variation at the pronominal level serves

32

32  J. César Félix-Brasdefer and Allison B. Yates a purpose. This purpose changes depending on the progress of the interaction and sometimes serves to soften an imposing request or establish familiarity. Moser (2006) explains that in Costa Rica, where the voseo, ustedeo, and tuteo function simultaneously, the voseo is used when making a request or a face-​ threatening statement. However, outside of Buenos Aires, where the tú is not used, the voseo/​ustedeo alternation can be described as an instance where the interlocutor attempts to manipulate the receptor (Kaul de Marlangeon, 2011). The alternation shows a sense of the vendor trying to be strategic, wanting to show familiarity and distance. The V to T alternation was also observed in Argentinean boutique service encounter interactions (Ferrer & Sánchez Lanza, 2002). After the vendor opens the interaction in a deferential form usted, he/​she changes to the informal T during the negotiation of the transaction, establishing affiliation with the customer. Overall, pronominal alternation can be seen as the “strategic” desire, even within the conversation, to show solidarity and respect as the “changing of roles” continues throughout the interaction.

1.5  Conclusion This study examined pragmatic variation in naturally occurring service encounters in three regions of Spanish: Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville, Spain. We examined pragmatic variation on two levels of analysis, the actional and the stylistic level. The data showed that customers in Buenos Aires used a more diverse range of request strategies, though elliptical and implicit were most commonly used, unlike in Mexico City, where assertion was the most common strategy, and in Seville, where the imperative was the most frequently employed. There was very little internal modification of requests found in the data, though the use of ‘please’ was most common in Mexico City interactions and the diminutive was used more frequently in Buenos Aires than Mexico City or Seville. However, vendors in each of the three regions chose to use nicknames either in playfulness or out of respect during the negotiation of the transaction, with Buenos Aires vendors using the most varied selection of these terms. Finally, in regard to pronominal use, if vendors in Mexico City used a pronoun, they preferred the deferential V form, while Seville vendors overwhelmingly omitted any pronoun use and Argentine vendors opted for the T form (vos). Future research should look at the impact of other macrosocial variables such as sex, age, and socioeconomic status during the negotiation of service. Further, to examine the discursive structure of the sales transaction, researchers should focus on the negotiation of service at the discourse level by looking at how the service provider and the service seeker negotiate service throughout the interaction, including the opening and closing sequences and the negotiation of the request-​response sequences over multiple turns. Finally, attention should be given to the discourse and pragmatic function of nontransactional talk such as small talk during the negotiation of service.

 33

Regional pragmatic variation in small shops 33

Note 1 ↑↓ The up and down arrows mark sharp rises or falls in pitch. ? A question mark signals rising intonation. = Equal signs indicate no breakup or gap. They are placed when there is no interval between adjacent utterances and the second utterance is linked immediately to the first. : A colon marks a lengthened syllable or an extension of a sound. ::: More colons prolong a sound or syllable. (()) Double parentheses are used to mark the transcriber’s descriptions of events.

References Barron, A., & Schneider, K. (2009). Variational pragmatics: Studying the impact of social factors on language use in interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 425-​442. Bataller, R. (2015). ¡Enrique, échame un tintillo! A  comparative study of service encounter requests in Valencia and Granada. In L. Fernández-​ Amaya & M. Hernandez-​Lopez (Eds.), Service encounters and cross-​cultural communication (pp. 113-​137). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Blas-​Arroyo, J. L. (2005). Sociolingüística del español. Madrid: Cátedra. Blum-​Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-​cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Díaz-​Campos, M. (Ed.). (2011). Handbook of Hispanic sociolinguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-​Blackwell. Félix-​ Brasdefer, J. C. (2012). Pragmatic variation by gender in market service encounters in Mexico. In J. C. Félix-​Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues (pp. 17-​48). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The language of service encounters: A pragmatic-​discursive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2017). Service encounters. In B. Vine (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language in the workplace (pp. 162-​174). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Ferrer, M. C., & Sánchez Lanza, C. (2002). Atención al público: ¿Interacciones corteses? Español Actual, 77-​78, 99-​108. García, C., & Placencia, M. E. (2011). Estudios de variación pragmática en español. Buenos Aires: Dunken. García Moutón, P. (2014). Lenguas y dialectos de España (6th ed.). Madrid: Arco/​ Libros. Gumperz, J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation (pp. 13-​31). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Kaul de Marlangeon, S. (2011). Voseo/​ustedeo argentinos: su variación pragmática intralingüe e intracultural. In C. Carcía & M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Estudios de variación pragmática en español (pp. 217-​241). Buenos Aires: Dunken. Lipski, J. (1994). Latin American Spanish. London: Longman. Márquez Reiter, R., & Bou-​Franch, P. (2017). (Im)politeness in service encounters. In J. Culpeper, M. Haugh, & D. Kádár (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of (im)politeness (pp. 661-​687). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

34

34  J. César Félix-Brasdefer and Allison B. Yates Márquez Reiter, R., & Placencia, M. E. (2004). Displaying closeness and respectful distance in Montevidean and Quiteño service encounters. In R. Márquez Reiter & M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Current trends in the pragmatics of Spanish (pp. 121-​155). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Márquez Reiter, R., & Placencia, M. E. (2005). Spanish pragmatics. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Martín Butragueño, P. (2014). La división dialectal del español mexicano. In R. Barriga Villanueva & P. Martín Butragueño (Eds.), Historia sociolingüística de México, vol. 3: Espacio, Contacto y Discurso (pp. 1355-​1409). México City: El Colegio de México. Merritt, M. (1976). On questions following questions in service encounters. Language in Society, 5(3), 315-357. Moser, K. (2006). La variación entre formas ustedeantes y voseantes a nivel del discurso familiar en la clase media y alta de San José, Costa Rica: ¿Una estrategia de cortesía? In M. Schader Kniffki (Ed.), La cortesía en el mundo hispano: Nuevos contextos, nuevos enfoques metodológicos (pp. 97-​116). Madrid: Iberoamericana. Placencia, M. E. (1998). Pragmatic variation: Ecuadorian Spanish vs. Peninsular Spanish. Spanish Applied Linguistics, 2(1), 71-​106. Placencia, M. E. (2005). Pragmatic variation in corner store interactions in Quito and Madrid. Hispania, 88(3), 583-​598. Placencia, M. E. (2008). Requests in corner shop transactions in Ecuadorian Andean and Coastal Spanish. In K. Schneider & A. Barron (Eds.), Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages (pp. 307-​332). Amsterdam/​ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Placencia, M. E., & Mancera Rueda, A. (2011). Vaya, ¡qué chungo! Rapport-​building talk in service encounters: The case of bars in Seville at breakfast time. In N. Lorenzo-​Dus (Ed.), Spanish at work: Analyzing institutional discourse across the Spanish-​speaking world (pp. 192-​207). New York, NY: Palgrave/​Macmillan. Ruzickova, E. (2007). Customer requests in Cuban Spanish: Realization patterns and politeness strategies in service encounters. In M. E. Placencia & C. García (Eds.), Research on politeness in the Spanish-​speaking world (pp. 213-​244). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Schneider, K. (2010). Variational pragmatics. In M. Fried (Ed.) Variation and change: Pragmatic perspectives [Handbook of pragmatic highlights  6] (pp. 239-​ 267). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Schneider, K., & Placencia, M. E. (2017). (Im)politeness and regional variation. In J. Culpeper, M. Haugh, & D. Kádár (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im) politeness (pp.539-​570). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Vélez, J. A. (1987). Contrasts in language use: A conversational and ethnographic analysis of service encounters in Austin and San Juan. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). The University of Texas at Austin. Yates, A. (2015). Pragmatic variation in service encounters in Buenos Aires, Argentina. IULC Working Papers, 15, 128-​158. Retrieved from https://​scholarworks.iu.edu/​ journals/​index.php/​iulcwp/​issue/​view/​1715

 35

2  Corner-​store interactions in Cartagena and Bucaramanga A variational pragmatics study Rebeca Bataller

2.1  Introduction The present study compares the pragmatic strategies used to make requests by customers at four corner stores located in two cities in Colombia: Bucaramanga in the eastern Andean region of the country and Cartagena on the Caribbean coast. There are only a few studies that have examined pragmatic elements of the Spanish spoken in these two regions of Colombia. Previous research looked at the pragmatic strategies used on the Caribbean coast, more ­specifically in Barranquilla and Cartagena de Indias (Escamilla  Morales, Morales Escorcia, Torres Roncallo, & Vega [2004]; Escamilla Morales, Morales Escorcia, & Torres Roncallo [2005]; Escamilla Morales, Vega, & Morales Escorcia [2008]). Further, Rincón (2007a, b) and Méndez-​Vallejo (2013, 2014) analyzed different pragmatic aspects of the Spanish spoken in Bucaramanga in different contexts. Data for this study were collected via field notes and recordings, and were transcribed and examined at the illocutionary and stylistic levels according to Spencer-​Oatey’s (2000) domains of analysis in the study of rapport management. Spencer-​Oatey distinguishes five interrelated domains that play an important role in rapport management: illocutionary, discourse, participation, stylistic, and nonverbal. Of these, the illocutionary and stylistic domains are relevant to the present study. The illocutionary domain involves the performance and interpretation of speech acts, while the stylistic domain focuses on aspects such as the use of honorifics or choice of tone (Spencer-​Oatey, 2002, p. 543). This chapter is organized as follows: Section 2.1 starts with an overview of studies that have explored the Spanish spoken on the Caribbean coast and in the eastern Andean region of Colombia. Section 2.2 offers a review of the theoretical framework and previous studies on service encounters. Section 2.3 describes the method used. Section 2.4 presents the results, and a discussion is presented in Section 2.5. Finally, conclusions and recommendations for further research are offered in Section 2.6.

36

36  Rebeca Bataller

2.2  Theoretical framework 2.2.1  The Spanish spoken in Colombia According to Montes Giraldo (1982), the Colombian linguistic community can be subdivided into two macrodialects: the one spoken in the interior highlands or Andean region, where Bucaramanga is located, and the dialect spoken on the coasts. Coastal dialects are further subdivided into the Caribbean coast, where Cartagena is situated, and the Pacific coast (Orozco, 2004). The characteristics of the two macrodialects and their speakers—​also referred to as cachacos (speakers from the interior highlands) and costeños (speakers from coastal regions)—​have been studied by several authors, such as Escamilla Morales (1993), Flórez-​Ortiz (2005), Garrido (2007), Quesada (2000), and Rincón (2007a, b). Quesada (2000) observed that the Spanish spoken in the Andean region is notable for its phonological conservatism, and for the use of usted as the main pronoun in both formal and informal contexts. Flórez-​ Ortiz (2005) described coastal Spanish as a dialect with very particular features that clearly differentiate it from other regions of Colombia. Also focusing on speakers of coastal Spanish, Escamilla Morales (1993) described characteristics including distinctive pronunciation and intonation, the constant use of humor, the insertion of sayings and proverbs, as well as the use of creative nicknames and new words. He also noted a negative perception of the coastal dialect throughout the rest of Colombia. Indeed, in a more recent article Garrido (2007) confirmed the stigmatization of dialects from both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, contrasting this with the high prestige assigned to the dialect spoken in Bogotá. According to Garrido (2007), cachacos are characterized as formal and refined, while costeños have been portrayed as talkative, happy, and lively. As Escamilla Morales (1993) explained, critics of the costeño dialect argue that its speakers destroy or degrade the language by speaking too fast, cutting off some words and letters, using vulgar expressions, and employing the informal pronominal form tú (T), rather than usted (V), in all social settings (p. 50). Despite this criticism, the costeños themselves are proud of their distinctive way of speaking, and those who do not use coastal pronunciation in these regions may be accused of emulating a cachaco. There are only a few studies that have explored these dialects from a pragmatic point of view. In Barranquilla, Escamilla Morales et al. (2004) analyzed communicative style in everyday interactions among people of different social status, age, and gender in diverse communicative contexts (e.g., workspace, schools, home). The authors described the participants’ style as informal and affectionate. Example (1), taken from Escamilla Morales et al. (2004, p. 207), shows an instance of directness and informality during a request for service in Barranquilla:

 37

Corner-store interactions in Colombia 37 (1) BARRANQUILLA: Male customer and female vendor CUSTOMER: Dame la bolsa grande   ‘GiveT me the big bag’ VENDOR: Grande.    ‘Big.’   (…)   ((singing))   Puedes hacer conmigo lo que quieras,   llevarme a una fiesta…   ‘YouT can do with me whatever you’d like,   take me to a party…’ This example shows a direct request (as a command) and an instance of affection as the shop assistant starts singing a popular song in the middle of the interaction. Escamilla Morales et al. (2005) analyzed the communicative style in telephone conversations between employees and clients at a hardware store in Cartagena. The authors found that in these interactions there were many linguistic and nonlinguistic elements that revealed the informality characterizing speakers from this Caribbean coastal region. Linguistically, these interactions showed that speakers used the informal pronoun tú most of the time, and that their preferred request strategy was the imperative. Moreover, they rarely included greetings or farewells, or any thanking expressions in their interactions. The authors concluded that these conversations between customers and clients were filled with colloquialisms, reflecting not only the fact that the interlocutors were sometimes familiar with each other, but also that formality is often avoided in this region of Colombia as it is considered pretentious and unnatural. Finally, Escamilla Morales et  al. (2008) analyzed several interactions among college students from two different institutions in Barranquilla. They pointed out two types of strategies the students used when they interacted with each other: strategies to show closeness to one another, and strategies to differentiate themselves from the group. As Escamilla Morales et al. observed (2008, p.  193), students used impoliteness both in order to show that they belonged to a group of young college students and to differentiate themselves from adults. In addition, they often showed a desire to be considered impolite in order to reinforce the image of costeños as people who do not use forms of politeness, which they believe do not belong to the Caribbean style of interaction. The results from these three studies concur in their description of the interaction style in the Caribbean region as informal and direct. Turning to Bucaramanga Spanish (Andean region), Méndez-​Vallejo (2013, 2014) used role-​play interactions to analyze the request strategies and internal/​external mitigators employed by ten middle-​class college students from Bucaramanga

38

38  Rebeca Bataller when making requests. The author described the pragmatic style of these students as deferential, as illustrated by their use of indirect request strategies (e.g., ¿Me los puedes prestar? ‘Can youT lend them to me?’), formal terms of address (e.g., Señora ‘Mrs.’), and internal and external mitigators (e.g., Si no sería mucha molestia ‘if it wouldn’t be too much trouble’). Rincón (2007a), on the other hand, analyzed some pragmatic elements of Bucaramanga Spanish among a group of 70 middle-​class adult speakers, using semistructured interviews. Participants were first asked about their occupation, daily routine, and so forth, and then about topics that invited them to express their opinions, such as the country’s economic crisis. Rincón examined the use of three of the most commonly employed discourse markers in these participants’ speech sample: pues ‘so,’ o sea ‘that is,’ entonces ‘then.’ She observed that over time, entonces ‘then’ seemed to be displaced by the other two discourse markers. She inferred that this may have been a result of the national media’s influence on this population. As Rincón (2007a) stated, the Bumangueses seem very conscious of their use of language and tend to follow the rules (p. 18). The results of these studies, while showing certain patterns of language use, also display participants’ general attitudes toward both their own dialect and the standard dialect. As Escamilla Morales et al. (2004, 2005, 2008) observed, the costeños are proud and like to be recognized as speakers of their unique dialect, while the Bumangueses prefer to use a language that is closer to the standard, or to the dialect spoken in Bogotá.1 2.2.2  Pronominal (tú/​usted) and nominal forms of address in Colombia Several studies (i.e., Flórez, 1965; Mestre-​Moreno, 2010; Uber, 1985) have analyzed the use of the pronouns tú and usted in Colombia (see Placencia 2010 for an overview). Uber (1985) described two main uses of usted in Bogotá. She describes the “solidarity” usted used among friends and close relatives on the one hand, and the “nonsolidarity” usted employed among strangers on the other. These pronouns are located on each end of a continuum, as shown in Figure 2.1: As Uber (1985) explained, tú ‘you (informal)’ falls in the middle, denoting a certain degree of familiarity but also some distance. Uber explained that the choice of pronoun can change according to the degree of familiarity between interlocutors: One might progress from the nonsolidarity usted to tú when there is trust and familiarity (confianza), and from tú to the solidarity usted

Usted (no solidarity)

tú

Figure 2.1 Pronominal pronouns continuum

Usted (solidarity)

 39

Corner-store interactions in Colombia 39 form. The author also indicated that, in general, tú has been expanding in both directions over time in Colombia. Other works have analyzed the use of these pronouns in specific regions of Colombia. In a study of the Spanish from Bogotá, Mestre-​Moreno (2010) noted an alternation between pronouns in everyday speech among her participants. In terms of the use of these pronouns in Bucaramanga and Cartagena, Flórez (1965) emphasized the fact that in the eastern Andean region, the solidarity usted is used to interact with family and, at times, with people one knows very well. In a more recent study, Méndez Vallejo (2014) analyzed the incidence of these pronouns in Bucaramanga, indicating that people there frequently alternate between tú and usted, with a preference for usted. As the author stated, usted is used among friends and acquaintances to express solidarity, but it conveys nonsolidarity when it is used with strangers (p. 5). The author found several occurrences of usted in interactions with close friends, acquaintances, and unfamiliar people. Tú, on the other hand, appeared to be used by participants who wanted to emphasize their belonging to higher social classes (p. 6). In terms of the use of these pronouns in Cartagena, Escamilla et al. (2005) stated that on the Caribbean coast older people do not accept usted because it makes them feel old, and tú is not considered disrespectful. According to the authors, tú is the most widely used pronoun on the Caribbean coast in Colombia. As such, these studies show that tuteo seems prevalent in the coastal region of Colombia, while ustedeo and the alternation between tú and usted is more common in Bucaramanga. Furthermore, the choice of a specific pronoun also depends on the role that interlocutors play in each conversation. In terms of the use of nominal address forms, Placencia, Fuentes-​ Rodríguez, and Palma-​Fahey (2015) suggest that these play an important role in the construction of interpersonal relationships (p. 547). The use of nominal address terms in Colombian Spanish has been studied by a few authors, including Fitch (1991, 1998) and Travis (2006). As Fitch (1991) explains, personal address terms are linguistic elements that can be described as both universal and culture specific: They are universal in the sense that they reflect a communicative activity shared by all (addressing one another); they are cultural in the sense that the choice of a specific address term is influenced by each community’s cultural beliefs, reflecting “socially constructed notions of the nature of relationships” (p. 255). Fitch (1991) conducted an analysis of 1,200-​1,500 interactions that she documented via observations and interviews over the course of nine months at different institutions in Bogotá. During her research, she analyzed the use of the term madre ‘mother’ and its derivatives (e.g., mamacita, mamasota, mamita, etc.), as these appeared frequently in the data she collected. Fitch observed that these terms had different meanings and communicative functions among Colombians depending on the specific context in which they were used. For

40

40  Rebeca Bataller instance, they could express respect, affection, trust, or flirtation, or they could assume derogatory connotations. As the author pointed out, the use of madre terms perfectly reflects the intersection of universal and cultural qualities involved in the use of address terms. Fitch (1998) also examined the use of address terms by a group of middle-​class  Colombians from Bogotá. The author noted, among other things, how some colloquial terms such as huevón ‘jerk’ or imbécil ‘idiot’ could be used playfully among friends. This is another example of how the meaning of address terms is unique to a community and reflects their cultural beliefs. Travis (2006) described a cultural model of what it means to be a Colombian, involving three key words: confianza ‘familiarity and trust,’ calor humano ‘human warmth,’ and vínculos ‘connectedness’ (p. 200). She analyzed the use of endearment terms and stated that they are as important to Colombian Spanish as they are rich in cultural meanings, and reflect various facets of the Colombian cultural model for interpersonal relationships. Travis noted that the use of first names, or their short forms, highlights the addressee’s identity. Furthermore, she explained that terms such as mamita ‘mummy’ and papito ‘daddy’ highlight a caring relationship between the interlocutors. Other terms, such as mi amor ‘my love’ and mi vida ‘my life’ also demonstrate the speaker’s feeling towards the addressee. Finally, she described terms that refer to physical aspects of the interlocutor, such as gordo ‘fat’ or negro ‘black,’ and that are understood as affectionate terms, as they reflect confianza ‘trust’ and calor humano ‘human warmth’ between participants. As Travis (2006) explained, the use of endearment terms is centered around caring for the well-​being of others and enhancing elements of solidarity that might make them feel good. 2.2.3  Variational pragmatics studies: service encounters In the last two decades, there have been a number of studies investigating pragmatic variation in the Hispanic world (see, e.g., Placencia, 2011, and García & Placencia, 2011 for overviews on regional variation). While there are numerous studies dealing with pragmatic variation in the realization of different speech acts, very few focus on service encounters. With respect to the small number of studies that do have this focus, some examine speakers from a specific region of the Hispanic world (e.g., Félix-​Brasdefer, 2012 [Mexican Spanish]; Placencia & Mancera Rueda, 2011a, 2011b [Seville, Spain]), some investigate two different countries in the Spanish-​speaking world (Márquez Reiter & Placencia, 2004 [Ecuador and Uruguay]; Placencia, 1998, 2005 [Ecuador and Spain]), and others contrast pragmatic aspects at a “subnational level,” comparing different regions within the same country (Bataller, 2015 [Granada and Valencia, Spain]; Félix-​Brasderfer, 2015 [Mexico City and Guanajuato, Mexico]; Placencia, 2008 [Quito and Manta, Ecuador]). The present study most closely resembles the latter type of study, offering a comparison of request realization in corner stores in two different regions of Colombia.

 41

Corner-store interactions in Colombia 41 2.2.4  Subnational level studies Placencia (2008) analyzed transactions in neighborhood stores in two Ecuadorean cities in which two dialectal varieties are spoken: Quito (Andean) and Manta (coastal). Placencia (2008) conducted an analysis of these interactions at three different levels: illocutionary, discursive, and stylistic. At the illocutionary level, she found that people from Quito used a greater number of internal mitigators than the participants from the coast. At the discursive level, she noted that quiteños used more personal strategies than the people from Manta; their opening and closing strategies were more extensive and frequent. Finally, at the stylistic level, she observed that both groups showed a preference for the formal usted, but that manteños were less formal regarding their greeting and politeness strategies. In other words, while manteños and quiteños were found to share a preference for the formal usted, they showed varying preferences in other respects. Bataller (2015) compared service encounter requests in cafeterias in Valencia and Huetor-​Santillán, a small city in the Granada suburbs. The study found that, while customers in both locations preferred direct requests and the use of the informal pronoun tú, customers in Granada used more interpersonal strategies and showed more solidarity among interlocutors. Félix-​Brasdefer (2015) compared service encounter interactions recorded in two regions in Mexico (Mexico City and Guanajuato). The natural data from Mexico were collected in corner stores, and the author analyzed the data at the actional and interactional levels. Furthermore, he observed how the gender of the customer and vendor affected the interactions. The author found some differences in terms of strategy choice from participants in each Mexican region. He also noted that the gender of both customer and vendor was an important factor in the choice of strategies used to make requests for a service. Placencia (2008), Bataller (2015), and Félix-​Brasdefer (2015) have all shown that, although there are some similarities, there are notable differences in the way speakers from different Spanish-​speaking regions interact with each other. The present study is framed around the following research questions: RQ1: What are the strategies and internal mitigating devices used to make requests for a service in Bucaramanga and Cartagena de Indias? RQ2: What are the preferred pronominal and nominal forms of address used to make requests for a service in Bucaramanga and Cartagena de Indias?

2.3  Method 2.3.1  Data collection procedures Audio recordings and field notes were taken at four corner shops in two neighborhoods in Cartagena and Bucaramanga. The researcher asked for

42

42  Rebeca Bataller permission to conduct the study in corner stores with the potential for clear audio recordings, and in which clients had to request most items, as they were not within reach. Finally, the author selected shops that were located near the downtown area of the two cities. Hence, the participants were a combination of regular and first-​time customers. One digital recorder was placed on each of these shop counters. The researcher also stood at the back of the shop at times to take additional field notes of the interactions. Despite these efforts, there were instances in which the conversation between vendors and clients could not be understood in its entirety, as there were several people talking at once. With regard to permission to collect the data, the Institutional Review Board (IRB, human subjects) process was waived by the researcher’s institution (Gettysburg College, USA). No personal data were gathered from the participants, as the interactions recorded were transactional and not personal. 2.3.2  Data The Bucaramanga corpus consisted of a total of 75 interactions between shop vendors and customers. Of these, 40 involved male customers and 35 female customers. The Cartagena corpus consisted of 82 interactions, 45 with female clients and 37 with male ones. No other personal information about the clients (e.g., age, social class, degree of familiarity with the vendor, etc.) was gathered, and the researcher did not have any interaction with them. The customers from both groups seemed to be a combination of regular clients who knew the vendors on a personal level, and others who did not. The shops were in centrally located neighborhoods that may have attracted both types of clients. In Bucaramanga, the shop vendors were three middle-​aged males and a young female; however, the female vendor interacted with only four participants, as she was the assistant to one of the male vendors. 2.3.3  Data analysis 2.3.3.1  Illocutionary analysis Spencer-​Oatey’s (2000) illocutionary and stylistic domains were the focus of analysis in the present study. In order to answer the first research question, an illocutionary analysis of the data was conducted with a focus on requests. The frequency of particular strategies and internal mitigating devices used to make service requests was calculated, and the results from each group were compared. Additionally, a difference of proportions test was conducted to determine whether the difference in request strategies and internal mitigators was statistically significant between groups. A modified version of Blum-​Kulka, House, and Kasper’s (1989) coding scheme was used to classify the main strategies (Table 2.1):

 43

Corner-store interactions in Colombia 43 Table 2.1 Request strategies Direct Strategies Mood derivable

The use of the imperative in order to make a request. Regáleme una arepa de huevo   ‘GiveV me an egg arepa’

Ellipsis

The client names the object they want to buy.   Dos bolsitas de arroz   ‘Two bagsD of rice’

Simple interrogative

This strategy is formed with the indirect object pronoun ‘me’ and a verb in the present tense.   ¿Me da dos chocochips?   ‘Will youV give me two chocochips?’

Implicit request

Instances where the exchange was made without words: the client puts the product and the money on the counter, the vendor takes the money and hands the product to the client.

Indirect strategies Query preparatory

Asking for existence

The speaker asks the hearer whether he/​she will carry out an action:   ¿Me puede regalar un bocadillo?   ‘Can youV give me a snack?’ CUSTOMER: Rubén, ¿tú aquí vendes atún valcán?

 

 

 

   ‘Rubén, do youT sell Valcán tuna here?’ VENDOR:   Sí ((placing a can on the counter))           ‘Yes.’

Table 2.2 shows the internal mitigating devices found in the data: Table 2.2 Internal mitigating devices Politeness marker

Additional elements “added to the request to bid for cooperative behavior”2   Trae una cinta de esas de ahí, por favor   ‘BringT me one of those rolls of tape from over there,   please’

Verb lexical downgrading

The verb ‘regalar’ (to give as a gift) is used instead of ‘dar’ (to give).3   Regáleme una arepa de huevo, por favor   ‘GiveV me an egg arepa, please’

Diminutive:

The diminutive (D) is used to express affection and mitigate the direct force of the request.4   Regáleme dos cervecitas   ‘GiveT me two beersD,

44

44  Rebeca Bataller 2.3.3.2  Stylistic analysis In order to answer the second research question, the frequency of the different pronominal and nominal forms of address used to make requests was calculated, and the results for each group were compared. More specifically, the stylistic analysis focused on the frequency of the pronouns tú (T) and usted (V) in clients’ interactions with shop vendors. A difference of proportion test was employed to determine whether the differences in the use of T and V between the two regions was statistically significant.

2.4  Results The results of this study are divided into two sections that address the two research questions. Section 2.4.1 reports on the main request strategies and internal mitigating devices used by the participants, and 2.4.2 reports on the pronouns and address terms. 2.4.1  Illocutionary analysis 2.4.1.1  Request strategies Table  2.3 shows the distribution of request strategies (direct, conventional indirect, nonconventional indirect) in both Bucaramanga and Cartagena (frequency and percentage [%]‌). As shown in Table 2.3, there was a clear preference for direct strategies in both corpora: 80% (70/​87) of the request strategies used by the bumangueses and 89% (86/​97) of those used by the cartageneros were direct strategies. The imperative was the most frequently used strategy, with 43% (37/​87) of the participants using it in Bucaramanga and 47% (46/​97) in Cartagena. Examples of this strategy are shown in (2) and (3): Table 2.3 Request strategies Bucaramanga Frequency

Cartagena %

Frequency

%

Direct Strategies Imperative Simple interrogative Ellipsis Implicit request Total Direct

37 25 8 0 70

43 29 9 0 80

46 9 27 4 86

47 9 28 4 89

Indirect Strategies Query preparatory Asking for existence Total Indirect Total

2 15 17 87

2 17 20 100

0 11 11 97

0 11 11 99

 45

Corner-store interactions in Colombia 45 (2) BUCARAMANGA: Male customer, male vendor. CUSTOMER: Regálame 3 huevos.   ‘GiveT me three eggs.’ (3) CARTAGENA: Male customer, male vendor. CUSTOMER: Dame un litro de leche.   ‘GiveT me a liter of milk.’ The simple interrogative was the second most frequent strategy in Bucaramanga, present in 29% (25/​87) of the requests, while this strategy was only used in 9% (9/​97) of the interactions in Cartagena. An example of this strategy is shown in (4): (4) BUCARAMANGA: CUSTOMER:  

Male customer, female vendor Doña Ana, ¿me regala un litro de leche? ‘Madam Ana, will youV give me a liter of milk?’

Ellipsis was more frequently employed in the Cartagena corpus, appearing in 28% (27/​97) of the requests. An example is shown in (5): (5) CARTAGENA: CUSTOMER:  

Female customer, female vendor Una bolsa de arroz y una libra de harina ‘A bag of rice and a pound of flour’

The proportions tests showed that the difference between groups in the use of the simple interrogative was statistically significant at the .01 level (z = 3.395; p = .0007). The difference in the use of ellipsis was also significant at the .01 level (z = -​3.216; p = .0013). Finally, there were four instances of implicit requests in the data from Cartagena, while this strategy was not used at all in Bucaramanga. In these exchanges, the client simply placed the item on the counter and offered the money to pay for it; no words were exchanged between customer and vendor. As Table 2.3 shows, indirect strategies were seldom used by either group of participants. These strategies were employed in just 20% (17/​87) of the interactions in Bucaramanga, and 11% (11/​ 97) in Cartagena. The most frequently used indirect strategy was the “asking for existence” strategy: Bucaramanga 17% (15/​87), and Cartagena 11% (11/​97). Example (6) shows the client asking for the existence of a product, and the assistant taking this as a request to purchase it. (6) CARTAGENA: Female customer, male vendor CUSTOMER: Rubén, ¿tú aquí vendes atún valcán?   ‘Rubén, do youT sell Valcán tuna here?’ VENDOR: sí. ((placing a can on the counter))   ‘yes.’

46

46  Rebeca Bataller This strategy was followed by the query ability, which was used in Bucaramanga in only two instances. An example is presented in (7): (7) CARTAGENA: Male customer, male vendor CUSTOMER: ¿Me puede vender una por ahora?   ‘Can youV sell me one for now?’ The cartageneros were more straightforward in their requests overall, as they used more ellipsis and implied requests. The bumangueses used more simple interrogatives and conventionally indirect strategies instead, making them sound more eloquent and formal. 2.4.1.2  Internal mitigating devices Table  2.4 shows the distribution of internal elements used to modify the request for service: As shown in Table  2.4, the Bucaramanga participants used many more mitigating devices than those in Cartagena. Overall, there were 60 instances of internal mitigators in the Bucaramanga corpus and just 21 in the Cartagena one. The difference in the use of internal mitigating devices between groups was statistically significant at the 1% level (z = 6.4550; p = .000000001). The most frequently used internal mitigating device in Bucaramanga was lexical downgrading, represented by the use of the verb regalar ‘to give away’ instead of dar ‘to give’ (see also Placencia, 2005). This mitigating device was used 31 times in requests from the Bucaramanga corpus, but only twice in the Cartagena corpus. The difference in the use of lexical downgrading between groups was statistically significant at the 1% level (z = 5.9260; p = .00000003). Example (8) shows an instance of internal modification of requests from the Bucaramanga data: (8) BUCARAMANGA: Male customer, female vendor CUSTOMER: Regáleme una coca cola y una arepa de huevo para llevar     ‘GiveV me a coke and an egg arepa to go’

Table 2.4 Internal mitigating devices Bucaramanga Frequency

Cartagena %

Frequency

%

Politeness markers Verb lexical downgrading

20 31

33 52

2 2

10 10

Diminutive Total

9 60

15 100

17 21

80 100

 47

Corner-store interactions in Colombia 47 Furthermore, the politeness marker por favor ‘please’ was used in 20 instances in the Bucaramanga corpus, as in example (9), and only twice in the Cartagena one. The difference in the use of the politeness marker between groups was statistically significant at the 1% level (z = 4.368; p = .00001). (9) BUCARAMANGA: Female customer, male vendor CUSTOMER: Trae una cinta de esas de ahí, por favor    ‘BringT me one of those rolls of tape

from over

there, please’ Additionally, the participants in Cartagena used the diminutive much more often than those in Bucaramanga. It appeared 17 times in the Cartagena corpus and only 9 times in the Bucaramanga one. The difference in the use of the diminutive between groups was statistically significant at the 1% level (z = -​1.3961; p = .16262). Example (10) shows the use of the diminutive in Bucaramanga: (10) BUCARAMANGA: Female customer, male vendor CUSTOMER: Una ruedecita de cinta.   ‘A rollD of tape.’ The use of more mitigating devices by the Bucaramanga clients points toward a more deferential request style. They often used the verb downgrader regalar ‘to give away,’ and the politeness marker por favor ‘please.’ The Cartagena clients mainly used the diminutive, which, in addition to mitigating the force of the request, is used to express affection or closeness with the addressee. The use of more deferential mitigating devices along with more deferent request strategies makes the Bucaramanga interactions appear much more deferential than those in the Cartagena corpus. 2.4.2  Stylistic domain 2.4.2.1  Use of tú/​usted In this section, the use of the pronouns tú and usted in both regions is compared. Table  2.5 shows the frequency of the use of these pronouns in the data. As can be seen in Table  2.5, the use of pronouns varied between each group of participants. While tú was used in 79% (65/​82) of the Cartagena interactions, it was only used in 15% (11/​75) of the Bucaramanga ones. The difference in the use of tú between groups was statistically significant at the 1% level (z = -​8.0906 p = 5.9995 × 10–​16). In Bucaramanga, usted was the preferred form, appearing in 69% (52/​75) of the interactions, whereas it was only used in 2.4% (2/​82) of the Cartagena ones. The difference in the use of usted

48

48  Rebeca Bataller Table 2.5 Use of tú and usted

Tú Usted Both No pronoun Total

Bucaramanga

Cartagena

Frequency

%

Frequency

%

11 52 4 8 75

15 69 5 11 100

65 2 1 14 82

79 2 1 17 100

between groups was also statistically significant at the 1% level (z = 8.81375; p = 1.2269 × 10–​18). Example (11) shows the use of usted in Bucaramanga, while (12) shows the use of tú in Cartagena. (11) BUCARAMANGA: Female customer, male vendor CUSTOMER: ¿Usted no tiene sudacito?   ‘Don’t youV have sudacito?’ (12) CARTAGENA: Female customer, male vendor CUSTOMER: Dame un kilo de tomates   ‘GiveT me a kilo of tomatoes’ It is important to point out that the actual pronouns tú and usted were hardly ever explicitly stated in the requests; they were more frequently derived from the verb forms, as example (12) shows. There were also instances in which no pronoun at all was used, either explicitly or implicitly (Bucaramanga 11% [8/​75]; Cartagena 17% [14/​82]), and others in which both forms were used in alternation during the same interaction (Bucaramanga 5% [4/​75]; Cartagena: 1% [1/​82]). The lack of pronoun was mostly a result of the use of the ellipsis and implied requests. At times, however, even though an elliptic or implied request was used to request the product, the client used a pronoun at a different point in the interaction, as example (13) shows: (13)

CARTAGENA: Male customer, male vendor CUSTOMER: Una pony por favor, grande   ‘A pony, please, a big one’ (no pronoun used) CUSTOMER: ¿Me regalas un vasito?   ‘Will youT give me a glassD?’ (explicit pronoun)

In example (14), the client alternated between both pronouns. He started with usted and continued with tú as he requested something additional:

 49

Corner-store interactions in Colombia 49 (14)

BUCARAMANGA: Male customer, female vendor CUSTOMER: ¿Me puede regalar un bocadillo, querida? (use of usted)   ‘Can youV give me a snack, dear?’ VENDOR: Sí, tome.   ‘Yes, here youV go.’ CUSTOMER: ¿Qué cuesta?   ‘How much is it?’ VENDOR: 500   ‘500’   ((a few minutes after)) CUSTOMER: Nena, regálame dos cervecitas también.   ‘Darling (lit. girl), giveT me two beersD as well.’

2.4.2.2  The use of address terms In this section, we compare the address terms used by the Bucaramanga and Cartagena participants. Bucaramanga participants used more address terms than those in Cartagena. In the Bucaramanga corpus, 29% (22/​75) of the interactions included a term of address, while these terms appeared in only 15% (12/​82) of the Cartagena corpus. The difference in the use of address terms between groups was statistically significant at the 1% level (z = 2.4108; p = .0159). It is important to point out that the specific nominal address terms used by each group differed notably as well. The group in Bucaramanga mainly used the first name of the shop assistant (e.g., Germán) and other formal (e.g., Doña ‘madam,’ señor ‘sir,’ señorita ‘Miss’) and informal (e.g., Querida ‘dear,’ nena ‘darling’) terms. On the other hand, the Cartagena participants did not use the first name much; instead, they preferred terms that were more colloquial and playful (e.g., Papi ‘daddy’ or ‘pop,’ loco ‘crazy’). The fact that the bumangueses used more address terms than the cartageneros goes hand in hand with the former’s more frequent use of mitigating devices.

2.5  Discussion This study examined naturally occurring service encounter interactions at the illocutionary and stylistic levels at four different corner stores in two Colombian cities: Bucaramanga and Cartagena. Two research questions were addressed. The first question dealt with the strategies and internal mitigating devices used to make requests for a service in these Colombian regions. The illocutionary analysis showed that there were some similarities between the two groups of participants, as they both preferred to use direct strategies to make requests for products. However, there were also clear differences between them. On the one hand, the cartageneros were more

50

50  Rebeca Bataller straightforward in their requests, mainly using imperatives (e.g., Dame un agua de limón grande, por favor ‘GiveT me a big lemon water, please’) and elliptical strategies (e.g., Un jugo de mora y uno de papaya ‘a blackberry and a papaya juice’), with hardly any mitigating devices. On the other hand, the participants in Bucaramanga showed a preference for more deferential strategies, frequently using the simple interrogative and other indirect strategies, which were often accompanied by internal mitigating devices (e.g., ¿Me regala dos calmidas, me hace el favor? ‘Will youV give me two Calmidas, will you please?’). Previous studies analyzing the pragmatic style of participants from these two Colombian regions found similar results. Méndez-​Vallejo (2014) also noted that the bumangueses in her study used internal and external mitigating devices frequently in order to reduce the imposition of their requests (e.g., Si no sería mucha molestia ‘If it wouldn’t be too much trouble’). As Méndez-​Vallejo (2013) stated, “Bucaramanga Spanish seems to greatly favor the use of linguistically polite expressions” (p. 133). In contrast, Escamilla et al. (2004) noted that the requests carried out by the costeños in their study did not show any signs of linguistic politeness. The second research question examined the preferred pronominal and nominal forms of address used to make requests for a service by each group of participants. Stylistically, the cartageneros in the present study were more informal than the bumangueses. This was mostly shown through their use of the pronominal form tú and the less frequent use of nominal terms of address, which, when used, were mainly colloquial in nature (e.g., loco ‘crazy’). The bumangueses, however, preferred the usted, and they used more nominal address terms, which were also more formal (e.g., señor ‘sir’ and señora ‘ma’am’). Previous studies have described comparable findings in terms of the use of pronominal and nominal address forms in these two regions. Flórez (1965) emphasized that in the eastern Andean region where Bucaramanga is located, usted is the more generalized form, mainly used with family and at times with people one knows very well. In a more recent study, Méndez-​Vallejo (2014) also indicated that in Bucaramanga there is a preference for usted. As she explained, this pronoun can be used to interact with close friends, acquaintances, and unfamiliar people. According to Méndez-​ Vallejo, when used with close friends usted shows solidarity, and when used with strangers it shows nonsolidarity. Furthermore, Méndez-​Vallejo (2013) pointed out the frequent switching between tú and usted in Bucaramanga that is also noted in the present study. The common use of tú in most contexts by speakers from the coastal region has also been examined in several studies (see, e.g., Escamilla et al. 2004, 2008; Garrido, 2007). Overall, it can be concluded that the cartagenero and bumanguese participants in this study used different styles to interact with vendors in corner stores. While the cartageneros were carefree and informal in their interactions, the bumangueses were more formal and used more politeness strategies. Previous studies have noted similar interacting styles for these two groups of participants (Escamilla Morales, 1993; Escamilla et al. 2004, 2005,

 51

Corner-store interactions in Colombia 51 2008; Méndez-​Vallejo, 2013; Rincón, 2007a, b). Escamilla et al. (2004, 2005, 2008) describes the style of cartageneros as informal, carefree, and playful, while Méndez-​Vallejo (2013) found that the participants from Bucaramanga in her study used deferential and respectful language. It is also interesting to note that Placencia (2008) found a similar result in terms of the two groups she compared in Ecuador, corresponding to coastal and Andean varieties of Ecuadorean Spanish: While the Andean group in her data (from Quito) used more mitigation and formal address terms, the coastal participants (from Manta) were less formal and less personal in their interactions.

2.6  Conclusion The present study conducted an illocutionary and stylistic analysis of naturally occurring requests in corner-​store interactions from two cities located in two different regions of Colombia: Cartagena (Caribbean coast) and Bucaramanga (Andean region). The illocutionary analysis showed that the cartageneros used more direct request strategies, while the bumangueses used more internal mitigating devices and were more deferential in their requests. At the stylistic level, the differences between each group were more noticeable, as the cartageneros were more informal overall. Cartageneros used the informal pronoun tú much more frequently than the bumangueses, who opted for the formal usted more often. Furthermore, while the cartageneros used more informal address terms, the bumangueses were more deferential in these choices. Future variational pragmatic studies could continue to analyze service encounter interactions at the subnational level in different regions of Colombia. Additionally, they could compare coastal and Andean regions in different countries to observe whether the findings about Colombia can be generalized when comparing Spanish speakers from coastal and interior regions elsewhere in Spanish America.

Notes 1 As Rincón (2007a) explains, the dialect spoken in Bogotá is considered the national standard and it is widely used in mass media. It is also a dialect that is prestigious among the Latin American Spanish dialects (p. 21). 2 Blum Kulka et al. (1989, p. 283). 3 Placencia (2008) explained that the use of regalar makes “the request sound more like a plea than a request” (p. 12). 4 Félix-​Brasdefer (2009, p. 483).

References Bataller, R. (2015). Pragmatic variation in the performance of requests: A comparative study of service encounter requests in Valencia and Granada. In M. Hernández

52

52  Rebeca Bataller López & L. Fernández-​ Amaya (Eds.), A multidisciplinary approach to service encounters (pp.113-​137). Leuven: Brill. Blum-​Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). Cross-​cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Escamilla Morales, J. (1993). Acerca de los orígenes y características del habla costeña. Lingüística y Literatura, 24,  50-​61. Escamilla Morales, J., Morales Escorcia, E., Torres Roncallo, L. M., & Vega, G. H. (2004). La cortesía verbal y gestual en la ciudad de Barranquilla (COLOMBIA). In D. Bravo & A. Briz (Eds.), Pragmática sociocultural: Estudios sobre el discurso de cortesía en español (pp. 197-​210). Barcelona: Ariel. Escamilla Morales, J., Morales Escorcia, E., & Torres Roncallo, L. M. (2005). La expresión de la cortesía en algunas conversaciones telefónicas de carácter institucional en la ciudad de Cartagena, Colombia. Un aporte a los estudios contrastivos. In J. Murillo Medrano (Ed.), Actos de habla y cortesía en distintas variedades del español: perspectivas teóricas y metodológicas. Actas del II Coloquio Internacional del Programa EDICE (pp. 17-​36). Costa Rica: EDICE. Escamilla Morales, J., Vega, G. H., & Morales Escorcia, E. (2008). Solicitud de información y petición en contextos Universitarios. In A. Briz, A. Hidalgo, M. Albelda, J. Contreras, & N. Hernández Flores (Eds.), Cortesía y conversación, de lo escrito a lo oral. III Coloquio Internacional. Programa EDICE (pp. 186-​193). Valencia, Spain: EDICE. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2009). Pragmatic variation across Spanish(es): Requesting in Mexican, Costa Rican, and Dominican Spanish. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 473-​515. Félix-​ Brasdefer, J. C. (2012). Pragmatic variation by gender in market service encounters in Mexico. In J. C. Félix-​Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Variation in first and second languages (pp.17-​49). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The language of service encounters: A pragmatic discursive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fitch, K. (1991). The interplay of linguistic universals and cultural knowledge in personal address: Colombian madre terms. Communications Monograms, 52(3), 254-​272. Fitch, K. (1998). Speaking relationally: Culture, communication and interpersonal connection. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Flórez, L. (1965). El español hablado en el departamento de Santander. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo. Flórez-​Ortiz, M. (2005). El costeñol, variante dialectal del castellano en el caribe colombiano: estudios y características. Tesis inédita. Universidad de Cartagena, Facultad de Lingüística y Literatura. García, C., & Placencia, M. E. (2011). Estudios de variación pragmática (sub) regional en español: visión panorámica. In C. García & M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Estudios de variación pragmática en español (pp. 29-​54). Buenos Aires: Dunken. Garrido, M. (2007). Language attitude in Colombian Spanish: Cachacos vs.costeños. LL Journal. Retrieved from: https://​lljournal.commons.gc.cuny.edu/​ 2007-​2-​garrido-​texto/​ Márquez Reiter, R. & Placencia, M. E. (2004). Displaying closeness and respectful distance in Montevidean and Quiteño service encounters. In R.  Márquez ​Reiter & M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Current trends in the pragmatics of Spanish (pp. 121-​55). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia. PA: John Benjamins.

 53

Corner-store interactions in Colombia 53 Méndez-​Vallejo, D. C. (2013). Conversational and prosodic patterns in Colombian requests. International Journal of Language Studies, 7(2), 109-​142. Méndez Vallejo, D. C. (2014). The M word: Face and politeness in Colombian Spanish. Dialectologia, 12, 89-​ 108. Retrieved from www.publicacions.ub.edu/​revistes/​ dialectologia12/​ Mestre-​Moreno, P. (2010). Alternancia de formas de tratamiento como estrategia discursiva en conversaciones colombianas. In M. Hummel, B. Kluge, & M. E. Vázquez Laslop (Eds.), Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico (pp. 1033-​1049). Mexico City/​Graz: El Colegio de México/​Karl-​Franzens. Montes Giraldo, J. J. (1982). El español de Colombia: Propuesta de separación dialectal. BICC, 37,  23-​92. Orozco, R. (2004). A sociolinguistic study of Colombian Spanish in Colombia and New  York City. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. New  York University, New York City, NY. Placencia, M. E. (1998). Pragmatic variation: Ecuadorian Spanish vs. Peninsular Spanish. Spanish Applied Linguistics, 2(1), 71-​103. Placencia, M. E. (2005). Pragmatic variation in corner store interactions in Quito and Madrid. Hispania, 88(3), 583-​598. Placencia, M. E. (2008). Requests in corner shop transactions in Ecuadorian Andean and coastal Spanish. In K. Schneider & Barron, A. (Eds.), Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties pluricentric languages (pp. 307-​332). Amsterdam/​ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Placencia, M. E. (2010). El estudio de formas de tratamiento en Colombia y Ecuador. In M. Hummel, B. Kluge, & M. E.  Vázquez Laslop (Eds.), Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico (pp. 341-​374). México-​Graz: el Colegio de México-​Karl Franzens universitat Graz. Placencia, M. E. (2011). Regional pragmatic variation. In G. Andersen & K. Aijmer (Eds.), Pragmatics of society [Handbook of pragmatics 5] (pp. 79-​113). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Placencia, M. E., & Mancera Rueda, A. (2011a). Dame un cortado de máquina, cuando puedas: Estrategias de cortesía en la realización de la transacción central en bares de Sevilla. In C. Fuentes Rodríguez, E. Alcaide Lara, & E. Brenes Peña (Eds.), Aproximaciones a la (des)cortesía verbal en español. Fondo Hispánico de Linguística y Filología, 3 (pp. 491-​508). Bern: Peter Lang. Placencia, M. E., & Mancera Rueda, A. (2011b). Vaya qué chungo. Rapport building talk in service encounters: The case of bars in Seville at breakfast time. In N. Lorenzo Dus (Ed.), Spanish at work: Analyzing institutional discourse across the Spanish speaking world (pp. 192-​207). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Placencia, M. E., Fuentes-​ Rodríguez, C., & Palma-​ Fahey, M. (2015). Nominal address and rapport management in informal interactions among university students in Quito (Ecuador), Santiago (Chile) and Seville (Spain). Multilingua, 34(4), 547-​575. Quesada, M. A. (2000). El español de América. Cartago: Editorial Tecnológica de Costa Rica. Rincón, M. L. (2007a). The use of discourse markers in the Spanish of Bucaramanga. Hispanic Journal, 28(2),  9-​23. Rincón, M. L. (2007b). Metodología para un estudio dialectal urbano: el caso del estudio del español de Bucaramanga. Forma y Función, 20, 173-​196. Schneider, K., & Barron, A. (Eds.). (2008). Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages. Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

54

54  Rebeca Bataller Spencer-​Oatey, H. (2000). Face, (im)politeness and rapport. In H. Spencer-​Oatey (Ed.), Culturally speaking: Managing rapport through talk about cultures (pp.11-​ 46). New York, NY: Continuum. Spencer-​Oatey, H. (2002). Managing rapport in talk: Using rapport sensitive incidents to explore the Motivational concerns underlying the management of relations. Journal of Pragmatics, 34, 529-​545. Travis, C. E. (2006). The communicative realisation of confianza and calor humano in Colombian Spanish. In G. Cliff (Ed.), Ethnopragmatics: Understanding discourse in cultural context (pp. 99-​129). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Uber, D. R. (1985). The dual function of “usted”: Forms of address in Bogota, Colombia. Hispania, 68, 388-​392.

 55

3  “No gracias amigo”: Refusals of bargaining offers in e-​service encounters in Mercado Libre Ecuador and Mercado Libre Venezuela María Elena Placencia and Carmen García 3.1  Introduction In this chapter we look at sellers’ refusals to offers put forward by buyers as bargaining moves in interactions in two subsidiaries of Mercado Libre (ML), an online marketplace: ML-​Ecuador (ML-​EC) and ML-​Venezuela (ML-​VEN). We seek to identify the strategies and linguistic resources that sellers use to produce refusals in this context in both locations, and the kind of “relational work” (Locher & Watts, 2005) that they engage in. We adopt a variational pragmatics perspective (Schneider & Barron, 2008), focusing on possible regional variation (García & Placencia, 2011; Placencia, 2011; Schneider & Placencia, 2017) in the use of refusal strategies. Definitions of bargaining center on price negotiation, as in Prego Vázquez (1999) where bargaining is defined as “interactions within commercial transactions in which buyer and seller negotiate the price of a product” (p. 775) (our translation). Example (1) below, from our Ecuadorean corpus in the context of the sale and purchase of mobile phones, illustrates an attempt at negotiation, initiated by a reduced-​price offer on the part of the buyer: amigo los 120 compra inmediata ‘friend 120 immediate purchase’ that is rejected by the seller with No gracias! ‘No thank you!’: (1) EC-​12.41 Samsung Galaxy S3 Gt-​i9300 16gb ($159) BUYER:   SELLER:  

amigo los 120 compra inmediata ‘friend 120 immediate purchase’ No gracias! ‘No thank you!’

However, as in Placencia (2019), we use Prego Vázquez’s (1999) notion of bargaining in a broad sense and extend it to cover bartering moves too as bartering also involves negotiation and sometimes a cash payment as part of the negotiation. The following is an example of a plain bartering offer from our Venezuelan corpus:

56

56  María Elena Placencia and Carmen García (2) VEN-​2.5 Motorola Moto G-​2 (Bs 110.000) BUYER Buenas    ‘Good SELLER  

noches amigo, le ofrezco un mini dual sim liberado evening friend, I  offer you an S4 mini dual sim unblocked’ cuanto de diferencia! […]. ‘what’s the difference! [that you are willing to pay]! […]’

In this example, the buyer offers a Samsung in exchange for the Motorola that was advertised; the buyer asks for or demands an additional payment, thereby rejecting the initial offer. In our study we look at refusals of these two types of offers—​reduced-​price and bartering offers—​although we do not focus on variation according to type of offer (but see Placencia, 2019, with respect to a different market domain). Bargaining in service encounters has been examined as a commonplace activity in public markets, in particular, in a range of face-​to-​face sociocultural contexts, as in Sherzer’s (1993) study of this practice in Bali, Canagarajah’s (1995) in Sri Lanka, Prego Vázquez’s (1999) in Spain, and Ayoola’s (2009) in Nigeria, among others. In such contexts, it has been described as consisting of four to five phases across various sequences (Prego Vázquez, 1999; Canagarajah, 1995), whereas in the ML corpus for the present study, bargaining is normally carried out over just two turns, as illustrated by the previous examples (see also Placencia, 2019, in a different context). In other words, buyers and sellers on ML tend to take an expeditious approach to bargaining without much of the tira y afloja, or tug-​of-​war, described by Prego Vázquez (1999), for example. This can be partly attributed to characteristics of the platform offered by ML, which we describe in Section 3.3. And yet, both buyers and sellers often pack more than one move into both their offers and refusals. These are moves that tend to carry out relational work, as can be observed in the following example: (3) EC-​9.1 Samsung S6 Edge 32gb (US$ 600) BUYER:   SELLER:  

Te interesa un iPhone 6 de 16gb […] ‘Are you interested in an iPhone 6,16gb […]’ No amigo muchas gracias necesito algo de efectivo ‘No friend thank you very much I need some cash’

Focusing on refusals, we can see in this example that the seller’s refusal No ‘No’ is accompanied by an affiliative form of address (amigo ‘friend’), an expression of gratitude (muchas gracias ‘thank you very much’), and an explanation (necesito algo de efectivo ‘I need some cash’), which mitigate the refusal. ML is an online marketplace where participants interact anonymously and bargaining is an activity that appears to be commonplace (cf. Placencia,

 57

Refusals of bargaining offers 57 2016), with second-​hand goods, in particular, although it was not officially sanctioned by the site at the time of data collection. Also, refusals are potentially face-​threatening acts (cf. Beebe, Takahashi, & Uliss-​Weltz, 1990) as they go against the wishes of the person making an offer in our case. As such, it is interesting to explore the way that refusals to bargaining moves are carried out through this particular online medium and whether there is regional variation across ML subsidiaries. While previous studies on face-​ to-​face contexts have shown regional variation in the realization of different speech acts and other aspects of talk in interaction (see overviews in García & Placencia, 2011; Placencia, 2011; Schneider & Placencia, 2017), it is possible that, with globalization and the expansion of social media, communicative behaviors are becoming more homogeneous (cf. Sifianou, 2013). The main question that we aim to address is whether sellers on ML-​EC and ML-​VEN employ similar refusal strategies. We also consider the extent to which ML users in this context pay attention to interpersonal concerns in their formulation of refusals. By this we mean whether they make any effort to mitigate the possible face threat that refusals involve, or whether they perhaps intensify the rejection if they do not regard the offer they receive as appropriate. Addressing these questions involves looking at the types of head acts employed to realize refusals, the use of supportive moves with a mitigating effect, and the use of supportive moves with an aggravating effect (Blum-​ Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989). Finally, we also briefly look at the extent to which the online medium and the technical affordances of the site appear to exert influence on the interaction. The chapter is structured as follows: In Section 3.2, we provide the background to the study with a focus on refusals. In Section 3.3, we describe some features of ML, the corpus employed, and the data analysis. The results are presented in Section 3.4, followed by a discussion (Section 3.5), with some conclusions in the final section (Section 3.6).

3.2  Background We start this section with a description of Beebe et al.’s (1990) influential categorization scheme of refusals that provided the basis for the classification employed in the present study (see Appendix for the full list of categories employed, with examples from our corpora). We then offer an overview of studies on refusals in Spanish, including a consideration of studies on service encounters that deal with this speech act. 3.2.1  Beebe et al.’s (1990) categorization scheme While acceptance or agreement to requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions are generally considered preferred responses, refusals or rejections are usually not, since they might mean disapproval of the interlocutor’s idea and

58

58  María Elena Placencia and Carmen García thus, they may threaten both his/​her positive and negative face. Consequently, refusals are often indirect and include mitigation. In their seminal work, Beebe et al. (1990) analyzed refusals and classified them into two main categories: direct and indirect strategies (pp. 55-​73). These are synonymous with the notions of explicit and implicit realizations, respectively, employed in the present study. In addition, they included adjuncts (supportive moves in the present study) that may accompany refusal strategies. According to Beebe et al. (1990), direct refusals include performative (No) and nonperformative (I can’t) statements, while indirect strategies include, for example, statements of regret (I’m sorry); wishes (I wish I could help you…); excuses, reasons, and explanations (I have a headache); statements of alternative (I’d rather…); set conditions for future or past acceptance (If you had asked me earlier, I would have…); promises of future acceptance (Next time I’ll…); and avoidance (verbal and nonverbal). Adjuncts, on the other hand, may include, for instance, statements of positive opinion/​feeling or agreement (I’d love to…); statements of empathy (I realize you are in a difficult situation); and expressions of gratitude/​appreciation (Thank you…). In terms of subsequent works on refusals, given space constraints, in Section 3.2.2 below, we focus exclusively on empirical studies on refusals in Spanish. 3.2.2  Studies on refusals among Hispanists The majority of these have centered on linguistic politeness in face-​to-​face encounters. They include studies with participants from Peru (García, 1992), Venezuela (García, 1999), Argentina (García, 2007), Mexico (Félix-​Brasdefer, 2006, 2008), Ecuador (Placencia, 2008), and Spain (Siebold & Busch, 2015) (but see also Kaiser this volume with reference to Uruguayan Spanish). With respect to online interactions, two recent studies on refusals are González García and García Ramón (2017), who deal with refusals of invitations to events on Facebook (Spain), and Placencia (2019), who looks at refusals of offers in e-​service encounters (Ecuador). With respect to SEs specifically, there are multiple studies among Hispanists (see Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015, for an overview); however, Placencia (2019) is the only study focusing on refusals in an online context (Ecuador) (see also Kaiser this volume in face-​to-​face SEs). Using Brown and Levinson’s (1987 [1978]) politeness model and Blum-​Kulka et al.’s (1989) classification of strategies into head acts and supportive moves, García (1992) compared the politeness strategies used by Peruvian male and female speakers when declining an invitation in one open role-​play situation. Her findings revealed that refusing an invitation was realized in two stages: invitation-​response and insistence-​response. In the first stage participants preferred deference politeness strategies to refuse the invitation; in the second stage, however, they adopted solidarity politeness strategies. Males tended to refuse, while females generally responded affirmatively, though vaguely.

 59

Refusals of bargaining offers 59 The patterns of politeness strategies used by Venezuelans when inviting and responding to an invitation were also studied by García (1999). Results showed that participants were highly deferential in both the inviting-​response stage as well as the insistence-​response stage, choosing deference politeness strategies over solidarity politeness strategies as head acts. However, for the third stage, wrap-​up, participants preferred the exclusive use of solidarity politeness strategies as head acts. In a later study, García (2007) analyzed the strategies used by a group of Argentinean Spanish speakers refusing an invitation. In contrast to Peruvians in García’s (1992) study described above, Argentinean invitees balanced their expression of respect and friendliness when refusing and threatened their own negative face with more strength than the interlocutor’s. Both males and females preferred deference politeness strategies in the first stage; in the second stage, males balanced deference and solidarity politeness strategies but females favored solidarity politeness strategies. García states that these strategies contributed to the maintenance of their vínculo ‘bond’ (Fitch, 1998) with the interlocutor and demonstrate how participants belonged to and reflected a positive politeness culture. Using a modified classification system of refusal strategies proposed by Beebe et al. (1990), Félix-​Bradesfer (2006) studied the linguistic refusal strategies used by male university students from Tlaxcala, Mexico, in formal and informal interactions. The study focused on degree of formality, politeness systems and strategy use, and politeness and the notion of face. Results showed power and distance playing a crucial role in determining appropriate degrees of politeness. Face needs were oriented toward the group, emphasizing involvement over independence. Working with data of face-​ to-​ face interactions in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, and with reference to Scollon and Scollon’s (2001) framework, Félix-​Brasdefer (2008) examined refusals to a request, to an invitation, and to a suggestion, and analyzed (socio)pragmatic variation when refusing an interlocutor of equal status, but with different degrees of social distance. Results showed situational and regional variation. Mexicans used a significantly high number of refusal strategies and displayed preference for independence face. Dominicans, on the other hand, employed fewer strategies and displayed an orientation toward involvement face. Taking an ethnographic approach, Placencia (2008) researched how middle-​class Ecuadoreans (from Quito) responded to invitations and other directives that they were not able or willing to accept/​comply with. Concerning invitations, findings revealed that Quiteños had a tendency to directly avoid refusals. The author stated that close ties among family members and intimate friends made refusals to certain directives difficult since the subjects felt obligated to comply because of social pressure. On the other hand, Placencia noted that, when there was less closeness, token acceptances and avoidance strategies were employed to save face.

60

60  María Elena Placencia and Carmen García Adopting a cross-​cultural perspective and using an adapted version of Beebe et  al.’s (1990) classification of refusals, Siebold and Busch (2015) looked at refusals of proposals and invitations, among university students, in Peninsular Spanish and German. They found, for example, that the Spanish participants showed a preference for the use of indirect strategies, alluding to external factors for their refusal, whereas the German students displayed a tendency toward the use of direct strategies, and were not shy about expressing a lack of affinity toward the speaker’s proposal (p. 55). Within the realm of digital communication, González García and García Ramón (2017) examined refusals of invitations to events in a Facebook group (Spain). With reference to work in conversation analysis and pragmatics, they identified nine different moves that can realize refusals. A  number of them, such as explicit refusals, expressions of regret, excuses, expressions of gratitude, and so on are all roughly similar to Beebe et al.’s (1990) categories. The authors found that explicit refusals tend to be avoided, and that the three main strategies employed are providing an excuse, followed by the expression of good wishes and the compensatory offer. They also looked at the use of mitigation and intensification devices in the production of refusals in this context. Finally, with respect to refusals in service encounters, as far as we know, Placencia (2019) is the only study available (but see Kaiser in the present volume). Like the present study, it is also in the context of ML (more specifically, ML-​EC); however, unlike the present study, it focuses on the ‘pets and other animals’ market domain. Building on Beebe et al.’s (1990) study on refusals and other works, it looks at how sellers respond to bargaining and bartering offers. Explicit refusals were found to be overall more common than implicit ones, but some variation according to type of offer was identified. The majority of sellers were found to engage in relational work oriented toward mitigating the refusal. The study also considers possible factors exerting influence on the behavior identified, such as the medium of interaction and ML’s norms and conventions.

3.3  Mercado Libre, corpus, and data analysis 3.3.1  Mercado Libre ML is the largest online marketplace in Latin America, with several domains of products and services. An affordance of the ML platform is a public message board with a question-​answer format through which buyers and sellers communicate anonymously up to the point of purchase. Prospective buyers can ask questions through this board and sellers can provide a response. Another feature is that there is a code of conduct for the site that specifies, for example, that buyers and vendors should not exchange personal information. Their questions or answers are deleted if they deviate from this code. Finally, on ML both buyers and sellers can rate each other and their ratings are publicly available.

 61

Refusals of bargaining offers 61 3.3.2  Corpus The market domain that we chose for the present study is that of cellular phones and telephony (celulares y telefonía) on account of its intensive activity across the two sites. More specifically, we focused on secondhand mobile phones sold in Quito, Ecuador, and Distrito Capital, Venezuela. Four products were selected at random of each of these five brands, which were found across sites: iPhone, Samsung, Sony Xperia, Motorola, and LG. That is, we selected a total of 20 products per location. This gave rise to 135 pairs of offers-​refusals for ML-​EC, and 198 pairs of offers-​refusals for ML-​ VEN. Questions with no answers or deleted answers were not taken into account. In relation to ethical matters, our use of ML conforms to the recommendations of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) in that the exchanges examined for the present study appear in a site of public access. Also, buyers and sellers conceal their identity by using pseudonyms or nicknames as previously indicated. Therefore, informed consent from participants is not required. However, pseudonyms were modified to protect participants’ privacy. 3.3.3  Data analysis For the classification of refusals, we built on Blum-​Kulka et al.’s (1989) key distinction between head act and supportive moves as well as various works that deal with refusals such as Beebe et al. (1990), García (1992, 2007), Félix-​ Brasdefer (2006, 2008), and Placencia (2008, 2019). With respect to Blum-​Kulka et al.’s (1989) distinction between head acts and supportive moves, for instance, in the following example of refusals that we saw earlier (No amigo muchas gracias necesito efectivo ‘No friend thank you very much I need some cash’), we classified No, the explicit negative, as the head act, and the three accompanying moves—​affiliative address, expression of gratitude, and explanation—​as supportive moves: HEAD ACT:   No ‘no’ [explicit SUPP. MOVES:  amigo ‘friend’



negative] [affiliative address muchas gracias ‘thank you very much’   [expression of gratitude]    necesito algo de efectivo ‘I need some cash’  [explanation]

3.4  Results 3.4.1  Overall results Looking at the incidence of supportive moves vis-​à-​vis head acts, Table  3.1 below shows that in the Ecuadorean corpus, supportive moves represented

62

62  María Elena Placencia and Carmen García Table 3.1 Overall incidence of head acts and supportive moves in the two data sets Ecuadorean

Head Act Refusals Supportive Moves Total # of Moves

Venezuelan

s#

%

s#

%

135 211 346

39.01 60.98

198 233 431

45.93 54.06

60.98% of all moves, and in the Venezuelan corpus, 54.06% of all moves. The more extensive use of supportive moves than head acts in the Ecuadorean corpus (211 or 60.98% vs. 135 or 39.01%) was found to be highly significant (z = 4.10 > 2.58 (α .01)). Venezuelans in our corpus, on the other hand, displayed a more balanced use of head acts and supportive moves (198 or 45.93%, and 233 or 54.06% respectively) leading to a small difference in their use of these two types of strategies, which was not statistically significant (z = 1.60 < 1.96 (α .05)). However, the difference between Ecuadoreans’ and Venezuelans’ use of head acts and supportive moves is not significant (z = 1.95).2 Also, we need to recall that supportive moves can include moves that soften the refusal as well as moves that aggravate its impact, so it is difficult to draw conclusions from these overall figures. We will return to this point later. 3.4.2  Categories of refusals We identified two basic types of head acts that realize refusals: explicit and implicit. The former include an explicit negative as in the earlier example ‘No.’ In implicit refusals, the refusal is realized by means of different moves and therefore needs to be inferred, as in example (2) above where the seller demands a ‘difference’ payment with cuanto de diferencia! ‘What’s the difference! [that you are willing to pay].’ Through this question/​demand, the seller implicitly refuses the offer. Concerning the incidence of explicit and implicit refusals, Figure 3.1 shows that explicit refusals are considerably more frequent than implicit ones in the Ecuadorean data (72.59% vs. 27.40%), and this difference is statistically significant (z = 4.76 > 2.58 (α .01)). This is in line with Placencia’s (2019) results for a different ML market domain. Conversely, there is no statistically significant difference in the Venezuelan data between the two types (51.02% vs. 49.98%, z = .29 < 1.96 (α .05)). Furthermore, the difference between Ecuadoreans’ and Venezuelans’ use of explicit versus implicit head acts was significant (z = 4.13 > 2.58 (α .01)). The only similarity between these two groups was that both overwhelmingly preferred the ‘explicit negative’ (68.88% of Ecuadoreans’ refusals and 44.44% of Venezuelans’), but again Venezuelans were more loquacious, as Table 3.1 above shows (431 vs. 346 moves). The differences were also obvious in terms

 63

Refusals of bargaining offers 63 80%

72.59%

70% 60% 51.01%

50%

48.98%

40% 30%

27.40%

20% 10% 0% ML-EC

ML-VEN Explicit

Implicit

Figure 3.1 Incidence of explicit and implicit refusals

Explicit

• Negative • Refusing exchange • Refusing to pay difference • Expressing lack of interest

Implicit

• (Re)stating norm/conditions/price • Stating bottom line • Admonishing/accusing/warning • Expressing want/need/preference • Requesting (additional) payment/making counter offer • Criticizing the offer • Providing explanations/reasons/justifications • Mocking/telling buyer off

Figure 3.2 Subcategories of explicit and implicit refusals

of the types of implicit refusals, with Ecuadoreans preferring to request (additional) payment or to make counteroffers (19 or 14.07%) and Venezuelans preferring to (re)state norms, conditions, or prices (24 or 12.12% of their head acts). This suggests that Ecuadorean sellers are more to the point in their approach to the business transaction itself, and that Venezuelans are more concerned with the observance of the regulating principles of the transaction. It is also useful to look at subcategories of both explicit and implicit refusals. The subcategories identified appear in Figure 3.2.3

64

64  María Elena Placencia and Carmen García

Expressing lack of interest

1.98% 2.04%

Refusing to pay difference

1.98% 0% 8.91% 3.06%

Refusing exchange

87.12% 94.89%

Negative 0%

20%

40% ML-VEN

60%

80%

100%

ML-EC

Figure 3.3 Subcategories of explicit refusals

With respect to explicit refusals and concerning their incidence, as can be seen in Figure 3.3, the use of the negative ‘No’ was clearly the most common strategy across data sets (see also Placencia, 2019). In relation to subcategories of implicit refusals, in the Ecuadorean corpus, as can be seen in Figure  3.4 below, requesting an additional payment (e.g., Cuanto de diferencia? ‘What’s the difference [that you are willing to pay]’) was the most frequently employed strategy, followed by want/​need statements such as Necesito efectivo ‘I need cash.’ In the Venezuelan corpus, on the other hand, there is no predominant single category. The three most frequent are restating norm/​conditions/​price, as in Solo efectivo ‘Cash only’; admonishing/​accusing/​warning, as in No tiene suficiente reputacion ‘You don’t have enough reputation’; and expressing want/​ need/​preference, as in Prefiero efectivo ‘I prefer cash.’ In terms of relational work, one can see that implicitness (or indirectness) cannot necessarily be associated with attempts to mitigate the refusal as a number of the strategies listed indeed appear to be face threatening. 3.4.3  Use of mitigators and aggravators Two overall categories of supportive moves can be distinguished: those that appear to have a mitigating effect, and those that appear to aggravate the refusal. As can be seen in Table 3.2 below, mitigators are much more frequent than aggravators in both data sets (see also Placencia, 2019). On the other hand, Venezuelans produce more aggravators compared to Ecuadoreans, and this difference is significant (z = 2.78 > 2.58 (α .01)).

 65

Refusals of bargaining offers 65

Mocking/telling buyer off

2.06% 2.70%

Providing explanations/ reasons

3.09% 5.40%

10.30%

Criticizing the offer

5.40%

Requesting (additional) payment

11.34% 51.35%

Expressing want/need/ preference

17.52% 21.62%

Admonishing/accusing/ warning

0%

(Re)stating bottom line

0%

18.55%

12.37%

(Re)stating norm/ conditions/price

24.74% 13.51%

0%

10%

20%

30%

ML-VEN

40%

50%

60%

ML-EC

Figure 3.4 Subcategories of implicit refusals

Table 3.2 Mitigators and aggravators Supportive moves

Mitigators Aggravators Total

Ecuadoreans

Venezuelans

#

%

#

%

198 13 211

93.83 6.16

200 33 233

85.83 14.16

Examining subcategories of mitigators, we identified eight types with two or more instances, as can be seen in Figure 3.5. Under ‘other’ we placed subtypes that occurred only once. For Ecuadoreans, the most frequently employed are ‘affiliative terms of address’ (e.g., amigo ‘friend’) and ‘expressions of gratitude’ (e.g., muchas gracias ‘thank you very much’). These two, although with a lower incidence, are also the most frequent among Venezuelans, followed by ‘explanations.’

66

66  María Elena Placencia and Carmen García 60% 50%

47.97%

40% 28%

18.50% 10%

10%

6.50% 2.02%

3.03%

1.51%

5.55% 2.52% 0%

0%

2.52%2.50%

Af

fil ia of tive ad te dr rm es s G ap ra t pr itu ec d ia e/ tio Ex n pl a ju n st at G ifi io re ca ns et tio / in gs ns /fa w re Po ell- we w l si tiv ish ls/ e e ev s of alu pr ati od on W uc illi ng t n co es (R op s e) er to st at at e in g co no Ex nd rm pr es iti s/ on si on s s pr of n ef e er ed en / ce

0%

6.05% 3.53%

er

20%

31.31% 28%

O th

30%

ML-EC

ML-VEN

Figure 3.5 Subcategories of mitigators

Turning to aggravators, as can be seen in Figure 3.6 below, the most common strategy among Ecuadoreans is ‘reinstating negative/​setting the bottom line,’ as in NO AMIGO HUAWEI NO GRACIAS ‘NO FRIEND HUAWEI NO THANK YOU.’ Incidentally, in this example, one could argue that the use of capitals constitutes an aggravator, as if the person were yelling. However, co-​occurring features, such as the use of an affiliative form of address, and an expression of appreciation, suggest that the vendor is attempting to mitigate his refusal rather than aggravate it. For Venezuelans, on the other hand, the most common strategy is admonishing/​accusing/​warning (e.g., no vayas a valorar el tuyo como nuevo ‘don’t value yours as new.’ In both data sets, a few instances of sarcasm or laughter on the part of the seller can also be found, conveying to the buyer that their offer is laughable, as in Jajajaja no ‘Hahaha no.’ Summarizing the results, we found both similarities and differences across data sets. Regarding the former, they include the production of compact offers-​refusals—​often consisting of two or more moves in the same turn—​, a more frequent use of plain negatives (i.e., No) to realize refusals, a more frequent occurrence of mitigators than aggravators, and use of affiliative address forms and expressions of gratitude as the most frequently employed supportive moves. With respect to differences, they include Ecuadoreans’ more extensive use of supportive moves than head acts, with fewer aggravators,

 67

Refusals of bargaining offers 67 70%

63.63%

60%

53.84%

50% 40% 30.76% 30.30%

30% 20%

15.38%

10% 0%

6.06% 0%

Admonishing/ accusing/warning

0%

(Re)stating negative/ bottom line ML-EC

Sarcasm/ laughter

Other

ML-VEN

Figure 3.6 Subcategories of aggravators

and more mitigators, versus a more balanced distribution and a higher use of aggravators in the Venezuelan corpus; a much higher incidence of explicit refusals in the Ecuadorean corpus, compared to the Venezuelan corpus where a more balanced distribution between explicit and implicit refusals was found; and, finally, different preferences for subcategories of refusals and aggravators.

3.5  Discussion Interpreting our findings, we can say that some of the results above display the influence of the online medium (e.g., informality; compact refusals) and the affordances of the site (e.g., two-​turn offer-​refusal interactions, or the predominance of Ø nominal address in the context of anonymity prescribed by the site). The results also show that, given that mitigators were far more common than aggravators across data sets, most sellers appear to treat the refusal as face threatening, and seek to redress the threat. In terms of differences, some tentative conclusions in relation to various dimensions of cultural variation (see, among others, Bateson, 1972; Fant, 1995; House, 2000; Spencer-​Oatey & Jiang, 2003) can be made, albeit keeping in mind that the differences found are, in most cases, just a matter of degree, showing tendencies. 1) Explicitness versus implicitness With their clear preference for explicit refusals, Ecuadoreans can be placed  closer to the explicitness pole, whereas Venezuelans would fall around the middle of the continuum. However, in a different social life domain (cf. Boxer, 2002)—​the family and friends domain—​in face-​to-​face

68

68  María Elena Placencia and Carmen García

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

contexts, Quiteños have been found to avoid refusing directly certain requests, offers, or invitations (Placencia, 2008). This would suggest that the type of interactional domain (Kaiser, this volume) as well as the online medium and the context of anonymity of ML might be factors influencing Ecuadoreans’ behavior in the present study. Verbal routines versus ad-​hoc formulation Venezuelans tend to use a wider range of strategies, whereas in the Ecuadorean corpus, certain strategies tend to stand out, suggesting that Ecuadorean refusals have more of a verbal-​routine character than Venezuelan refusals. Concerning Ecuadorean refusals, the results of the present study would be in line with Márquez Reiter and Placencia (2004), in which Quiteños were found to be more ritualistic than Montevideans in SE openings. Conflict avoidance versus conflict tolerance By using more mitigating than aggravating supporting moves, and more verbal routines rather than ad-​hoc formulations, Ecuadoreans seem to exhibit a preference for conflict avoidance. Venezuelans, on the other hand, employ certain aggravating moves such as criticizing the offer, a well-​known bargaining strategy (Prego Vázquez, 1999), more frequently; likewise, they use strategies, such as admonishing and accusing, that do not occur in the Ecuadorean corpus (see also Placencia, 2019). In this respect, Venezuelans showed more tolerance for conflict. Tentativeness versus terseness Through a more frequent use of mitigators, and a wider range, Ecuadoreans display a somewhat stronger orientation toward tentativeness,4 compared to Venezuelans. This finding would be in line with results in request realization in face-​to-​face SEs in Quito (cf. Placencia, 2005, 2008) and in the realization of refusals on MLE (Placencia 2019), in a different market domain. Similarly, orientation toward terseness among Venezuelans would be in line with findings in inviting and reprimanding (García, 1999, 2004). Deference versus equality Through a higher use of verbal routines, Ecuadorean sellers seem to indicate that the notion of deference is important to them (cf. Márquez Reiter & Placencia, 2004; Placencia, 1998). This is a notion that does not stand out in the Venezuelan corpus. Venezuelans reveal a preference for the establishment of equality. This is business versus this is personal Bateson’s (1972) frame perspective (García, 1996) perhaps best captures the present picture. Our results suggest that Ecuadoreans employ more of a ‘this is business’ approach, with their higher use of explicit refusals, verbal routines, and displays of consideration through expressions of gratitude, whereas more elements of a ‘this is personal’ approach can be seen in Venezuelan refusals. They include, for example, the higher use of implicit refusals and ad-​hoc formulations, and certain moves such as admonishing and accusations.

 69

Refusals of bargaining offers 69 A caveat, however, is in order: The study was limited to one type of online interaction (selling/​ buying a product) and one type of product (mobile phones) by two different groups of ML users. Therefore, the results cannot be generalized to all users of ML-​EC or ML-​VEN. Future research should study intralingual pragmatic variation with respect to a wider range of market domains, and in other types of SE online interactions, to provide a more comprehensive look.

3.6  Conclusions The present study examined the realization of refusals of bargaining offers by sellers on ML Ecuador and ML Venezuela from a variational pragmatics perspective. Both similarities and differences were identified across data sets. Regarding the former, some derive from the technological affordances and constraints of the ML site (e.g., the production of two or more moves to realize a refusal, often compacted in one turn, given the two-​turn format provided by the site). On the other hand, the extended use of mitigating supportive moves across data sets, which helps sellers achieve both their transactional and presentational goals, could be influenced by these factors: the expectation of future encounters (Kong, 1998) and ML’s code of conduct and its system of customers’ reviews of sellers (see also Placencia, 2019). In terms of the differences identified, we linked them to a number of dimensions of cultural variation. While in most cases the differences across data sets are only a matter of degree, put together, we think that they provide evidence to support the existence of regional pragmatic variation as opposed to a move toward homogenization on account of globalization (cf. Sifianou, 2013). Given this, it is worth pondering if increased interconnectedness in many aspects of social life, as a result of online interactions and escalated migration, might bring more homogenization in the use of Spanish in Latin America. This is a topic of enormous interest for future research.

Notes 1 EC stands for ML-​Ecuador and VEN for ML-​Venezuela; the first number next to EC or VEN indicates the product number the example corresponds to (see Section 3.3), and the last number, the number of the question-​answer pair within a product thread. 2 A proportions test was applied in both cases. When comparing the strategies used by Ecuadoreans and Venezuelans, a difference of proportion test was used. These tests establish three different levels of validity, at .05 (95%) and at .01 (99%). According to Kachigan (1986, pp. 184-​185), “[t]‌ypically, we set α = .05 or α = .01), so that if the hypothesis H0 is in fact true we will erroneously reject it only 1 time in 20, or 1 time in 100, respectively […] the value of z = 1.96 [is] needed to discredit the null hypothesis at the α = .05 or level of significance […] For a significance level α.01), a value of z greater than 2.58 is needed” (p. 165). 3 It could be argued that the category “Expressing lack of interest” represents an implicit refusal. However, this strategy is normally formulated as an explicit negative

70

70  María Elena Placencia and Carmen García as in No estoy interesado ‘I’m not interested’ As such, we have deemed appropriate to classify it as an explicit refusal. 4 Readers may wonder how it is possible to be explicit or direct and tentative at the same time. Tentativeness refers to the use of mitigation that could be in the form of supportive moves or through the use of (internal) downgraders (Blum-​ Kulka et al., 1989), in order to soften the effect of a face-​threatening act (see, e.g., Márquez Reiter, 2002, in relation to request realization). A speaker may choose to formulate his/​her action—​a refusal in this case—​in a clear and unambiguous way; however, he/​she may accompany the refusal with a move or moves that mitigate its force.

References Ayoola, K. A. (2009). Haggling exchanges at meat stalls in some markets in Lagos, Nigeria. Discourse Studies, 11(4), 387-​400. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. Aylesbury: Intertext. Beebe, L. M., Takahashi, T., & Uliss-​Weltz, R. (1990). Pragmatic transfer in ESL refusals. In R. C. Scarcella, E. S. Andersen, & S. D. Krashen (Eds.), Developing communicative competence in a second language (pp. 55-​ 73). New  York, NY: Newbury House. Blum-​Kulka, S., House, J., & Kasper, G. (1989). The CCSARP coding manual. In S. Blum-​Kulka, J. House, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Cross-​cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies (pp. 273-​294). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Boxer, D. (2002). Applying sociolinguistics: Domains and face-​ to-​ face interaction. Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987[1978]). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Canagarajah, A. S. (1995). Manipulating the context: The use of English borrowings as a discourse strategy by Tamil fish vendors Multilingua, 14,  5-​24. Fant, L. (1995). Negotiation discourse and interaction in a cross-​cultural perspective: The case of Sweden and Spain. In K. Ehlich & J. Wagner (Eds.), The discourse of business negotiation (pp. 177-​201). Berlin/​New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2006). Linguistic politeness in Mexico: Refusal strategies among male speakers of Mexican Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 2158-​2187. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2008). Sociopragmatic variation: Dispreferred responses in Mexican and Dominican Spanish. Journal of Politeness Research, 4(1), 81-​110. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The language of service encounters. A pragmatic discursive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fitch, K. L. (1998). Speaking relationally: Culture, communication, and interpersonal connection. New York, NY: Guilford Press. García, C. (1992). Refusing an invitation: A case study of Peruvian style. Hispanic Linguistics, 5, 207-​243. García, C. (1996). Reprimanding and responding to a reprimand: A case study of Peruvian Spanish speakers. Journal of Pragmatics, 26, 663-​697. García, C. (1999). The three stages of Venezuelan invitations and responses. Multilingua, 18, 391-​433. García, C. (2004). Reprendiendo y respondiendo a una reprimenda. Similitudes y diferencias entre peruanos y venezolanos. Spanish in Context, 1(1), 113-​147.

 71

Refusals of bargaining offers 71 García, C. (2007). “Ché, mirá, vos sabés que no voy a poder”: How Argentineans refuse an invitation. Hispania, 90(3), 551-​564. García, C., & Placencia, M. E. (2011). Estudios de variación pragmática (sub)regional en español: visión panorámica. In C. García & M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Estudios de variación pragmática en español (pp. 29-​54). Buenos Aires: Dunken. González García, V., & García Ramón, A. (2017). Atenuación e intensificación: estrategias pragmáticas del rechazo en respuestas a invitaciones en redes sociales en línea. In M. Albelda Marco & W. Mihatsch (Eds.), Atenuación e intensificación en diferentes géneros discursivos (pp. 187-​203). Madrid/​Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/​ Vervuert. House, J. (2000). Understanding misunderstanding: A pragmatic-​discourse approach to analysing mismanaged rapport in talk across cultures. In H. Spencer-​Oatey (Ed.), Culturally speaking: Managing rapport through talk across cultures (pp. 145-​ 164). London: Continuum. Kachigan, S. K. (1986). Statistical analysis: An interdisciplinary introduction to univariate & multivariate methods. New York, NY: Radius Press Kong, K. C. C. (1998). Politeness of service encounters in Hong Kong. Pragmatics, 8(4), 555-​575. Locher, Miriam A., & Watts, R. J. (2005). Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research, 1,  9-​33. Márquez Reiter, R. (2002). A contrastive study of conventional indirectness in Spanish: evidence from Peninsular and Uruguayan Spanish. Pragmatics, 12, 135-​151. Márquez Reiter, R., & Placencia, M. E. (2004). Displaying closeness and respectful distance in Montevidean and Quiteño service encounters. In R. Márquez Reiter & M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Current trends in the pragmatics of Spanish (pp. 121-​155). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Placencia, M. E. (1998). Pragmatic variation: Ecuadorian Spanish vs Peninsular Spanish. Spanish Applied Linguistics, 2, 71-​106. Placencia, M. E. (2005). Pragmatic variation in corner store interactions in Quito and Madrid. Hispania, 88, 583-​598. Placencia, M. E. (2008). (Non)compliance with directives among family and friends: Responding to social pressure and individual wants. Intercultural Pragmatics, 5(3), 315-​344. Placencia, M. E. (2011). Regional pragmatic variation. In G. Andersen & K. Aijmer (Eds.), Pragmatics of society [Handbook of pragmatics 5] (pp. 79-​113). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Placencia, M. E. (2016). Las ofertas en el regateo en Mercado Libre-​Ecuador. In A. M.  Bañón Hernández, M. M. Espejo Muriel, B. Herrero Muñoz-​Cobo, & J. L. López Cruces (Eds.), Oralidad y análisis del discurso. Homenaje a Luis Cortés Rodríguez (pp. 521-​544). Almería: Editorial Universidad de Almería (Edual). Placencia, M. E. (2019). Responding to bargaining moves in a digital era: Refusals of offers on Mercado Libre Ecuador. In P. Garcés-​ Conejos Blitvich, L. Fernández-​Amaya, & M. Hernández-​López (Eds.), Technology mediated service encounters(pp. 173-​197). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Prego Vázquez, G. (1999). La cortesía: Control interaccional y negociación de identidades en regateos de ferias rurales gallegas. In J. A. Samper Padilla & M. Troya Déniz (Eds.), Actas del XI congreso internacional de la Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de la América Latina, Las Palmas De Gran Canaria, del 22 al 27 de julio de 1996, tomo 1 (pp. 773-​781). Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Servicio de Publicaciones/​Librería Nogal.

72

72  María Elena Placencia and Carmen García Schneider, K. P., & Barron, A. (2008). Where pragmatics and dialectology meet: Introducing variational pragmatics. In K. P. Schneider & A. Barron (Eds.), Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages (pp. 1-​32). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Schneider, K. P., & Placencia, M. E. (2017). (Im)politeness and regional variation. In J. Culpeper, M. Haugh, & D. Z. Kádár (Eds.), Palgrave handbook of (im)politeness (539-​570). Basingstoke: Palgrave Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. (2001). Intercultural communication (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Sherzer, J. (1993). On puns, comebacks, verbal dueling, and play languages: Speech play in Balinese verbal life. Language and Society, 22, 217-​233. Siebold, K., & Busch, H. (2015). (No) need for clarity—​Facework strategies in Spanish and German refusals. Journal of Pragmatics, 75,  53-​68. Sifianou, M. (2013). The impact of globalisation on politeness and impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics, 55, 86-​102. Spencer-​Oatey, H., & Jiang, W. (2003). Explaining cross-​cultural pragmatic findings: Moving from politeness maxims to sociopragmatic interactional principles (sips). Journal of Pragmatics, 35, 1633-​1650.

Appendix Each strategy used is presented here in underlined. Punctuation, misspellings, or typographical errors were not corrected.

Explicit refusals a. Explicit negative EC-​1.2 Sony Xperia Z3 (US$420) BUYER:   SELLER:  

Lg g3 mas 50 ‘Lg g3 plus 50’ no gracias ‘no thank you’

b. Refusing exchange EC-​8.2 iPhone 6s (US$990) BUYER:  Amigo

buen día le hago un cambio con una note 4, y 2 Huawei y220…    ‘Friend good day I’ll exchange it for a note 4, and 2 Huawei and220…’ SELLER: No hago cambios     ‘I don’t do exchanges’ c. Refusing to pay difference VEN-​18.2 iPhone 6 Plus (Bs 640.000) BUYER: Buenos dias le interesa un p6 […] y me da diferencia   ‘Good morning are you interested in a p6 released in

lent condition […] and you pay difference’ SELLER: …cambio sin diferencia usted me dice   ‘…I’ll exchange with no difference you tell me’

excel-

 73

Refusals of bargaining offers 73 d. Expressing lack of interest EC-​19.1 Lg G3 D855 (US$235) BUYER:   SELLER:  

Tal vez por mi Huawei g play mini […] más 60 a tu favor ‘Maybe for my Huawei g play mini […] plus 60 for you’ Gracias amigo por su oferta pero no estoy interesado ‘Thank you for your offer friend but I’m not interested’

Implicit refusals e. (Re)stating norm/​condition/​price VEN-​15.24 iPhone 6 Plus (Bs. 640.000) BUYER: Chekee muy bien el articulo saludos […]   ‘Check the article carefully greetings […]’ SELLER:  Amigo buenas tardes, es la 3ra vez que le digo que NO HAGO CAMBIOS, solo VENDO VENDO VENDO, […]     ‘Friend good afternoon, it’s the 3rd time I tell you I DON’T

DO EXCHANGES, I only SELL SELL SELL, […]’ f. Stating bottom line EC-​4.12 Sony Experia Z2 (US$330) BUYER: Hola talvez le interesaria cambiar su z2 con un Huawei […]   ‘Hi maybe you would be interested to exchange your z2 with SELLER:    

for a Huawei p7 […]’ NO AMIGO HUAWEI NO GRACIAS ‘NO FRIEND NO HUAWEI THANKS’

g. Admonishing/​accusing/​warning VEN-​7.12 Galaxy S4 […] (Bs 350.000) BUYER: 412Se lo 803cambio por23 mi 87iphone 6 plus […]   ‘412Se I’ll 803 exchange it for 23 my 87iphone 6 plus […]’ SELLER:  disculpe pero no me interesa su cambio, la publicacion

que hace mension no tiene Imágenes niused suficiente reputacion  en el sitio. tiene todas las caracteristicas de potencial fraude    ‘sorry but I’m not interested in your exchange, the publication that you mention does not have Images neither do you have sufficient reputation on the site. It has all the characteristics of potential fraud’ h. Expressing want/​need/​preference EC-​10.14 Samsung Galaxy (US$520) BUYER:   SELLER:    

saludos amigo le ofrezco un cambio […] gracias ‘Greetings friend I offer you an exchange […] thank you’ Le agradezco amigo su oferta pero prefiero el efectivo saludos ‘Thank you friend for your offer but I prefer cash greetings’

74

74  María Elena Placencia and Carmen García i. Requesting (additional) payment/​making counter offer EC-​3.2 Sony Experia Z3 (US$420) BUYER:   SELLER:    

amigo te ofresco los 360 […] ‘Friend I offer you 360 […]’ Ya te lo dejo en 390 nada menos amigo gracias ‘I’ll leave it to you in 380 no less friend thanks’

j. Criticizing the offer EC-​4.5 Sony Experia Z2 (US$330) BUYER:   SELLER:    

Tal vez un cambio por un cel s5 mini […] ‘Maybe an exchange for a cel s5 mini […]’ ESE ES GAMA MEDIA NOMAZ AMIGO ‘THAT ONE IS ONLY MID-​RANGE FRIEND’

k. Providing explanations/​reasons/​justifications VEN-​4.7 Moto G1 16 Gb Liberado (Bs. 90.000) BUYER:   SELLER:    

Aceptas cambio por un z10 […] ‘Do you accept exchange for a z10’ Ya tengo uno! ‘I already have one!’

l. Mocking/​telling buyer off EC-​6.2 iPhone 6 (US$664) BUYER:   SELLER:    

Amigo te ofrezco los 600 y concretemos la compra […] ‘Friend I offer you 600 and let’s finalize the purchase […]’ Siga no mas buscando amigo a ese precio imposible […] ‘Continue looking friend impossible at that price […]’

. (Re)stating explicit negative/​(minimum) price/​bottom line m Ven-19-​10 Lg Nexus 4 16gb (Bs 99.000) BUYER:  Amigo,

ambos telefonos cuestan similar y si hacemos cambio quedariamos a mano.   ‘Friend, both phones cost the same and if we do the exchange we would be even.’ SELLER: solo hago cambios bajo esa condicion     ‘I only do exchanges under that condition’ Mitigators n. Affiliative terms of address EC-4.8 Sony Experia Z2 (US$330) BUYER:   SELLER:  

Amigo te cambio por un z3 compact 9/​10 ‘Friend I’ll exchange it for a z3 compact 9/​10’ NO BROTHER GRACIAS ‘NO BROTHER THANK YOU’

 75

Refusals of bargaining offers 75 o. Gratitude/​appreciation VEN-​4.8 Moto G1 16 Gb Liberado (Bs. 90.000) BUYER:   SELLER:  

[Link to product] Estarías interesado? ‘Would you be interested?’ Ya tengo laptop gracias! ‘I already have a laptop thank you’

p. Explanations/​reasons/​justifications EC-​13.9 Moto G (US$125) BUYER:   SELLER:    

Tal vez los $100 […] ‘Maybe $100 […]’ No pana los 115 esta nuevo ‘No dude 115 it’s like new’

q. Greetings/​farewells/​well-​wishes EC-​10.13 Samsung Galaxy (US$520) BUYER:   SELLER:  

Saludos … Le cambio con una hp 4430s! ‘Greetings … I’ll exchange it with an hp4430s!’ no muchas gracias … Saludos ‘No thank you … greetings’

r. Positive evaluation of product EC-​13.9 Moto G (US$125) BUYER:   SELLER:    

Tal vez los $100 […] ‘Maybe $100 […]’ No pana los 115 esta nuevo ‘No dude 115 it’s like new’

s. Willingness to cooperate VEN-​15.4 iPhone 6 Plus (Bs. 640.000) BUYER: Amigo aceptas 300.000 […]   ‘Friend do you accept 300.000 […]’ SELLER:  Sería genial pero necesito el dinero intenta

vender el S5 y le damos play-​   ‘That would be great but I need the money try to sell the S5 and we press play’ t. Stating regret/​apology VEN-​7.11 Galaxy S4 […] (Bs. 350.000) BUYER:   SELLER:  

412Se lo 803cambio por23 mi 87iphone 6 plus […] ‘412 I’ll exchange it 803 for 23 my 87iphone 6 plus […]’ disculpe pero no me interesa su cambio, ‘I am sorry but I’m not interested in your exchange,’

76

76  María Elena Placencia and Carmen García u. Expressing understanding VEN-​19.7 Lg Nexus 4 16gb […] (Bs. 99.999) BUYER: yo estoy vendiendo mi equipo en 120 S   ‘I’m selling my equipment in 120 S’ SELLER: Entiendo amigo pero no me interesa efectuar ese cambio […]    ‘I understand friend but I’m not interested in doing that

exchange […]’ Aggravators v. Admonishing/​accusing/​warning VEN-​2.2 Motorola Moto G-​2 […] (Bs. 110.000) BUYER: Te lo cambio por un alcatel idol mini 2s   ‘I’ll exchange it for an alcatel idol mini 2s’ SELLER:  cuanto me das de diferencia toma en cuenta el precio del mío y

si el tuyo es sado no vayas a valorar el tuyo como nuevo   porque si es uasí imaginate que yo haga el mismo con el mío […]    ‘how much difference will you give me take into account

the price of mine and if yours is second hand don’t value yours as new because if it is so imagine if I do the same with mine […]’ w. Sarcasm/​laughter VEN-​11.9 Xperia U (Bs. 43.000) BUYER:   SELLER:    

buenas […] acepta 35 […] ‘Hi […] do you accept 35 […]’ no amigo no lo estoy regalando ‘no friend I’m not giving it away’

Other x. Degrading address term VEN-​2.7 Motorola Moto G-​2 (Bs. 110.000) BUYER: Tiene mas Ram, Puerto infrarrojo entre otros.   ‘It has more RAM, infrared port among others.’ SELLER:  El infrarrojo no me sirve de nada. El mío es muchísimo

mejor […] Ósea ese S4 mini no tiene vida   Papa Vaya a ver quien le cambia ese gallo muerto     ‘The infrared is of no use to me. Mine is much better […] so this s4 mini has no life Dad go see who changes you this dead cock’

 77

4  Gender variation in address form selection in corner-​store interactions in a Nicaraguan community Jeff Michno

4.1  Introduction Service encounters provide an ideal context for the study of forms of address, which serve a range of socioindexical and pragmatic functions. The use of forms of address, including personal pronouns and vocatives, has been shown to vary according to both speaker and interlocutor gender (e.g., Blas-​Arroyo, 2005; Pinkerton, 1986; Schreffler, 1994; Simpson, 2002). The structured nature of service encounters offers a somewhat controlled framework for comparing personal pronoun and vocative use among a range of individuals (i.e., the customers) interacting with the same service provider. A  type of nonformal institutional discourse (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008), which allows for relational talk, service-​encounter interactions follow procedural norms familiar to members of a given community of practice (Mills, 2003; Wenger, 1998), while simultaneously allowing for individual variation. The format of service encounters lends itself well to contrastive analysis and is particularly useful in situations of language or dialect contact, in which pronominal systems may be in flux. This chapter explores one such setting, a corner store in a rural community in the municipality of Tola, Rivas Department, Nicaragua, that has experienced recent growth and dialect/​ language contact due to tourism. By analyzing interactions between a local vendor and local and nonlocal customers, I identify differences in the use of pronouns and vocatives according to customer gender and request type. I also pinpoint pragmatic variation by locals that serves to index local versus nonlocal status. Combined, the data provide insights into evolving speech community norms with respect to forms of address. They also shed light on how individuals are able to selectively employ address forms to successfully co-​construct service transactions while managing interpersonal relations (e.g., Leech, 1999). The study contributes new knowledge about the most understudied variety of Spanish in Central America (Lipski, 2008). In Section 4.2, I  discuss previous research on forms of address in the Spanish-​speaking world, focusing on studies of pragmatic variation during service encounters, and present my research questions. In Section 4.3,

78

78  Jeff Michno I provide a description of the community in which the study was carried out and the methods used to collect and quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the data. I dedicate Section 4.4.1 principally to the quantitative analysis of pronoun use and Section 4.4.2 to the quantitative and qualitative analysis of vocative use. Finally, in Section 4.5, I present my conclusions while acknowledging the study’s limitations and offering suggestions for future research.

4.2  Theoretical framework and background 4.2.1  Pronominal address Personal pronouns serve as deictic elements by assigning referential status to individuals within a contextualized interaction. For languages like Spanish, in which multiple pronominal variants exist for the same referential target (vos, tú, usted ‘you’), the choice by a speaker of a given form over another can index a range of social and pragmatic meanings. Research on second person pronoun use is largely based on Brown and Gilman’s (1960) proposition that pronoun selection is driven by interpersonal notions of power and solidarity. In a relationship between two individuals who experience an asymmetrical power dynamic (e.g., boss-​employee; parent-​ child), a nonreciprocal pronoun usage pattern is presumed to prevail. In more egalitarian settings, solidarity is presupposed to drive reciprocal pronoun selection. Since Brown and Gilman’s (1960) seminal study, a variety of researchers have critiqued the rigidity of the power-​solidarity framework, which does not allow for pragmatic variation and is based on a binary pronominal address system. Previous work (e.g., Clyne, Norrby, & Warren, 2009; Félix-​Brasdefer, 2012; Moyna & Rivera-​Mills, 2016; Placencia, 1997) has embraced a sociocultural view that considers the contextualized use of pronouns in light of the participants’ social attributes, relationships, and roles. 4.2.2  Spanish second person pronominal system Spanish has three potential pronominal forms of address for second person singular, tú, vos, and usted, although they are not uniform in their distribution or significance across the Spanish-​speaking world.1 Previous research suggests that Nicaraguans exclusively use vos as the informal second person singular pronoun along with more deferential usted (see, e.g., Lipski, 1994, 2008; Páez Urdaneta, 1981; Rey, 1997; Thiemer, 1989, among others) to the exclusion of tú. Contrary to previous claims, I contend that locals in the community under study do use tú in conjunction with vos and usted, as part of a trilevel system (Michno, 2017).2 While perhaps not a full-​fledged tripartite system, such as that observed in Guatemala (Pinkerton, 1986), use by locals of tú does appear to extend beyond occasional interactions with tourists, contrasting with previous accounts (e.g., Lipski, 1994). Tú use among locals seems to be increasing, influenced by a local perception that tú is a prestigious

 79

Gender variation in address form selection 79 form, and vos, a stigmatized one, as reported by an 18-​year-​old local female (Michno, 2017, p. 144), as in (1): (1)

¡Ese vos se siente feo! …Va a seguir cambiando. Dentro de unos cinco años más, solo el tú; se va a perder el vos.

‘That vos feels ugly!…It’s going to keep changing. Within some five more years, only tú; vos will be lost.’3 This view seems to be driven by the predominant use of tú by outsiders (i.e., tourists, workers, and new residents) brought to the community by recent growth, although it is likely enhanced by the association in Nicaragua between tú and education (Christiansen, 2014) and print media (Christiansen & Chavarría Úbeda, 2010). Similar expansion of tú use among Nicaraguans has been reported in a diasporic dialect contact situation. López Alonzo (2016) describes how pronoun selection and alternation among Nicaraguan immigrants living in Miami serves both to accommodate speakers of other dialects and to index Nicaraguan identity. Research on pronominal accommodation in service-​encounter contexts has shown differences according to gender and customer-​versus-​provider status (Barrancos, 2008), motivating consideration of both factors in the present study. Given the research site’s proximity to Costa Rica, the potential influence of Costa Rican Spanish must also be considered. While all three pronominal forms, vos, tú (T), and usted (V), are found in Costa Rican Spanish, tú is typically associated with tourists (e.g., Thomas, 2008). Nonetheless, some studies have suggested changes within the Costa Rican pronominal system, including increased use of tú by younger speakers (e.g., Quesada Pacheco, 2010). Michnowicz, Despain, and Gorham (2016), on the other hand, find that younger speakers seem to be increasing their use of usted. The researchers also suggest that Costa Ricans may actively avoid vos due to its association with Nicaraguans. Analysis of the Costa Rican pronominal system is further complicated by competing verbal forms, with some speakers combining tuteo verbal forms with vos pronouns (Moser, 2008, 2010). Accounts of similar pronoun-​verb mixing in Chile attribute use of the tú pronoun alongside vos verbal forms to the stigma associated with vos (e.g., Bishop & Michnowicz, 2010). Regardless of actual Costa Rican pronoun use, evidence suggests that locals of Tola, Nicaragua, associate tú with Costa Rican speakers (and outsiders, more generally), as captured by the following commentary (2) from a 46-​year-​old local male: (2) Algunos queremos manejar el idioma de ellos…porque el que lo usa el gringo es casi “tú, oye, tú, ven,” como en Costa Rica. ‘Some of us want to use their language…because what the gringo uses is almost “youT, hey, youT, comeT here,” like in Costa Rica.’4

80

80  Jeff Michno 4.2.3  Pronoun use in service encounters Researchers have found variation in Spanish pronoun use in a variety of service-​encounter settings, such as corner stores (Placencia, 2005, 2008) and markets (Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015). Similar studies have found variation in the use of vocatives (e.g., Placencia, 2001a, 2001b, 2015; Rigatuso, 2003). In each of these settings, one participant represents an institution (e.g., the store owner/​clerk/​business), while the other seeks service (i.e., the customer) (Agar, 1985). The discourse is more loosely organized and conversational than that found in formal settings, such as courts (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008). Research has demonstrated intralingual variation at the national level (Castro, 2000; Márquez Reiter & Placencia, 2004; Placencia, 1998, 2015) and the subnational level (Félix-​Brasdefer, 2012; Placencia, 2008). Félix-​Brasdefer (2015) also identifies cross-​linguistic pragmatic-​discursive variation across Mexican Spanish and American English. Aside from regional differences, the studies have found variation according to macrosocial variables, such as gender and age. Félix-​Brasdefer (2012), for example, finds that female customers in Southern Mexican markets used more the deferential form usted (the formal variant) than male customers to address male vendors. Similarly, Murillo Medrano (this volume) finds that female customers in Costa Rica were more likely than male customers to use and receive ustedeo and to limit vocative use. Blas-​ Arroyo (2005) discusses the frequent association between female speakers and prestige variants (and their reported avoidance of stigmatized forms), while cautioning against one-​to-​one generalizations due to the complex interplay of factors influencing variant use. More broadly, research has shown pronominal variation according to speech act. Murillo Fernández (2003) finds in her Colombian Spanish data more voseo in commands, and usted, in statements. Newall (2016) adds that voseo in Colombian Spanish is used more in commands issued to known interlocutors, and ustedeo, to strangers, a tactic described by Mestre Moreno (2010) as a strategy for protecting the addressee’s negative face (Brown & Levinson, 1987), alternatively referred to as “independence face” (Scollon & Scollon, 2001). Use of ustedeo has been considered a mitigator of these acts, and use of voseo, an intensifier (Castro, 2000). Gutiérrez-​Rivas (2010) ties pronoun selection in requests to the pragmatic function of either expressing solidarity (tuteo) toward or establishing distance (ustedeo) from the interlocutor. Uber (2011) emphasizes the importance of considering social and contextual factors when analyzing second person pronouns, underscoring the potential for individual variation, or personal style, which she refers to as “the wild card.” Researchers have employed a variety of tools to gather data on forms of address, including questionnaires, surveys, role-​ plays, participant observations, and observations of naturally occurring interactions. While experimental methods can yield large quantities of data in a short time period, they can also lead to errant or incomplete generalizations, as self-​reported

 81

Gender variation in address form selection 81 behavior does not always match actual behavior. The present study combines quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze naturally occurring data, thus addressing methodological concerns expressed by past researchers of personal pronouns (see, e.g., Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015; Michnowicz et al., 2016; Sorenson, 2013; van Compernolle & Williams, 2012). Through this approach, I seek to contribute new insights into the role of gender in personal pronoun and vocative use during service encounters while describing a rural vernacular of the least-​studied variety of Central American Spanish (Lipski, 1994, 2008). In this pursuit, I analyze Nicaraguan corner-​store interactions to address the following research questions: RQ1: What is the distribution of second person singular pronouns (vos, tú, usted) used by Nicaraguan corner-​store customers and the service provider? Is there pronoun switching or alternation and, if so, what functions does it serve? Is there any patterning according to request or speech act type? RQ2: What vocatives are used by customers and the service provider in Nicaraguan face-​ to-​ face service encounters? Is there any patterning according to gender? What functions do these vocatives serve?

4.3  Method 4.3.1  Research site This study was carried out in a small rural community in the municipality of Tola, department of Rivas, on Nicaragua’s southwestern coast. The community is classified as an area of high poverty, with 31.6% of the residents living in extreme poverty, and another 41.2% in moderate poverty.5 Reports by locals are consistent with findings by the Inter-​American Development Bank that Nicaragua has the highest percentage among Latin American countries of children who are not enrolled in school, with only 50% completing primary school (Näslund-​Hadley, Meza, Arcia, Rápalo, & Rondón, 2012). Recent growth in tourism has created employment opportunities in the community for locals and outsiders from other parts of Nicaragua and beyond, including speakers of Spanish and other languages. The social dynamics have foregrounded the value of education and access to a variety of Spanish perceived by locals as “standard,” as well as access to other languages, principally English. The corner store analyzed in this chapter is a central meeting place for local residents in this small, tight-​knit community. The shopkeeper and the majority of his customers are well acquainted and, I  claim, share sociocultural expectations for appropriate behavior during service encounters (i.e., constitute a community of practice; Mills, 2003; Wenger, 1998). This chapter describes pragmatic variation in pronoun and vocative use according to gender during those service encounters. Applying an ethnographically informed perspective on interpersonal relations, I embrace the view that the

82

82  Jeff Michno small size and pace of life in the community may influence discourse, and I acknowledge the roles the shopkeeper might play in addition to “provider-​ of-​goods” (Placencia, 2005). As such, I expect use of involvement strategies (Scollon & Scollon, 2001), such as the use of vocatives, in line with findings of Placencia (2005) in Ecuador and Fitch (1998) in Colombia. 4.3.2  Setting and data collection The data analyzed in this study stem from audio recordings at the community’s busiest corner store, independently owned and run by a 26-​year-​old local male with the assistance of his family members. The store itself comprised the front room of the family’s home, accessed by customers via a large storefront window through which interactions proceeded. The store carried a variety of household items, food and beverages, phone cards, cigarettes, and alcohol. Given the small size of the community, most customers were well acquainted with the shopkeeper, referred to here using the pseudonym “Arturo,” who extended to many of his customers a line of credit. Due to the rapid growth in tourism in the region, Arturo increasingly interacted with tourists and outsiders living in the area. Prior to collecting audio data, I  familiarized myself with the store and the comings and goings of its customers. I was already acquainted with the general rhythm of life in the community, which I had visited three times in a five-​year period. In order to maximize access to service-​encounter data, I targeted the time of day (late afternoon) with the highest concentration of interactions. Upon receiving the shopkeeper’s permission, I placed a Marantz PMD620 handheld solid-​state recorder just inside the shop’s window on two separate occasions and sat within earshot to take detailed field notes.6 Approximately three hours of recordings yielded 81 analyzable interactions between the shopkeeper and his customers. Data were transcribed by the primary researcher and a research assistant, and cross-​validated to increase accuracy. Participant names, where retrievable, were replaced by pseudonyms to protect participant privacy. 4.3.3  Data analysis This study employed quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze data. As observed by Terkourafi (2012), there is an inherent difficulty in studying pragmatic variables, in part due to a tension between utilizing sociolinguistic and pragmatic research methods. Several researchers have pointed to a need to embrace a multimethod approach, with specific reference to studying personal pronoun use (e.g., Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015 [­chapters 5 & 8]; Michnowicz et al., 2016; Sorenson, 2013; van Compernolle & Williams, 2012). For the quantitative analysis, I  conducted a general descriptive statistical analysis followed by a mixed-​model logistic regression and conditional inference tree analysis, where applicable (Tagliamonte, 2012; Tagliamonte &

 83

Gender variation in address form selection 83 Table 4.1 Independent variables potentially affecting pronoun use Social Variables Age Gender

Levels Younger, Middle, Older Female, Male

Linguistic Variables Request Type (Actional) Sequence (Interactional)

Levels Assertion, Command, Direct, Elliptical, Implicit Opening, Request, Exchange, Closing

Baayen, 2012). This combination of analytic tools yielded a better description of the variation encountered in the data (Tagliamonte & Baayen, 2012) and accounted for the imbalanced number of participants according to the target social variables (i.e., age and gender) and the wide range in the number of dependent variable tokens produced per participant. These tools identified significant effects of independent variables on the primary dependent variable (pronoun variant selection), as well as potential interactions between variables affecting pronoun use (Table 4.1). The social variables of age and gender were deemed relevant based on ethnographic observations, knowledge of the sociocultural history of the community, and findings from extant studies on pronominal variation citing them as significant social factors (see, e.g., Pinkerton, 1986; Schreffler, 1994; Simpson, 2002), including in the context of service encounters (see, e.g., Félix-​ Brasdefer, 2012, 2015). The primary dependent variable consisted of three variants: vos, tú, usted. A  token was defined as the individual occurrence of one of the following: (1) a variant pronoun; (2) variant verbal/​clitic morphology; or (3) a combination of a variant subject pronoun and inflected verbal/​clitic morphology. An example of each appears below in (3). The following convention superscripts are used in the examples to indicate which variant appears: T = tú; Vos = vos; V = usted; A = ambiguous (tuteo or voseo). (3) a. Pronoun      La comida es para vos.      ‘The food is for youVos’ b. Morphology:      ¿Qué querés?      ‘What do you wantVos?’      Le presto mi bici.      ‘I’ll lend youV my bike.’ c. Combination:      ¿De dónde eres tú?     ‘Where areT youT from?’

84

84  Jeff Michno Each token was counted and tagged according to the social and linguistic variables, resulting in multiple pronoun tokens for some speakers, including instances of pronominal switching. All data were analyzed in R 3.3.3 (R Core Team, 2013). To qualitatively analyze the service-​encounter interactions, I  chose an interactional sociolinguistic approach, which allowed me to attend to a variety of contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1982) and consider local and global forces influencing participant speech. My analysis was informed by detailed participant observations that I compiled during the service encounters, as well as my field notes from three visits to the community, which allowed me to identify patterns and functions of pronoun use by locals in natural settings (Michno, 2017).

4.4  Results and discussion 4.4.1  Pronoun use according to customer gender There were 209 second person singular pronouns tokens identified in the 81 service-​encounter interactions. As detailed in the methods section, a token consisted of one of the pronoun variants (vos, tú, usted) or corresponding verbal/​clitic morphology. Overall, vos predominated in the data (54%; 113/​ 209), followed by usted (30%; 63/​209) and tú (16%; 33/​209). This patterning falls in line with the existing literature on pronoun use in Nicaraguan Spanish regarding vos and usted (see, among others, Lipski, 1994, 2008; Páez Urdaneta, 1981; Rey, 1997; Thiemer, 1989), but departs from past accounts with respect to tú use (see Michno, 2017, for a discussion of the expanding use of tú in the community). The service-​encounter data analyzed here also included a high number of ambiguous pronoun tokens (100) due to the shared verbal/​ clitic morphology of vos and tú in several commonly used expressions (e.g., dame ‘giveA me,’ te gusta ‘youA like’). The imperative dame (you-​informal) was particularly frequent in the data set (26 tokens). Table 4.2 shows the overall breakdown of pronoun use by the shopkeeper and his customers according to customer gender. As illustrated in the left half of Table 4.2, the shopkeeper used more usted forms with female customers (50%; 15/​30) and more vos forms (62%; 68/​110) Table 4.2 Pronoun use by shopkeeper and customers according to customer gender Pronoun

tú usted vos Total

Shopkeeper (male)

Customers

Total

to Females

to Males

Females

Males

8 (27%) 15 (50%) 7 (23%) 30

17 (15%) 25 (23%) 68 (62%) 110

3 (12%) 17 (65%) 6 (23%) 26

5 (12%) 6 (14%) 32 (74%) 43

33 (16%) 63 (30%) 113 (54%) 209

 85

Gender variation in address form selection 85 with male customers. A similar pattern held for customer usage: Females used more usted forms (65%; 17/​26) and males used more vos forms (74%; 32/​43). Regarding tú use, the shopkeeper used proportionally more tú forms with female customers (27%; 8/​30) compared to males (15%; 17/​110), while the customers’ limited tú use was balanced across genders. Given the discrepancy in the number of pronoun tokens provided by male and female customers, a mixed-​model logistic regression analysis was used to determine significance of the social variables on pronoun use. The model compared the two primary pronouns used in Nicaraguan Spanish (as reflected in the data): vos and usted.7 The best-​fit model for the shopkeeper’s pronoun use showed significant effects for customer gender and age: The shopkeeper was more likely to use usted with female customers (p = 0.02) and customers in the older age group (p = 0.02). Similarly, a model for customer pronoun use showed a significant effect for customer gender: Females were more likely to use usted with the shopkeeper, and males were more likely to use vos (p < 0.01). The following conditional inference trees corroborate the mixed models and help illustrate the patterns found in the data. The first tree indicates that the shopkeeper’s pronoun use was similar during interactions with male and female customers in the older age group (right branch of tree in Figure 4.1). With customers in the younger and middle age groups (left branch), on the other hand, the shopkeeper used more vos with males, and usted with females. This tree also shows that tú forms were more likely directed to younger and middle age group customers, particularly females. The next tree shows that customer gender was the only significant factor affecting customer pronoun selection (Figure 4.2). Females were significantly more likely to address the shopkeeper using usted (left branch), and males were more likely to address him using vos (right branch). An intriguing pattern emerges when the quantitative analysis is paired with a closer qualitative inspection of data. During service encounters between the male vendor and female customers, usted was most commonly used, and it was typically used by both conversational participants (i.e., it was reciprocal). With male customers, on the other hand, vos use predominated, and interactions often contained pronoun alternation (i.e., asymmetrical use across conversational partners). I  interpret this as a strategy by the shopkeeper to show respect for his customers, while simultaneously using vocatives to show affiliation (discussed in the next section). In order to further explore the pragmatic variation of pronoun use during these service encounters, a subset of the data was analyzed according to the linguistic variables. It was found that request type also influenced pronoun use, as shown in the following conditional inference tree (Figure 4.3). As illustrated by Figure 4.3, gender appeared to have an effect on pronoun use in requests delivered as assertions and commands (left branch of tree); female customers were more likely than male customers to use the usted form. In example (4), an older female customer, who addressed Arturo by name,

86

newgenrtpdf

1 c.age p < 0.001 O

{m, y}

2 c.sex p = 0.001 male

female

Node 3 (n = 64)

Node 4 (n = 19)

Node 5 (n = 47)

1

1

1

0.8 0.6

0.8 0.6

0.8 0.6

0.4

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

0.2

0

0 tú

ud

vos

0 tú

ud

Figure 4.1 Conditional inference tree of shopkeeper pronoun use

vos

tú

ud

vos

 87

newgenrtpdf

1 c.sex p < 0.001

female

male

Node 2 (n = 26)

Node 3 (n = 39)

1

1

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

0

0 tú

ud

vos

Figure 4.2 Conditional inference tree of customer pronoun use

tú

ud

vos

88

newgenrtpdf

1 req.type p < 0.001 {assertion, command}

direct

2 c.sex p = 0.005 male

female

Node 3 (n = 26)

Node 4 (n = 18)

Node 5 (n = 11)

1

1

0.8

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.4

0.2 0

0.2

0.2

1

0

0 amb

tú

usted

vos

amb

tú

usted

vos

Figure 4.3 Conditional inference tree of customer pronoun use according to request type

amb

tú

usted

vos

 89

Gender variation in address form selection 89 uses usted in a command delivered to Arturo and then switches to tú when addressing her young daughter. (4) CUSTOMER: Deme un juguito…y deme unos diez consomés de pollo.   ‘GiveV me a juice…and giveV me ten chicken bouillons.’ ARTURO: Uno noventa y nueve sería. Aquí tiene, mire   ((delivering product))   ‘One ninety-​nine that would be. Here you haveV (it is),   lookV’   CUSTOMER: ((handing juice to daughter)) Toma, niña.   ‘TakeT (it), girl.’ Males, on the other hand, predominantly used ambiguous forms in commands and assertions (either vos or tú), which, given the generally observed pronoun usage in the community (as reported in Michno, 2017), was most likely vos; and certainly not usted. There was no gender effect for requests delivered in the form of direct questions (right branch of tree). Given the greater potential for face threat (i.e., imposition on the interlocutor) entailed by assertions and commands in contrast with direct questions, these results suggest a greater attention by female community members to mitigating such threat via pronominal selection and switching (i.e., pragmatic variation). This view aligns with past analyses of ustedeo as a mitigator of face-​threatening acts (Castro, 2000; Mestre Moreno, 2010). The findings add nuance to past claims that ustedeo is more common in commands delivered to strangers, and voseo, to acquaintances (Newall, 2016), by suggesting differences according to speaker gender. Interactions with outsiders in the community frequently contained pronoun mixing, or polymorphism. Example (5)  shows a switch by the shopkeeper from vos to tú forms during a self-​repair. (5) SHOPKEEPER:  Probalo. Si no te gusta, no-​tú no vuelves a comprarlo.     ‘TryVos it. If youA don’t like it, don’t-​youT don’tT buy it again.’ There were four such instances of pronoun mixing in the service-​encounter data, all pertaining to the shopkeeper’s utterances. I propose two contributing factors: (1) the shopkeeper’s frequent interactions with outsiders who use (or are presumed to use) tú forms, which are historically rare in the local speech community; and (2) the shopkeeper’s need to switch rapidly between pronoun variants across multiple simultaneous customers. Use of tuteo by Arturo, at times accompanied by pronoun switching, often appeared to be an effort to accommodate outsiders, although Arturo occasionally switched to tuteo when addressing local female customers, suggesting a potential gender-​related association among locals. To summarize the results with respect to Research Question 1: While vos use predominated during the service encounters, usted was significantly more

90

90  Jeff Michno likely to be used—​by both parties—​during interactions between the male service provider and female customers. Pronoun use during these interactions was typically reciprocal, as in example (4)  above, unlike interactions with male customers, which showed frequent alternation; male customers most often used vos forms and the service provider, usted. I interpret Arturo’s general use of usted with both genders as a strategy to index a respectful stance with his customers. The nonreciprocal vos use by male customers, on the other hand, may have served to establish solidarity (Gutiérrez-​Rivas, 2010) and to index local identity through use of the form perceived as local and Nicaraguan (López Alonzo, 2016; Michno, 2017). Female pronoun use suggests sensitivity to speech act type; females were significantly more likely to use usted in requests that entailed greater potential face threat: commands and assertions. The preference by female customers (but not males) for usted in commands issued to a known interlocutor suggests different sociocultural norms (i.e., perceptions of “appropriate behavior”; Locher & Watts, 2005) along gender lines for pronoun use in service encounters. The mixing of pronominal and verbal forms was fairly rare in these data and mostly confined to the shopkeeper’s speech, suggesting that locals typically maintain separate verbal paradigms for the three variants (e.g., Moser, 2008, 2010). What mixing was found, however, often involved the tú pronoun and vos verbal forms, a trend more widely observed in the community (Michno, 2017). Given the low level of formal education in the community and the strong association between tú use and formal education in Nicaragua, it is possible that many speakers are not as familiar with or do not frequently use the tuteo verbal paradigm. 4.4.2  Vocative use according to customer gender A similar distribution along gender lines was found for vocative use by both the shopkeeper and his customers. As shown in Table  4.3, a high quantity and wide variety of vocatives were used during the 81 service-​encounter interactions, primarily produced by and directed toward males. As displayed in the left side of Table 4.3, the shopkeeper frequently addressed his customers using vocatives, a total of 73 times during 81 interactions. The majority of these vocatives (90%; 66/​73) were directed to male customers and included a wide variety of forms. When addressing female customers, on the other hand, the shopkeeper’s vocatives were limited to the customer’s name (two instances) and amor ‘love’ (five instances), the latter of which was delivered to customers in all three age groups. The syntactic placement of all seven of these vocatives in utterance-​final position (e.g., Dígame, amor ‘TellV me, love’) suggests an affiliative or relationship-​oriented function (Leech, 1999). This is further supported by the use of the diminutive form of one of the customer’s names. The female customers limited vocative use to the shopkeeper’s name (ten instances). Half of these appeared during the opening of an interaction as

 91

Gender variation in address form selection 91 Table 4.3 Vocative use by shopkeeper and customers according to customer gender Vocative

Shopkeeper (male)

Customer

to Female

to Male

Female

(name) amigo amor brother caballito chavalo don/​doña hermano hombre huevón jefe lobo mae man niño salvaje señor(a) tío viejo

2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

9 17 0 0 3 1 0 2 3 1 8 1 4 0 0 12 0 2 3

10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

8 0 0 2 0 1 0 1 2 0 0 0 3 1 1 2 0 0 0

Subtotal Total

7 73

66

10 31

21

Male

part of the summons-​response sequence, either independently (“Arturo.”), or prefacing a request (Arturo, dame… ‘Arturo, giveT me…’), thus serving an attention-​calling function (Leech, 1999). Two uses of the shopkeeper’s name followed a request for information (¿Cuánto cuesta un bonbón, Arturo? ‘How much does a bonbon (candy) cost, Arturo?’), and two appeared at the end of brief utterances (Ya Arturo. ‘C’mon Arturo.’; Ay, Arturo [sigh]. ‘Oh, Arturo [sigh]’). The last two were interpreted as indexing a frustrated stance based on the conversational content and verbal and nonverbal contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1982) (e.g., loudness, intonation, facial expressions). In Leech’s (1999) terms, the vocative may have served as a relationship-​tuning device. One utterance-​final vocative occurred during relational talk, a greeting prior to the service-​encounter transaction (¿Cómo está, Arturo? ‘How are youV, Arturo?’). It was delivered by an older female customer (estimated to be in her sixties), who was one of the few individuals to initiate relational talk prior to a transaction. She also consistently addressed Arturo using usted, which, given their age discrepancy (Arturo: 26 years old), indicates a respectful rather than an age-​indexical function. The bulk of vocative use in these service encounters occurred during interactions with male customers (84%; 87/​104). The shopkeeper produced 76% (66) of these and the male customers, 24% (21).

92

92  Jeff Michno The most noteworthy attributes of male vocative use were the types and placement of the vocatives, as well as the reciprocal use of several forms. In addition, certain forms appeared to serve age-​indexical functions, while others indexed local versus outsider status. The most common form used by the shopkeeper was amigo ‘friend,’ which was only used with nonlocal customers, save one exception. The shopkeeper used this term frequently during interactions with a handful of nonlocal customers, some native-​Spanish-​speakers, others not. The following excerpt (6)  shows one such usage of amigo alongside tú forms in an interaction with me. (6) Arturo: ¿Encontraste el dinero amigo?   ‘Did you findA your money, friend?’ JEFF: Sí    ‘Yes’ ARTURO: Que bueno que lo encontraste.   ‘It’s good that youA found it.’   JEFF: Tengo harta sed. Eh, ¿qué tipos de bebidas tienen?   ‘I’m very thirsty. Uh, what types of drinks do you (plural) have?’   ARTURO: Eh, te puedes tomar uno de esos…   ‘Uh, youT canT drink one of those…’   ¿Y por cuanto tiempo tú vienes aquí amigo?   ‘And for how long do youT comeT here, friend?’ Interactions with outsiders often elicited use of tuteo by the shopkeeper and, to a lesser extent, ustedeo. These data corroborate my own ethnographic observations of tú use by locals (Michno, 2017). They suggest that the shopkeeper uses tú in tandem with amigo in an attempt to accommodate nonlocal customers’ speech while also indexing an affiliative, friendly stance. The second-​most common vocative used by the shopkeeper was directed exclusively to other locals: salvaje (lit. ‘savage’; akin to ‘dude’ or ‘man’). This form, uttered 12 times by Arturo and reciprocated twice in a subsequent turn by the customer, seemed to be an affiliative device for indexing solidarity with male customers, but only those within the same age range; it was exclusively directed to males ranging from 20 to 39. It typically co-​occurred with vos, as in ­example (7): (7) SHOPKEEPER:   CUSTOMER:  

¿Cigarros querías vos, salvaje? ¿Un paquete? ‘YouVos wanted cigarettes, man? One pack?’ Un paquete…rojo, salvaje. ‘One pack…red, man.’

Jefe ‘boss,’ on the other hand (along with the lesser-​used viejo ‘old man’), was only used to address older customers, perhaps serving as a means of

 93

Gender variation in address form selection 93 indexing both solidarity and respect simultaneously. Notably, it was never used to address Arturo. Jefe most often co-​occurred with usted forms, as in the examples with two older males in (8): (8) a.   b.  

¿Y usted aquí, jefe? ‘And youV here, boss?’ Aquí tiene su medicina, pues, jefe. ‘Here you haveV yourV medicine, boss.’

A few vocative forms were used reciprocally in adjacent shopkeeper-​ customer turns, on occasion initiated by customers: hermano ‘brother,’ hombre ‘man,’ and mae ‘dude.’ These forms of address seemed to be widely used by males in the community and to serve a solidarity function. In the context of service encounters, they appeared to aid in relationship maintenance during transactional sequences, thus facilitating successful negotiation. In response to Research Question 2: Vocatives were much more frequent and varied during interactions with male customers, with 16 different forms/​types used by the male customers and service provider. During interactions with female customers, on the other hand, Arturo limited vocative use to five utterances of mi amor ‘my love’ and two of the customer’s name. The female customers collectively produced just ten vocatives, all in the form of the service provider’s name. Most frequently, these served as an attention-​getting device, while on two occasions, they fulfilled a relationship-​tuning function (Leech, 1999). Generally speaking, but particularly among males, vocatives seemed to be an efficient means of indexing social relationships during the quick and often overlapping transactions common in this corner store, where the shopkeeper’s attentional resources were limited, in line with Murillo Medrano’s (this volume) observations in Costa Rica. Vocatives allowed for more “person-​oriented” interactions, inviting a friendly stance and enhanced rapport, as observed by Placencia (2004) in a neighborhood corner shop in Quito, Ecuador, where customers and the service provider were also well acquainted. While greetings did not seem to be an expected part of the transaction sequence in Tola, Nicaragua (similar to Felix-​Brasdefer’s, 2015 [­chapter  5], observations in Mexican market interactions), when time allowed, there was frequent use of vocatives during relational talk between Arturo and his customers and among the customers themselves, who often congregated in front of the store in the late afternoon. While a high volume of customers often necessitated a task-​ based orientation, vocatives provided a quick and easy means of reinforcing social relationships, presumably of paramount importance in such a small and highly interactive community.

4.5  Conclusions This chapter combined quantitative and qualitative methodologies to explain patterning of personal pronoun and vocative use according to gender during

94

94  Jeff Michno service encounters in a rural community in Tola, Nicaragua. Data showed that female customers were more likely to use usted with the male service provider, while male customers were more likely to use vos. Females were also more likely to use usted while uttering more face-​threatening requests, such as assertions and commands. The service provider, on the other hand, showed sensitivity to both customer age and gender. While he primarily used usted with all older customers, he varied pronouns among younger and middle age groups, using significantly more usted with females, and vos, with males. These data suggest both age-​indexical and gender-​related functions of pronoun selection. While the service provider frequently opted for the usted pronoun when addressing customers, he used a variety of vocatives to index an affiliative stance. This allowed him to simultaneously show respect for and establish solidarity with his customers, a useful strategy given the fast pace and overlapping nature of the interactions. Notably, vocative use also differed along gender lines, showing much greater quantity and variety among males, suggesting particular value in maintaining social relationships while negotiating service-​encounter transactions. This study informs our broader understanding of the evolution of pronominal systems by offering insights into the different pragmatic and socioindexical values attributed to pronominal variants in a community experiencing language and culture contact. While the study has uncovered significant patterns of pronoun and vocative use according to gender, it is limited by the number of customers and pronoun and vocative tokens analyzed. Future research should complement these findings by analyzing a wider pool of customers and comparing these data to service encounters with female service providers (at this and other regional and national locations). Further, research in this region should consider other levels of pragmatic analysis, such as the actional and interactional levels, which are briefly touched upon here.

Notes 1 Some authors (e.g., Uber, 1985, 2011) identify su merced or sumerce as another pronominal form of address in Colombia. 2 Michno (2017) analyzes pronoun use at the research site utilizing ethnographic observations from 2011, 2013, and 2015; sociolinguistic interviews from 2015; and semistructured conversations among locals from 2016. The study suggests expanded use of tuteo among locals interacting with both nonlocals and other locals while providing evidence of some of the socioindexical and pragmatic functions of pronoun selection and switching in the community. 3 Audio recordings were transcribed and translated by the author and a research assistant. Uncertainties and discrepancies were resolved through consultation with a native speaker of Nicaraguan Spanish. 4 Tuteo and voseo share the same clitic form (te) and several verbal forms (e.g., vos/​ tú estás ‘you are’; vos/​tú vas ‘you go’), which can lead to ambiguity regarding which pronominal variant is being used when the pronoun itself is absent (e.g., ¿Te gusta? ‘Do you [vos/​tú] like it?’ versus ¿Le gusta? ‘Do you [usted] like it?’).

 95

Gender variation in address form selection 95 5 Poverty status was assigned according to an index labeled Necesidades básicas insatisfechas ‘Unsatisfied basic needs,’ calculated using five criteria: dwelling-​size-​ to-​occupant ratio, quality of dwelling construction materials, presence of drinking and wastewater utilities, education status of household minors, and a combination of head-​of-​household education level and occupant employment status (Nicaragua, INIDE, 2008). 6 This study was part of a larger project designed to analyze language practices in the community. It was IRB approved and granted a Waiver of Documentation of Consent according to 45 CFR 46.117 and/​or 21 CFR 56.109(c)(1). 7 The mixed-​model logistic regression requires a binary variable; only two variants can be compared at a time.

References Agar, M. (1985). Institutional discourse. Text, 5(3), 147-​168. Barrancos, A. (2008). Linguistic accommodation by Argentinean immigrants in Spain: The case of the pronoun vos and other features. Birkbeck Studies in Applied Linguistics, 3,  27-​51. Barron, A., & Schneider, K. (2009). Variational pragmatics: Studying the impact of social factors on language use in interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics, 6(4), 425-​442. Bishop, K., & Michnowicz, J. (2010). Forms of address in Chilean Spanish. Hispania, 413-​429. Blas-​Arroyo, J. L. (2005) Sociolingüística del español. Madrid: Cátedra. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, R., & Gilman, A. (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), Style in language (pp. 253-​276). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Castro, A. (2000). Pronominal address in Honduran Spanish. Munich: Lincom. Christiansen, A. (2014). “El ‘vos’ es el dialecto que inventamos nosotros, la forma correcta es el ‘tú’ ”. Borealis, 3(2), 259-​297. Christiansen, A., & Chavarría Úbeda, C. (2010). Entre el habla y la escritura: Un análisis de las formas de tratamiento en los anuncios comerciales en Managua, Nicaragua. Revista Cátedra, 14(1),  61-​74. Clyne, M., Norrby, C., & Warren, J. (2009). Language and human relations: Styles of address in contemporary language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Félix-​Brasdefer, C. (2012). Pragmatic variation by gender in market service encounters in Mexico. In J. C. Félix-​Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues (pp.17-​ 48). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Félix-​ Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The language of service encounters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fitch, K. (1998). Speaking relationally: Culture and interpersonal communication in Colombia. New York, NY: Guilford. Gumperz, J. J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gutiérrez-​Rivas, C. (2010). Los usos de “tú” y “ud.” en los actos de habla: Una aproximación a la pragmática del bilingüe. Alpha, 31,  85-​102 Hutchby, I., & Wooffitt. R. (2008). Conversation analysis (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Polity. Leech, G. (1999). The distribution and function of vocatives in American and British English conversation. In H. Hasselgård & S. Oksefjell (Eds.), Out of corpora (pp. 107-​118). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

96

96  Jeff Michno Lipski, J. M. (1994). Latin American Spanish. London: Longman. Lipski, J. M. (2008). Varieties of Spanish in the United States. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Locher, M. A., & Watts, R. J. (2005). Politeness theory and relational work. Journal of Politeness Research, 1(1),  9-​33. López Alonzo, K. (2016). Use and perception of the pronominal trio vos, tú, usted in a Nicaraguan community in Miami, Florida. In M. I. Moyna & S. Rivera-​Mills (Eds.), Forms of address in the Spanish of the Americas (pp. 197-​232). Amsterdam/​ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Márquez Reiter, R., & Placencia, M. E. (2004). Displaying closeness and respectful distance in Montevidean and Quiteño service encounters. In R. Márquez ​Reiter & M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Current trends in the pragmatics of Spanish (pp. 121-​155). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Mestre Moreno, P. (2010). Alternancia de formas de tratamiento como estrategia discursiva en conversaciones colombianas. In M. Hummel, B. Kluge & M. E. Vázquez Laslop (Eds.), Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico (pp. 1033-​ 1049). Mexico City/​Graz: El Colegio de México/​Karl-​Franzens-​Universität Graz. Michno, J. (2017). Nicaragua y ¿vos, tú, o usted? Pronoun use and identity construction in an area of recent linguistic and cultural contact (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://​repositories.lib.utexas.edu/​handle/​2152/​63719 Michnowicz, J., Despain, S., & Gorham, R. (2016). The changing system of Costa Rican pronouns of address: tuteo, voseo, and ustedeo. In M. I. Moyna & S. Rivera-​Mills (Eds.), Forms of address in the Spanish of the Americas (pp. 243-​266). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Mills, S. (2003). Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moser, K (2008). Tres hipótesis acerca de la (des)cortesía en el tratamiento diádico informal-​familiar de San José, Costa Rica. In M. Perl, M. Portilla Chaves & V. Sánchez Corrales (Eds.), Estudios sobre el español centroamericano. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 6(1), 129-​148. Moser, K. (2010). Las formas de tratamiento verbales-​pronominales en Guatemala, El Salvador, Panamá (y Costa Rica): Hacia una nueva sistematización en la periferia centroamericana. In M. Hummel, B. Kluge & M. E. Vázquez Laslop (Eds.), Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico (pp. 271-​291). Mexico City/​Graz: El Colegio de México/​Karl-​Franzens-​Universität Graz. Moyna, M. I., & Rivera-​Mills, S. (2016). Forms of address in the Spanish of the Americas. Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Murillo Fernández, M. E. (2003). El polimorfismo en los pronombres de tratamiento del habla payanesa. Centro Virtual Cervantes: Coloquio de París. Retrieved from http://​cvc.cervantes.es/​obref/​coloquio_​paris/​ponencias/​murillo.htm Näslund-​ Hadley, E., Meza, D., Arcia, G., Rápalo, R., & Rondón, C. (2012). Educación en Nicaragua: Retos y oportunidades. Washington, DC: Inter-​American Development Bank. Newall, G. (2016). Second person singular forms in Cali Colombian Spanish: Enhancing the envelope of variation. In M. I. Moyna & S. Rivera-​Mills (Eds.), Forms of address in the Spanish of the Americas (pp. 149-​170). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Nicaragua Instituto Nacional de Información de Desarrollo (INIDE). (2008). Tola en Cifras. Retrieved from http://www.inide.gob.ni/censos2005/CifrasMun/Rivas/ TOLA.pdf

 97

Gender variation in address form selection 97 Páez Urdaneta, I. (1981). Historia y geografía hispanoamericana del voseo. Caracas, Venezuela: Casa de Bello. Pinkerton, A. (1986). Observations on the tú/​vos option in Guatemalan Ladino Spanish. Hispania, 69(3), 690-​698. Placencia, M. E. (1997). Address forms in Ecuadorian Spanish. Hispanic Linguistics, 9, 165-​202. Placencia, M. E. (1998). Pragmatic variation: Ecuadorian Spanish vs. Peninsular Spanish. Spanish Applied Linguistics, 2(1), 71-​106. Placencia, M. E. (2001a). Percepciones y manifestaciones de la (des)cortesía en la atención al público: El caso de una institución pública ecuatoriana. Oralia, Análisis del Discurso Oral, 4, 177-​212. Placencia, M. E. (2001b). Inequality in address behavior at public institutions in La Paz, Bolivia. Anthropological Linguistics, 43(2), 198-​217. Placencia, M. E. (2004). Rapport-​ building activities in corner shop interactions. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8(2), 215-​245. Placencia, M. E. (2005). Pragmatic variation in corner store interactions in Quito and Madrid. Hispania, 88(3), 583-​598. Placencia, M. E. (2008). Requests in corner shop transactions in Ecuadorian Andean and Coastal Spanish. In K. Schneider & A. Barron (Eds.) Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages (pp. 307-​332). Amsterdam/​ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Placencia, M. E. (2015). Address forms and relational work in E-​commerce: The case of service encounter interactions in Mercado Libre Ecuador. In M. Hernández-​ López & L. Fernández-​ Amaya (Eds.), A multidisciplinary approach to service encounters (pp. 37-​64). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Quesada Pacheco, M. Á. (2010). Formas de tratamiento en Costa Rica y su evolución (1561-​2000). In M. Hummel, B. Kluge & M. E. Vázquez Laslop (Eds.), Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico (pp. 647-​670). Mexico City/​Graz: El Colegio de México/​Karl-​Franzens-​Universität  Graz. R Core Team (2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Version 3.3.3. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. www.R-​project.org/​ Rey, A. (1997). Social correlates of the “voseo” of Managua, Nicaragua: Workplace, street, and party domains. Hispanic Journal, 18, 109-​126. Rigatuso, E. M. (2003) Cortesía, tratamientos e identidad cultural en encuentros de servicio en español bonaerense. In M. del C. Vaquero & M. N. Cernadas de Bulnes (Eds.), Actas de las II Jornadas Interdisciplinarias del Sudoeste Bonaerense (pp. 157-​179). Bahía Blanca: Archivo de la Memoria, Secretaría de Comunicación y Cultura, Universidad Nacional del Sur. Schneider, K., & Barron, A. (Eds.). (2008). Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages. Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Schreffler, S. (1994). Second-​ person singular pronoun options in the speech of Salvadorans in Houston, Texas. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 13, 101-​119. Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. (2001). Intercultural communication (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Simpson, J. M. (2002). The “American voseo” in Cali Colombia: An ethnographic study. Romansk Forum, 15,  25-​32. Sorenson, T. D. (2013). Voseo to tuteo accommodation among Salvadorans in the United States. Hispania, 96(4), 763-​781.

98

98  Jeff Michno Tagliamonte, S. (2012). Variationist sociolinguistics: Change, observation, interpretation. Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell. Tagliamonte, S., & Baayen, R. H. (2012). Models, forests, and trees of York English: Was/​were variation as a case study for statistical practice. Language Variation and Change, 24(2), 135-​178. Terkourafi, M. (2012). Between pragmatics and sociolinguistics: Where does pragmatic variation fit in? In J. C. Félix-​Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues (pp. 295-​319). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Thiemer, E. (1989). El voseo ante la polémica y la práctica. A propósito de algunos datos recogidos en Nicaragua. In P. Peira, P. Jauralde, J. Sánchez Lobato, & J. Urrutia (Eds.), Homenaje a Alonso Zamora Vicente, vol. 2 (pp. 299-​306). Madrid: Castalia. Thomas, J. A. (2008). Reflexiones metalingüísticas acerca del voseo costarricense. Spanish in Context, 5(2), 182-​195. Uber, D. R. (1985). The dual function of usted: Forms of address in Bogotá, Colombia. Hispania, 68, 388-​392. Uber, D. R. (2011). Forms of address: The effect of the context. In M. Díaz-​Campos (Ed.), The handbook of Hispanic sociolinguistics (pp. 244-​ 262). Malden, MA: Wiley-​Blackwell. van Compernolle, R. A., & Williams, L. (2012). Variationist sociolinguistics, L2 sociopragmatic competence, and corpus analysis of classroom-​based synchronous computer-​mediated discourse. In J. C. Félix-​Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues (pp. 239-​270). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 99

5  Gender variation in the perception of appropriate behavior in hotel service encounters in Spain Lucía Fernández-​Amaya and María de la O Hernández-​López 5.1  Introduction One basic assumption in variational pragmatics is that social class, ethnic identity, region, age, and gender, among other factors, have an influence on language use (Barron, 2014; Schneider, 2010). Some studies have paid attention to the role that gender plays in the expression of linguistic politeness (Holmes, 1995; Mills, 2003, 2005). However, the effect of gender on perceptions of (im) polite behavior (Lorenzo-​Dus & Bou-​Franch, 2003) has been underexplored to date. Therefore, we do not know whether expectations are only subject to cultural or regional constraints, or whether gender may also influence perception regarding what is expected in terms of communicative behavior in a given context. The present study focuses on a particular context—​service encounters (SEs)—​that is gaining interest as a research area from the perspective of variational pragmatics (e.g., Bataller, 2015; Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015; Placencia, 2005, 2008). In this context, and drawing on previous research on hotel interactions (Fernández-​ Amaya, Hernández-​ López, & Garcés-​ Conejos Blitvich, 2014; Hernández-​López & Fernández-​Amaya, in press), this study examines, by means of a questionnaire, the expectations of 100 Spanish guests (50 men and 50 women) regarding appropriate communicative behavior and interaction at hotel reception desks. The main goal of this study is to find out whether there is gender variation concerning 1) participants’ expectations when communicating with receptionists in relation to their use of language and politeness orientations (i.e., whether participants prefer formality or informality), and 2)  participants’ alignment toward the transactional or relational aspects of the SE. The study is organized as follows: Section 5.2 provides a brief literature review of studies on SEs, relational and transactional talk, gender differences, and hotel reception desk interaction as well as Spanish politeness. The research methodology and corpus employed are explained in Section 5.3. Section 5.4 describes the findings. Finally, a discussion and key conclusions are offered in Section 5.5.

100

100  Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López

5.2  Theoretical framework 5.2.1  Spanish politeness and interpersonal communication in SEs It should come as no surprise to find that hotel service interaction, as a (sub) genre of SEs, has its own characteristics. For instance, in contrast to other SE interactions such as corner-​shop interactions, hotel receptionists are more likely to receive specific training on how to address the customer and solicit and give out the necessary information and so forth (Blue & Harun, 2003, p. 74). In a nutshell, hotel staff need to know how to appropriately manage the politeness dynamics of interaction (Brown & Levinson, 1987 [1978]; Lakoff, 1989; Leech, 1983). Of particular interest for the present study are Brown and Levinson’s (1987 [1978]) notions of positive and negative face and politeness, built on Goffman’s (1967) notion of face. Related categories are, for example, those of involvement and independence (Scollon & Scollon, 1983, 1995), as well as closeness and respectful distance (Hernández-​López & Placencia, 2004; Hernández-​López, 2009, 2011; Márquez Reiter & Placencia, 2011 [2004]). According to Hickey (2005), “Brown and Levinson’s division of politeness into positive and negative applies directly to Spanish society, which, on a positive-​negative cline, is very close to the positive end” (pp. 319-​320). This orientation involves displays of affection, involvement, and solidarity between interlocutors, among other behaviors (see, e.g., Ardila, 2004; Ballesteros Martín, 2001; Fernández-​Amaya, 2001, 2004, 2008, 2010, 2011; Haverkate, 1998, 2002; Lorenzo-​Dus, 2011; Márquez Reiter & Placencia, 2005 for a discussion of Spanish politeness in different contexts). Independence or deference, on the other hand, has been traditionally associated with indirectness, respect, and formality in the Anglo-​Saxon literature. In line with the above, authors such as Barros García and Terkourafi (2014) argue that Spain is a rapprochement culture when compared to the United States, where a higher orientation toward distancing politeness can be found. However, they acknowledge that the use of politeness varies according to social distance and power. In this vein, Ballesteros Martín (2001), among others, also concluded that negative politeness strategies in Peninsular Spanish are likely to occur only when social distance is great. Nonetheless, caution is needed when making generalizations about people’s interactive style on the basis of nationality only, as there are other sociological variables, such as gender, which may also have an impact on individuals’ preference for solidarity or deference, be it in terms of production or perception. Thus, although some studies have suggested that speakers of Peninsular Spanish may orient toward solidarity and positive politeness, this may only apply in certain contexts (Bataller, 2015; Placencia & Mancera Rueda, 2011). In the context of SEs, the importance given to task-​related and interpersonal aspects of the interaction has also been explored. As Félix-​Brasdefer

 101

Gender variation in perception of behavior 101 (2015) states, within any type of SE, there are examples of relational and transactional talk. Relational talk in SEs can be defined as non-​obligatory talk that is embedded in transactional or task-​oriented talk, such as phatic exchanges or small talk. Relational talk establishes and maintains social and interpersonal relations between the customer/​ visitor and the service provider. (Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015, p. 13) Small talk has been associated by some with Malinowski’s (1923) definition of phatic communion as a conventionalized and peripheral mode of talk, devoid of information and more related to gossip, chat, or time-​out talk. In McCarthy’s (2000, p. 84) words, it is “non-​obligatory talk in terms of task requirements.” Among those who have paid special attention to relational as opposed to transactional talk in SEs are Lieverscheidt, Werlen, and Zimmerman (1989), who analyzed the language used in hairdresser’s salons, and McCarthy (2000), who compared a hairdresser and a driving lesson SE. With respect to Spanish, the reader is referred to Placencia and García’s (2008) collection of papers on small talk, a number of which focus on SEs. In relation to Peninsular Spanish, more recently, Placencia and Mancera Rueda (2011) carried out a study in bars in Seville, Spain, and showed that relational talk is an important component of interactions among service providers and customers who know each other. Likewise, Padilla Cruz (this volume) looks at SE interactions in bars in Seville, with a focus on the relational function of humor. Overall, there seems to be a general consensus with regard to the importance given to both transactional and nontransactional talk in a variety of SE interactions. Maintaining an appropriate balance between the two types of talk seems to be central to the establishment of good relations. What we do not know, however, is whether there are gender differences in relation to how participants in SE interactions perceive this balance. 5.2.2  Gender differences in SEs Over the past few decades, a large body of research has been conducted in the field of language and gender from different perspectives (see, e.g., Coates 2013 [2004] ; Eckert & McConnell-​Ginet, 2003; Holmes & Meyerhoff, 2003). According to Coates (2013 [2004], p. 6), the studies available in this area can be grouped and labeled under four categories: 1. The deficit approach, which represents the earliest works in this area. It claims that there is a so-​ called women’s language, linguistically characterized by the use of forms such as hedges, “empty” adjectives, and exaggerated intonation. This “female language” is described as weak, unassertive, and deficient when compared with male language.

102

102  Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López 2. The dominance approach, which considers that women belong to an oppressed group. It focuses on linguistic differences in women’s and men’s speech in terms of men’s dominance and women’s subordination. Studies attempt to prove how male dominance is enacted through language. 3. The difference approach, which believes that women and men belong to different subcultures. From this perspective, women’s talk is examined outside a framework of oppression or powerlessness. 4. The dynamic or social constructionist approach, which emphasizes the dynamic aspects of interaction. In studies that follow this perspective, gender identity is considered a social construct instead of a “given” social category. According to Coates (2013 [2004]), these four approaches “do not have rigid boundaries: Researchers may be influenced by more than one theoretical perspective” (p. 7). Given space constraints, below, we only consider studies that have focused on gender differences in SEs. In general, one of the most widely known findings in the marketing literature is the fact that women seem to prefer engaging in talk that builds rapport, or are more sensitive to relational aspects of the SE interaction, whereas men seem to prefer engaging in informational talk and seem to value service efficiency and accuracy (Slama & Tashlian, 1985; Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993; Sánchez-​Hernández, Martínez-​Tur, Peiró, & Moliner, 2010). Likewise, Mattila, Grandey, and Fisk (2003), in line with Mathies and Burford (2011), concluded that men are more likely to be focused on the outcome of the SE, while negative affective displays do not necessarily have a clear impact on their satisfaction. In contrast, these authors affirm that female customers’ satisfaction decreases in response to negative emotional displays in the process of the event, even if the SE is successful (i.e., when the task has been completed or the problem has been solved). However, these findings are by no means conclusive. To give an example, Bhagat and Williams (2008) found that “both genders consider the interpersonal and social aspects as well as the structural and material aspects of a professional service” (p. 19). This means that interpersonal aspects of communication might be of importance for men as well. This is consistent with findings in the field of pragmatics. Antonopoulou (2001), who examined gender variation and politeness in Greek customer-​ initiated requests, found that fully verbalized requests (e.g., imperatives, interrogatives, and declaratives) predominated in female-​female interactions, whereas elliptical requests were more frequent in male-​male interactions. By contrast, Félix-​ Brasdefer (2012) found that the gender of the interlocutor had an influence on the use of imperatives in Yucatecan (Mexico) public markets; imperatives being the preferred form only in male-​male and female-​male interactions. Likewise, Ruzickova (2007), in her study on Cuban commercial and noncommercial settings, showed that male participants were more indirect and oriented toward negative politeness than female participants. The latter

 103

Gender variation in perception of behavior 103 employed more positive politeness strategies such as claiming common ground and using in-​group markers. In light of the above, perception and communicative expectations with regard to politeness orientations, as well as the importance given to transactional and relational aspects, constitute a complex topic of study. On the one hand, gender studies show, to greater or lesser extent, revealing differences. On the other, contextual variables, such as national culture, socioeconomic background, age, and genre, might also exert an influence on the results (see, for example, Fernández-​Amaya et al., 2014). On the basis of these observations, the following research questions (RQs) were posited: RQ1: When communicating with receptionists, do Spanish men and women have different preferences in terms of the use of deference/independence or solidarity/​involvement strategies? RQ2: Do Spanish men and women place differing importance on relational versus transactional talk when interacting with receptionists?

5.3  Method 5.3.1  Data collection The data-​gathering method for this study is based on a questionnaire addressed to Spanish guests who have stayed at hotels located in Spain. The questionnaire was approved by Pablo de Olavide University (Spain) through Human Subjects, to fulfill the ethics requirements for this type of data collection for research purposes. An online version of the questionnaire1 was created and sent to LISTSERVs of different universities in Spain, including all the Andalusian universities, as well as Universidad de Alicante, Universidad de Valencia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and Universidad de Vigo. The fact that the subscribers to these lists are graduate students and faculty members guarantees homogeneity regarding educational background and occupation. Out of the final number of questionnaires received, 100 (50 by men and 50 by women) were selected2 and analyzed for the purpose of this study. It is generally acknowledged that questionnaires may have certain limitations. For instance, participants provide their answers based on what they recall from their interaction with the receptionists, which may not be entirely accurate. However, it is felt that this data-​gathering method is adequate for the purpose of this study, which is to examine respondents’ expressed preferences and perceptions of appropriate behavior (Liu, 2006; Kasper, 2008). The questionnaire employed was validated by means of the Delphi method and Cronbach alpha analysis.3 The Cronbach alpha analysis resulted in scores oscillating between 0.809 and 0.9715, which suggests that our questionnaire

104

104  Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López fulfills the necessary reliability requirements. Thus, a final version was designed taking into consideration the comments provided both by a statistician and by the group of experts chosen for our Delphi test. The questionnaire was divided into three main parts: 1. General information about the hotel guest: age, gender, nationality, education, occupation, level of English, languages spoken, country visited, number of times staying at a given hotel and country, length of stay, and purpose of the visit. 2. The guest’s experience and evaluation of their interaction with receptionists at hotel reception desks. 3. The guest’s preferences and expectations regarding receptionists’ interaction with clients in general. Given space constraints, this chapter only focuses on the results obtained from the last section (i.e., guests’ preferences and expectations). 5.3.2  Questionnaire design The information gathered was divided into two sections, corresponding to subjects’ expectations in terms of a) language used, and b) communicative attitude.4 In relation to participants’ linguistic expectations in their interaction with receptionists, they were asked the questions listed in Table 5.1. The aim of this section was to ascertain whether participants prefer receptionists’ language use to be oriented toward solidarity/​involvement (items a, c, e, f) or toward deference/independence (questions b, d, g). Furthermore, these data also provided valuable information on whether participants prefer receptionists’ linguistic expressions to be oriented toward the transaction at hand (questions b, d, f, g) or toward the relational aspect of the SE (items a, c, e). Moreover, the answers will indicate whether there are gender differences in terms of preferences, or whether gender is not a factor that plays a role concerning receptionist-​customer expectations. The aim is thus to focus on the intersection between genre (hotel interaction) and gender (male-​female) in a specific cultural context (Spain). The second question was related to the communicative attitude that is expected or that is (un)important for customers. In particular, the 100 participants in this study had to answer the questions listed in Table 5.2. The motivation behind including these items was to find out whether participants display a preference toward solidarity/​involvement (items b, c, e, f, g, h, j) or toward deference/independence (items d, k). The former reflect the use of positive politeness strategies by means of which the receptionist shows interest in the guest, whereas the latter represent negative politeness strategies that the receptionist may employ to provide the guest with options, freedom of action, and freedom from imposition. At the same time, the inclusion of

 105

Table 5.1 Questions about the participants’ linguistic preferences In your opinion, how important are the following aspects of your interaction with the receptionist? Please rate the following statements, depending on the importance you give them from 1 (unimportant) to 5 (crucial): 1= Unimportant/​Not necessarily expected 2= Not very important 3= Important 4= Really important 5= Crucial & expected A) The receptionist should use the following type of language: 1 a)  Kind words and expressions, such as compliments b) Certain expressions such as “please” and “thank you,” “sorry”; indirect requests (“Can I have your room number, please?” rather than “Give me your room number”) c)  Small talk, i.e., speaking about the weather, sports d) Formal language (for example, using USTED, instead of TÚ in Spanish, or “Good morning, Sir,” instead of “Hi, there,” etc.) e) Unsolicited suggestions, advice-​giving in terms of what to do/​ how: how to do something. f) Expressions of interest in the customer’s well-​being during their stay (e.g., is everything alright?/​did you sleep well? etc.) g)  Farewell wishes (“Have a nice journey, Sir”) h) OTHER (please, specify):_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​​

2

3

4

5

Table 5.2 Questions about the preferences of the participants in terms of communicative attitude B)  In terms of attitude, the receptionist should… 1 a)  use a proper tone of voice: not too soft, not too high. b)  look at the customer (eye contact) all the time. c)  not interrupt when the customer is speaking. d) be humble: acknowledge mistakes, accept criticism, show willingness to change, apologize if the customer complains about the service provided or if misunderstandings occur. e)  smile at the customer all the time. f) be clear and informative (stick to the information they need to give as receptionists). g) show some closeness and familiarity with the customer (i.e., treat you as if you are somebody s/​he knows well and whose well-​being s/​he concerned about). h)  have a good sense of humor. i) be truthful and transparent (i.e., provide truthful information regardless of whether the information is positive or negative). j)  always pay close attention to the customer’s needs. k) avoid barging in/​meddling in the customers’ personal concerns.

2

3

4

5

OTHER (please, specify): _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​​_​

106

106  Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López these items would test whether guests prefer a genre/​transaction orientation (items d, f, i, j, k) or not; that is, they take into consideration both their rights as guests to obtain the relevant help and information, and the receptionists’ obligation to provide them.

5.4  Results and discussion 5.4.1  Preferred linguistic strategies In order to find an answer to RQ1 (i.e., when communicating with receptionists, do Spanish men and women have different preferences in terms of the use of deference/independence or solidarity/​involvement strategies?), the participants were asked to rate their communication with receptionists by means of a 5-​point Likert scale. The results, expressed in percentages, are summarized in Tables 5.3 and 5.4. These two tables reveal a number of facts. In terms of (in)formality and (in)directness, some differences between men and women were found. Overall, women scored higher in terms of the importance given to indirectness and formal language (i.e., negative politeness or deference). In particular, 72% of women considered that making use of certain expressions such as “please” and “thank you” (formalisms), or indirect speech acts, is crucial, in contrast to the answers given by men (only 54% considered this to be crucial). Regarding the use of formal language (such as usted instead of tú), the number of women who considered it crucial is slightly higher than men (48% of women versus 36% of men). Regarding farewell wishes, 40% of women considered them crucial, in contrast to only 18% of men. Interestingly enough, this does not mean

Table 5.3 Incidence of female answers regarding the type of language the receptionist should use 1. 2. Not very 3. 4. Really 5. Crucial Unimportant important Important important a) Compliments b) Formalisms and indirectness c) Small talk d) Formal language (Rather than informal) e) Suggestions, what to do f) Interest in the customer’s well-​being g) Farewell wishes

10% 0%

30% 0%

26% 6%

20% 18%

10% 72%

8% 0%

36% 6%

40% 24%

10% 18%

2% 48%

2%

22%

32%

32%

10%

0%

8%

18%

34%

38%

0%

2%

26%

28%

40%

 107

Gender variation in perception of behavior 107 Table 5.4 Incidence of male answers regarding the type of language the receptionist should use

a) Compliments b) Formalisms and indirectness c) Small talk d) Formal language (Rather than informal) e) Suggestions, what to do f) Interest in the customer’s well-​being g) Farewell wishes

1. 2. Not very Unimportant important

3. Important

4. Really 5. important Crucial

6% 0%

20% 2%

50% 14%

14% 30%

10% 54%

12% 0%

56% 6%

18% 16%

14% 42%

0% 36%

2%

14%

42%

40%

2%

0%

4%

24%

32%

40%

0%

4%

38%

40%

18%

that men did not find these items important; indeed, the number of men who chose 1 (unimportant) was very low in all cases. What this indicates is that there is a tendency for women to rate formality, indirectness, and respectful language more highly than men, and that while men tend to find these aspects of communication important, they do not necessarily find them crucial. This, indeed, is interesting in the sense that women seem to value negative politeness or deference more highly in this particular context. Nonetheless, both groups of participants highlighted the relative importance of a variety of politeness strategies with no clear-​cut division between solidarity and deference. On the other hand, both men and women in the sample consider more or less equally important the fact that the receptionist should use “kind words and expressions, such as compliments” (a), give suggestions or advice (e), and express their interest in the customer’s well-​being during their stay (f), with most ratings ranging between 2 (not very important) and 4 (really important). That is, most of the answers concentrate on the midpoint of the Likert scale, and thus it would appear that, while participants do not consider this type of closeness crucial, interest in the customer’s well-​being and solidarity is somehow desirable. As explained before, these items are more closely related to the relational aspect of the SE. Thus, in contrast to some previous research, no significant gender variation was observed in this respect in the present study. The only gender difference worth mentioning is related to the use of small talk. On the one hand, 52% of women considered small talk an important part of their conversation with the receptionist (40% rated it as important; it was really important for 10%, and crucial for 2% of the women). On the other hand, 68% of male participants affirm that small talk is not important for them,

108

108  Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López with male ratings clustering mostly in column 2 (not very important). While it is true that these findings might be consistent with Slama and Tashlian (1985), Iacobucci and Ostrom (1993), and Sánchez-​Hernández et al. (2010), who state that women prefer engaging in talk that builds rapport, and men prefer engaging in informational talk, they should be considered with caution. Given that both groups of participants rated these items in the midpoint of the Likert scale (2 or 3), gender variation cannot necessarily be confirmed. Hence, the findings would seem to indicate that women, overall, believe that considerations of formality and respect (i.e., questions b, d, and g) are very important or crucial. This is in contrast to men, whose answers were more scattered, ranging from 2 to 5, rather than being clustered around a particular answer. Overall, it seems as though both solidarity/​involvement and deference/​independence are expected in the context of SEs. This shows that, while national culture might influence the perception of politeness5, this particular genre (hotel interaction) constrains participants’ expectations. Likewise, gender (male-​female) might bias preferences for formality, although such preferences are a matter of degree, as shown by the Likert scale stated preferences. 5.4.2  Communicative attitude Based on the understanding that politeness is a phenomenon that goes beyond the use of specific linguistic strategies, participants were asked about the attitude receptionists should adopt when communicating with customers (see Tables 5.5 and 5.6). As explained in Section 5.3, it was expected that these items would also reveal preferences toward either solidarity/​involvement or deference/​independence. Tables 5.5 and 5.6 show that participants’ orientations toward solidarity/​ involvement and deference/​independence tend to be balanced across genders. Specifically, items oriented toward independence, deference, and formality such as (g)  (“avoid barging in/​meddling in customer’s personal concerns”) are highly valued by both male and female participants. Interestingly enough, those items oriented toward involvement and solidarity are only considered to be crucial or very important when they are directly related to the transaction at hand. Indeed, (f) “be clear and informative,” was rated as crucial or really important by 60% of women and 86% of men. Along the same lines, (j) “pay attention to the customers’ needs” was found to be a crucial behavior by 56% of men and 58% of women. In relation to the first research question (i.e., RQ1: When communicating with receptionists, do Spanish men and women have different preferences in terms of deference/independence or solidarity/​involvement?), most men and women do not consider the following items to be crucial: (e) “smile at the customer all the time” (16% women and 10% men), (g) “show some closeness and familiarity” (8% women and 12% men), and (h) “have a good sense of humor” (14% women and 4% men). It is noteworthy that, even though most participants do not rate these items as being crucial, some gender differences

 109

Table 5.5 Incidence of female answers in terms of communicative attitude

a) Use proper tone of voice b) Use constant eye contact c) Do not interrupt d) Be humble e) Smile f) Be clear and informative g) Show closeness and familiarity h) Use humor i) Be truthful and transparent j) Attend to the customer’s needs k) Avoid meddling in the customer’s personal concerns

1. Unimportant

2. Not very 3. important Important

4. Really important

5. Crucial

0%

0%

28%

32%

34%

0%

6%

20%

38%

28%

0% 0% 0% 0%

4% 10% 20% 4%

14% 16% 28% 8%

32% 28% 28% 24%

42% 40% 16% 36%

6%

24%

28%

24%

8%

4% 2%

22% 4%

36% 8%

16% 28%

14% 48%

0%

2%

8%

24%

58%

4%

2%

10%

20%

56%

Table 5.6 Incidence of male answers in terms of communicative attitude

a) Use proper tone of voice b) Use constant eye contact c) Do not interrupt d) Be humble e) Smile f) Be clear and informative g) Show closeness and familiarity h) Use humor i) Be truthful and transparent j) Attend to the customer’s needs k) Avoid meddling in the customer’s personal concerns

1. Unimportant

2. Not very 3. important Important

4. Really important

5. Crucial

0%

2%

48%

32%

18%

2%

6%

20%

46%

26%

0% 2% 0% 4%

2% 4% 6% 6%

14% 26% 50% 4%

32% 32% 34% 44%

52% 36% 10% 42%

2%

16%

46%

24%

12%

2% 0%

12% 4%

60% 14%

22% 48%

4% 34%

0%

0%

16%

28%

56%

2%

2%

16%

40%

40%

110

110  Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López can be seen in the importance attached to these communicative behaviors. Thus, 50% of men consider “smiling at the customer” (e)  to be important and 34% really important, whereas only 28% of women rate this item as important and 28% as really important. A similar result is obtained with item (g) (“show some closeness and familiarity”) valued as important by 46% men but by only 36% women. However, the most significant difference is found when rating whether it is important for the receptionist to “have a good sense of humor” (h): this is important for 60% of men and only 36% of women and really important for 22% of men and 16% of women. So, contrary to previous studies that looked at production data (e.g., Ruzickova, 2007, relating to Cuban Spanish), these data, based on perception, reveal that male respondents place more importance on solidarity/​involvement than women when assessing items that are not related to the task directly at hand. With respect to the second research question posed in this study (i.e., RQ2: Do Spanish men and women place differing importance on relational versus transactional talk when interacting with receptionists?), the results show that it is again women who rated some of the items as being crucial more frequently, while male answers are more scattered across the range 2-​4 in the Likert scale. Even so, there is a tendency for both men and women to value those items related to the transactional aspect of the interaction more highly. Note, for instance, that item i) (“be truthful and transparent”) is crucial or really important for 76% of women and for 82% of men. Very similar results are also found when rating attention to the customers’ needs (j), a trait that 56% of men and 58% of women find crucial, or “avoid barging into customers’ personal concerns” (k), rated as crucial or really important by 76% of women and 80% of men. So, it seems that, in this specific context, the responses examined show no gender variation regarding participants’ orientation toward the relational and transactional aspects of their interaction with receptionists. These findings stand in contrast with results from previous studies on gender differences in SEs in marketing research, in particular (see, e.g., Iacobucci & Ostrom, 1993; Sánchez-​Hernández et al., 2010; Slama & Tashlian, 1985). However, we acknowledge that comparisons are not straightforward given that the works available differ in relation to the objectives pursued, the populations studied, and the methodology employed.

5.5  Conclusions The present study examined gender variation in guests’ perception and evaluation of receptionists’ behavior at hotel reception-​desk interactions in Spain. It reveals the importance assigned to formality and deference (and not only to closeness and solidarity) by both male and female participants in the study. Items in the questionnaire oriented toward independence, deference, and formality are highly valued both by male and female participants; however, items oriented toward closeness and solidarity are only considered to be crucial or very important when they are directly related to the transaction at hand. As

 111

Gender variation in perception of behavior 111 such, the present study suggests that a) genre (and not only gender) seems to constrain politeness expectations, and that b) culture is a macrovariable that depends on other variables, such as genre. Nonetheless, more studies are needed to confirm the presence or absence of gender differences in terms of communicative preferences at hotels. What is clear in this study, though, is that Spanish culture should not (and cannot) be labeled as only solidarity oriented without taking into consideration other factors that mediate perception, such as genre and gender. Thus, future research on national cultures should control for sociological variables such as gender, in combination with genre, age, and regional affiliation in order to gain a better understanding of politeness phenomena and variation at the microlevel, as well as at the intersection between culture, genre, and gender.

Notes 1 The full version of the questionnaire can be accessed at: www.e-​encuesta.com/​ answer.do?testid=kU/​QctJt7UU= 2 Questionnaires with incomplete information were discarded. 3 Following the Delphi method, the questionnaire was administered to 15 “experts” (linguists, questionnaire designers, and laypeople), who provided feedback in terms of contents, consistency, and clarity. The comments provided very valuable help to design the final version of the questionnaire. 4 These two questions are part of a wider research project, carried out in collaboration with Professor Pilar Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich, in which other aspects of relational work and receptionist-​customer interaction were assessed. Although by “communicative attitude” we are referring to “politeness orientations,” we decided to use this more neutral term in the questionnaire so as not to influence the participants’ responses. 5 This is so if, and only if, we assume Spanish politeness is oriented toward solidarity, as some authors have stated.

References Antonopoulou, E. (2001). Brief service encounters: Gender and politeness. In A. Bayraktaroǧlu & M. Sifianou (Eds.), Linguistic politeness across boundaries: The case of Greek and Turkish (pp. 241-​ 269). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/​pbns.88.10ant Ardila, J. A. G. (2004). Transition relevance and overlapping in (Spanish-​English) conversational etiquette. Modern Language Review, 99(3), 635-​650. Ballesteros Martín, F. (2001). La cortesía española frente a la cortesía inglesa. Estudio pragmalingüístico de las exhortaciones impositivas. Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense, 10, 171-​207. Barron, A. (2014). Variational pragmatics. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics (pp. 1-​7). Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell. Barros García, M. J., & Terkourafi, M. (2014). What, when and how? Spanish native and nonnative uses of politeness. Pragmática Sociocultural. Revista Internacional sobre Lingüística del Español, 8(2), 262-​292. doi: 10.1515/​soprag-​2014-​0017

112

112  Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López Bataller, R. (2015). Pragmatic variation in the performance of requests: A comparative study of service encounters in Valencia and Granada (Spain). In M. Hernández-​ López & L. Fernández-​ Amaya (Eds.), A multidisciplinary approach to service encounters (pp. 113-​137). Leiden/​Boston, MA: Brill. Bhagat, P. S., & Williams, J. D. (2008). Understanding gender differences in professional service relationships. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 25(1),  16-​22. Blue, G. M., & Harun, M. (2003). Hospitality language as a professional skill. English for Specific Purposes, 22(1),  73-​91. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987 [1978]). Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coates, J. (2013[2004]). Women, men, and language: A sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language. Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman Félix-​ Brasdefer, J. C. (2012). Pragmatic variation by gender in market service encounters in Mexico. In J. C. Félix-​Brasdefer & D. A. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second language contexts: Methodological issues (pp. 17-​48). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The language of service encounters: A pragmatic-​discursive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fernández-​Amaya, L. (2001). El fallo pragmático en la traducción al español de “Time and the Conways” y “Look Back in Anger”. Estudios de Lingüística Inglesa Aplicada, 2, 171-​179. Fernández-​Amaya, L. (2004). Las estrategias de cortesía en la secuencia de cierre de la conversación telefónica en inglés y español. In P. Garcés-​Conejos, R. Gómez Morón, L. Fernández-​ Amaya, & M. Padilla Cruz (Eds.), Current trends in intercultural, cognitive and social pragmatics (pp. 255-​265). Seville: Intercultural Pragmatic Studies Research Group. Fernández-​Amaya, L. (2008). La traducción al español de estrategias de cortesía en inglés. El caso de well y you know. In D. Bravo, N. Hernández Flores, & A. Cordisco (Eds.), Aportes pragmáticos, sociopragmáticos y socioculturales a los estudios de la cortesía en español (pp. 109-​134). Estocolmo/​Buenos Aires: Dunken. Fernández-​ Amaya, L. (2010). Análisis contrastivo del silencio en los cierres de conversaciones telefónicas en inglés y español. In J. L.  Bueno Alonso (Ed.), Analysing data: Describing variation (pp. 960-​968). Vigo: Universidad de Vigo, Servizo de Publicacións. Fernández-​Amaya, L. (2011). La cortesía en el cierre de conversaciones telefónicas: diferencias y similitudes entre el inglés americano y el español peninsular. In C. Fuentes Rodríguez, E. Alcaide Lara, & E. Brenes Peña (Eds.), Aproximaciones a la (des)cortesía verbal en español (pp. 331-​344). Bern/​New York, NY: Peter Lang. Fernández-​Amaya, L., Hernández-​López, M., & Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich, P. (2014). Spanish travelers’ expectations of service encounters in domestic and international settings. Tourism, Culture and Communication, 14, 117-​134. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-​to-​face behavior. New York, NY: Pantheon. Haverkate, H. (1998). Politeness strategies in verbal interaction: An analysis of directness and indirectness in speech acts. Semiotica, 71(1/​2),  59-​71. Haverkate, H. (2002). The syntax, semantics and pragmatics of Spanish mood. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Hernández-​López, M. (2009). Affiliative strategies to manage rapport in Spanish and British medical consultations. Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 17,  37-​56.

 113

Gender variation in perception of behavior 113 Hernández-​López, M. (2011). Negotiation strategies and patient empowerment in Spanish and British medical consultations. Communication and Medicine, 8(2), 169-​180. Hernández-​López, M., & Placencia, M. E. (2004) Modos de conducir las relaciones interpersonales en interacciones de atención al público: el caso de las farmacias en Sevilla y Londres. ELUA, Estudios de Lingüística de la Universidad de Alicante, 18, 129-​150. Hernández-​López, M., & Fernández-​Amaya, L. (in press). What makes im/​politeness for travellers? Spanish tourists’ perceptions at national and international hotels. Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture. Hickey, L. (2005). Politeness in Spain: Thanks but no “thanks”. In L. Hickey & M. Stewart (Eds.), Politeness in Europe (pp. 317-​330). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Holmes, J. (1995). Women, men and politeness. London: Longman. Holmes, J., & Meyerhoff, M. (Eds.). (2003). The handbook of language and gender. Malden, MA/​Oxford/​Melbourne/​Berlin: Blackwell. Iacobucci, D., & Ostrom, A. (1993). Gender differences in the impact of core and relational aspects of services on the evaluation of service encounters. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2(3), 257-​286. Kasper, G. (2008) Data collection in pragmatics research. In H. Spencer-​Oatey (Ed.), Culturally speaking. Culture, communication and politeness (pp. 316-​341). London: Continuum. Lakoff, R. T. (1989). The limits of politeness: Therapeutic and courtroom discourse. Multilingua, 8, 101-​129. Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman. Lieverscheidt, E., Werlen, I., & Zimmermann, H. (1989). Salongespräche: Kommunikationen beim Coiffeur. In E. Weigand & F. Hundsnurscher (Eds.), Dialoganalyse II: Referate der 2.  Arbeitstagung Bochum, 1988, I  and II (pp. 361-​ 380). Tübingen: Niemeyer. Liu, S. (2006). Measuring interlanguage pragmatic knowledge of EFL learners. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Lorenzo-​Dus, N. (Ed.). (2011). Spanish at work: Analysing institutional discourse across the Spanish-​speaking world. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lorenzo-​Dus, N., & Bou-​Franch, P. (2003). Gender and politeness: Spanish and British undergraduates’ perceptions of appropriate requests. In J. Santaemilia (Ed.), Género, lenguaje y traducción (pp. 187-​199). Valencia: Universitat de València/​ Dirección General de la Mujer. Malinowski, B. (1923). The problem of meaning in primitive languages. In C. K. Ogden & I. A. Richards (Eds.), The meaning of meaning (pp. 146-​152). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Márquez Reiter, R., & Placencia, M. E. (2005). Spanish pragmatics. Basingstoke: Palgrave-​Macmillan. Márquez Reiter, R., & Placencia, M. E. (2011 [2004]). Displaying closeness and respectful distance in Montevidean and Quiteño service encounters. In Z. Hua (Ed.), The language and intercultural communication reader (pp. 367-​385). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Mathies, C., & Burford, M. (2011). Customer service understanding: Gender differences of frontline employees. Managing Service Quality, 21(6), 636-​648. Mattila, A. S., Grandey, A. A., & Fisk, G. M. (2003). The interplay of gender and affective tone in service encounter satisfaction. Journal of Service Research, 6(2), 136-​143.

114

114  Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López McCarthy, M. (2000). Mutually captive audiences: Small talk and the genre of close-​ contact service encounters. In J. Coupland (Ed.), Small talk (pp. 84-​109). Harlow: Pearson. Mills, S. (2003). Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mills, S. (2005). Gender and impoliteness. Journal of Politeness Research, 1, 263-​280. Placencia, M. E. (2005). Pragmatic variation in corner store interactions in Quito and Madrid. Hispania, 88, 583-​598. Placencia, M. E. (2008). Pragmatic variation in corner shop transactions in Ecuadorian Andean and Coastal Spanish. In K. P. Schneider & A. Barron (Eds.), Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages (pp. 307-​332). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Placencia, M. E., & García, C. (Eds.). (2008). Sección temática: Formas, usos y funciones del habla de contacto en español. Special issue. Oralia, 11. Placencia, M. E., & Mancera Rueda, A. (2011). Vaya, ¡qué chungo! Rapport-​building talk in service encounters: the case of bars in Seville at breakfast time. In N. Lorenzo-​Dus (Ed.), Spanish at work: Analyzing institutional discourse across the Spanish-​speaking world (pp. 192-​207). Basingstoke: Palgrave-​Macmillan. Ruzickova, E. (2007). Customer requests in Cuban Spanish: Realization patterns and politeness strategies in service encounters. In M. E. Placencia & C. García (Eds.), Research on politeness in the Spanish-​speaking world (pp. 213-​241). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sánchez-​Hernández, R. M, Martínez-​Tur, V., Peiró, J. M., & Moliner, C. (2010). Linking functional and relational service quality to customer satisfaction and loyalty: Differences between men and women. Psychological Reports, 106(2), 598-​610. Schneider, K. P. (2010). Variational pragmatics. In M. Fried, J. Östman, & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Variation and change (pp. 239-​267). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. B. K. (1983). Face in interethnic communication. In J. C. Richards and R. W. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and communication (pp. 156-​190). London: Longman. Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W. (1995). Intercultural communication. A discourse approach. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Slama, M. E., & Tashlian, A. (1985). Selected socioeconomic and demographic characteristics associated with purchasing involvement. Journal of Marketing, 49,  72-​82.

 115

6  The role of gender in Mexican e-​service encounters Laura M. Merino Hernández

6.1  Introduction Even though electronic service encounters have gained momentum in the past five years, much work still needs to be done in order to understand how online encounters are structured and how users from different backgrounds interact in this domain. This study examines the role of gender in electronic service encounters (henceforth e-​service encounters) within an online Facebook community called Tianguis Friki (‘Freaky Flea Market’) (henceforth TF), whose main online members reside in the north of Mexico. The main objective of the present investigation is to determine the degree to which the realization of offers is influenced by vendors’ gender. In other words, I examine the similarities and differences among male and female vendors when making offers in an online virtual service environment. I consider offers to be taking place when a person presents another person with an item or service that they can either accept or reject. More specifically, in TF an offer occurs when a member posts an item to be sold and this item may be either purchased or rejected by other members. Variation has been observed in the realization of offers in face-​to-​face (FTF) interactions. For example, an offer might take place at the beginning or in the middle of an interaction, or different speech communities might have particular conventions for effective offers (see, e.g., Félix-​Brasdefer, 2012, 2015). Thus, it will be elucidating to see if this variation can be extrapolated to online environments. FTF service encounters have received considerable attention in the last few decades, both crosslinguistically (e.g., Bayyurt & Bayraktaroğlu, 2001), in Spanish (e.g., Placencia, 2005, 2008; Ruzickova, 2007), and in Mexican Spanish (e.g., Félix-​Brasdefer, 2012, 2015; Solon, 2013). There has been a tendency to analyze virtual data using FTF methodologies (see, e.g., Herring & Androutsopoulos, 2015), as it is thought that social, contextual, and cultural factors from FTF interactions carry over into computer-​mediated communication. However, the extrapolation of nondigital methods and assumptions to virtual environments has recently been questioned. Garcés-​ Conejos Blitvich (2015, p. 32) urges analysts to avoid making assumptions about virtual data based on FTF communication because they represent two different

116

116  Laura M. Merino Hernández modalities of communication. Although these modalities are similar in nature, it will become evident throughout this chapter that analyses of gender in e-​ service encounters cannot be based solely on preexisting findings about FTF encounters. Moreover, evidence shows that not all e-​service encounters share the same traits because the platform on which they are carried out determines their characterization. Thus, an appropriate methodology for one platform might not be appropriate for another. This chapter is organized as follows. In Section 6.2, the literature on e-​ service encounters and gender variation is critically reviewed, ending with the research questions that guided the present study. The method used for the current investigation is outlined in Section 6.3, followed by the results and discussion (Section 6.4). The last and final section (Section 6.5) discusses conclusions and future directions.

6.2  Review of existing literature 6.2.1  E-​service encounters Traditionally, service encounters are defined as an interaction between a service provider and a service seeker (Merritt, 1976). Service encounters tend to be heterogeneous, but they unfold in a predictable way (Traverso, 2001, p. 441). Nevertheless, they can vary according to the setting in which they are performed (e.g., open-​air versus closed settings, offline versus online versus telephone environments), the types of goods that are exchanged (e.g., groceries, electronics, clothing, souvenirs), the services that are offered (e.g., information or problem resolution), and/​or the participants involved in the transaction (e.g., male versus female customers/​ service providers). With the exception of a handful of studies (Bou-​Franch, 2015; Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich, 2015; Garcés-​ Conejos Blitvich & Bou Franch, 2008; Merino Hernández, 2016; Placencia, 2015, 2016), the study of e-​service encounters is still in its infancy and little is known about the role of gender in online commercial environments. Thus, the present study seeks to contribute to the growing field of online commerce by examining the role of gender in online environments. E-​service encounters can occur with or without a human interlocutor in a wide array of virtual settings. These encounters can be noncommercial; that is, there is not always an economic transaction of goods or services. For example, Bou-​Franch (2015) considers requests for information in blogs or the frequently asked questions in not-​for-​profit organization websites as instances of web-​mediated service encounters. Commercial encounters, on the other hand, generally involve an economic exchange over the Internet (McCole, 2002) in which people exchange tangible or intangible goods (e.g., website memberships, online games), though the economic exchange is not always present (Placencia, 2016). This section focuses on the literature that deals with commercial encounters.

 117

Role of gender in e-service encounters 117 E-​service sites are multimodal. They include visual, textual, and/​or oral cues for the customer to experience the product before buying it. Some of the most popular e-​service encounter sites similar to TF are eBay, Mercado Libre (Placencia, 2015), and Craigslist. What characterizes these websites is the fact that the members of the virtual community run the service interactions. That is, both sellers and customers are in charge of all the steps during the encounter, and the computer serves as a medium in accomplishing the transaction. Recent studies have focused on the various aspects that characterize the many kinds of e-​service encounters found all over the Internet. Regarding forms of address and relational work in Ecuador’s Mercado Libre, Placencia (2015) shows that there is a tendency to move away from formality toward informality, which is seen in the increased use of tú (T) ‘you (informal),’ the use of friendship terms such as amigo ‘friend,’ and greetings such as hola ‘hi’ with the formal usted (V) ‘you (formal).’ She attributes this informality to uncertainty “about what pronominal address is appropriate” (p.  59), an uncertainty that is also projected in the use of null address forms. Placencia’s results can be seen as a gradual move toward the homogenization of e-​service encounters in which the interpersonal nature of FTF encounters becomes secondary (Bou Franch, 2015; Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich & Bou Franch, 2008), and the true transactional nature of service encounters is highlighted (Bou Franch, 2015) by the elimination of some of its interpersonal features (see also, Placencia & García, this volume). According to Placencia (2015), for example, in virtual environments “the ethnic or socioeconomic background of the participants, or their age or gender, seem to become irrelevant. The result is a less personalized service encounter” (p. 60). Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich (2015), in turn, argues that some types of e-​service encounters (e.g., Amazon) have eliminated the interpersonal encounter altogether (p. 19). In fact, her participants cited one of the motivating reasons for shopping online as being the avoidance of interacting with service providers. Merino Hernández (2016) also found that e-​service vendors are very task oriented, leaving aside the interpersonal dimension of the encounter, as shown through the lack of greetings, closing statements, and/​or relational talk involved in completing a transaction. Another important trait of e-​service encounters on sites like Mercado Libre and TF is that one interaction can involve multiple participants at the same time. This multiplicity of members communicating simultaneously has led to the abridgement of interactional turns. Placencia (2016) found that buyers in Mercado Libre condense many of the elements that occur in FTF encounters into one “super turn” (p. 540). This is to say that support actions (i.e., expressive, commissive, assertive, and exhortative acts), the actual offer, as well as greetings and explanations, among other things, all occur in a single turn. Even though the interpersonal component in online encounters is eliminated, e-​service participants still develop a virtual persona (e.g., friendly, courteous, respectful, etc.) that they want to portray in the online environment.

118

118  Laura M. Merino Hernández In sum, the current literature on e-​service encounters has served as a blueprint for the analysis of this genre for this and future studies. The main finding in the aforementioned studies is the tendency toward the homogenization of e-​service encounters in terms of their lack of interpersonal components. The findings of the current study reveal that this homogenization is also present in the role of gender in e-​service encounters. 6.2.2  Gender variation in service encounters This section discusses the main findings regarding gender in FTF service encounters, followed by the research questions guiding the present study. As stated in Schneider and Barron’s (2008) framework of variational pragmatics, gender is a macrosocial variable that affects language use. A  number of studies have analyzed gender in FTF service encounters (Antonopoulou, 2001; Félix-​Brasdefer, 2012). The empirical investigation of gender in e-​ service encounters is problematic, however, as the information available to the researcher is limited to those platforms that have been analyzed (see Schneider, this volume). In her analysis of gender differences in Greek service encounters, Antonopoulou (2001) notes that Greek women tend to be more polite than men when making requests. This is due to a difference in each gender’s perception of the encounter: Males tend to see the encounter as purely transactional, requiring no relational talk, whereas women have the tendency to see it as a “tri-​partite event” (p. 265) in which a greeting and a closing portion are integral parts of the transaction. As a result, women use more thanking expressions, greetings, and farewells. Also, female participants have the tendency to accommodate their behavior to male participants. Thus, when the interlocutor is male, women tend to use more male-​male strategies. Regarding Spanish, Placencia (2005) has investigated intralingual variation in corner-​store transaction sequences in Quito and Manta, Ecuador. Even though the focus of this study was not gender per se, some tendencies pertaining to gender can be found in her data. In the request-​response sequence, for instance, some women from Quito avoided stating the quantity on the first turn, whereas some men in Manta yelled what they wanted when they entered the store. In an explicit analysis of gender, Félix-​Brasdefer (2012) studied its role in market service encounters in Mexico. His findings show that the imperative was the preferred form in male-​to-​male interactions, that elliptical requests were preferred in male-​to-​female and female-​to-​female interactions, and that implicit requests were preferred in female-​to-​female interactions. It was observed that females prefer a pre-​sequence and closing turns, but that greetings were barely present for either gender. Similar to Antonopoulou (2001), the distribution of forms of address across genders suggests that it is the gender of the addressee that determines which form the speaker will use. In virtual environments, vendors have no way of specifying the gender of the addressee, since their posts can be seen by anyone. As such, in a preliminary analysis of gender in the TF environment, Merino Hernández

 119

Role of gender in e-service encounters 119 (2016) observed that this specific virtual domain creates a “genderless” transaction; that is, gender differences are neutralized. Due to the lack of studies about the role of gender in e-​service encounters, the present study seeks to make a contribution to the literature by analyzing this macrosocial variable in the virtual Facebook community TF. The following research questions guided this study. RQ1: To what extent do male and female vendors use different strategies to formulate offers in a virtual commerce environment? RQ2: Are the offer strategies structured differently according to the vendor’s gender?

6.3  Method 6.3.1  Setting: Tianguis Friki TF is an online Facebook group whose virtual members can be traced back to a physical community located on the northwestern US-​Mexico border. This community has an official population of 82,918 (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geogafría e Informática [INEGI], 2015), but people from the surrounding areas and from other parts of the world have joined TF, as is evident from its 196,045 members as of June 2018. TF was created sometime during the summer of 2012, and the researcher has been a member of the group for four years. The main uses of this site are to sell and/​or exchange goods and to advertise local businesses, but this platform can also serve other purposes, such as discrediting other people, requesting prayers for sick people, announcing local events, posting lost/​found items, and reporting social injustices. Examples (1)1 and (2) contain two instances of vendor offers of food and clothes, respectively. (The following notations are used: Diminutives are marked with D; verbs are marked with T (tú) [‘you-​informal’] or V (usted) [‘you-​formal’]). (1) VENDOR 56             (2) VENDOR 59    

Tortillas gorditas Tortillas gorditas a $25 la docena en calle 10 ave 17 esquina casa mostaza no a domicilio ‘ThickD tortillas’ ‘ThickD tortillas $25 (pesos) a dozen on 10th Street corner of 17th Avenue, mustard house, no delivery’ [Picture of many tortillas] Ropa talla xtras ‘Plus size clothing’ [Eleven pictures of clothes]

The services and goods that are sold include, but are not limited to, clothes, cars, groceries, pets, electronics, household electric appliances, and beauty products. Almost every post is accompanied by a picture of the item being sold.

120

120  Laura M. Merino Hernández TF is similar to eBay, Craigslist, or Mercado Libre (Placencia, 2015, also Placencia & García, this volume) in that the individuals from a specific community are the ones who are in charge of posting the items being sold as well as arranging delivery or pick up. Potential buyers usually comment on the vendor’s post, or they can complete the purchase via a private message, but FTF contact with the buyer is always necessary (as opposed to Mercado Libre cf. Placencia, 2015, 2016, also Placencia & García, this volume). Unlike eBay and Craigslist, websites like Mercado Libre and TF are more interactive and immediate, and thus buyers can ask for more information about the product, make purchase arrangements (delivery or pick up), and/​or make an offer and sometimes get an immediate response from the seller. However, TF differs from Mercado Libre in that any member (who is usually not the seller) can tag another potential buyer to alert them about the item’s availability, as observed in ­example (3). (3) VENDOR 57      

Se vende herramienta urge venderse pido 4500 ‘Tools for sale, it is urgent to sell, asking 4500’ [Picture of tools] Respondent 1 Tagged person’s name

Furthermore, eBay, Craigslist, and Mercado Libre hide the identity of the sellers; hence, the buyers do not know the identity of the seller, and vice versa, until they make the purchase. In contrast, the identity of the members in TF is public. Thus, if a seller posts an item on TF, the rest of the virtual community can see their Facebook profile name and picture, and can click on it to gain access to their personal profile. Moreover, if a person’s Facebook friend posts something on TF, that person is likely to receive a notification, or their friend’s post can appear in their feed (if this setting is activated). 6.3.2  Procedures for data collection and analysis In order to become more acquainted with the dynamics of the group before collecting data, I  spent about 15 minutes a day, five days a week, on the group’s site for about two months. The interactions that were chosen for analysis come from 240 vendor offers; the first 120 female vendor and the first 120 male vendor offers from six different days during the summer of 2018. In order to ensure participants’ privacy, all names and identifying information were redacted. Similar to Placencia (2015) and Placencia and García (this volume), the data for this study come from an Internet site that is available to the public, which conforms to the ethical recommendations of the Association of Internet Researchers. No personal information was revealed, and the present study did not harm any individual. Gender2 was coded as a binary variable, as either female or male. In general, posts by women were more frequent than posts by men by a ratio of three to one (i.e., for every three female posts, I found one male post). There are two possible explanations for this. It could be that many women in the physical

 121

Role of gender in e-service encounters 121 community are stay-​at-​home mothers who see TF as an opportunity to bring some extra income into the home. It might also be that women who are already working see it as an opportunity to bring extra income into their households. No further comments can be made regarding this outcome, as an ethnographic study of the community is needed to fully support these claims. However, the higher presence of women will be of importance in the discussion. Only offers where the gender of the participant was evident in the name and/​or profile picture were considered. Data were coded for the type of goods being sold: groceries, clothing, beauty products and accessories, cars, electronics, and miscellaneous (e.g., piñatas). The types of offers were operationalized inductively. That is, after the data were collected, the offers were categorized into two types: Those with an explicit indicator that the item was for sale (e.g., se vende ‘for sale’) were labeled explicit offers, and those without an explicit indicator (e.g., a description of the item) were labeled as elliptical offers. Finally, the internal modifications were determined as follows: no modification, emoticons, capital letters, exclamation signs, and a combination of any of these.

6.4  Results and discussion 6.4.1  Overall results The results of the present study show only two strategies in vendors’ offers: elliptical offers (174/​240) and explicit offers (66/​240), illustrated in Figure 6.1. It is not surprising that elliptical offers (i.e., those without an explicit indicator that the product is for sale) are the most frequent (72.5%). Since TF is a site that specializes in e-​commerce, vendors do not have to specify that they are selling something (e.g., I  am selling X), because it is evident, as can be observed in ­example (4): (4) VENDOR 154     (5) VENDOR 222     (6) VENDOR 9      

Monociclo ‘Unicycle’ [Picture of a unicycle] Se vende bicicleta ‘Bicycle for sale’ [Picture of bicycle] Busco … Vestidos Talla XL Urge. ‘I’m looking for … Dresses size XL. It is urgent.’

When vendors do make it explicit that they are selling an item (see example [5]‌), they are disambiguating the purpose of their post, because TF is also used by vendors who are looking for goods or service providers. When vendors are looking for a service, they are also likely to specify this with the verb buscar ‘to look for,’ as can be observed in (6). These types of posts are not analyzed

122

122  Laura M. Merino Hernández 80

72.5%

60

40 27.5% 20

0

Elliptical

Explicit

Figure 6.1 Vendor offer strategies

in the present study. The next section discusses the results relevant to the two research questions formulated in the present chapter. 6.4.2  Gender variation in e-​service encounters The percentages below are drawn from a total of 240 vendor offers, 120 per gender. Overall, one distinction between the two genders is the type of goods that each sells. Generally, although not exclusively, males tend to sell stereotypically masculine goods, for example, cars, tools, and cell phones (especially for their parts), whereas women are more likely to sell beauty products and clothes, as seen in Table 6.1. Thus, it appears that each gender is selling on TF what would be stereotypically expected of them in the actual physical community. TF is not an anonymous environment (like Mercado Libre [Placencia, 2015; Placencia & García, this volume], or eBay); family, friends, and acquaintances are able to see what any given person sells on TF. Consequently, people using TF are transposing some stereotyped gender roles from their offline community to the virtual environment. 6.4.3  Research question 1: vendor strategies by gender The first research question sought to identify any differences in male and female behavior regarding the formulation of offers in TF. It was found that males use elliptical offers 69% (83/​120) of the time and explicit offers 31% (37/​120) of the time, whereas women show a slightly higher use of elliptical offers 76% (91/​120) and a lower use of explicit offers at 24% (29/​120). Merino

 123

Role of gender in e-service encounters 123 Table 6.1 Products most frequently sold by males and females (240 vendor offers) Product

Females

Males

Clothes Beauty products Cellphones Cars Tools

20% (48) 6% (14) 3% (5) 1% (3) .5% (1)

2% (4) 2% (4) 17% (40) 7% (16) 4% (10)

Hernández (2016) found that 72% of successful offers (those that showed a sign that the items were sold) were elliptical offers. Thus, based on the higher frequency of female posts, it seems possible that women are more likely to use a successful strategy (i.e., elliptical offers) because they are more familiar with the site’s protocols and the properties of a successful transaction. Males, who post less frequently, might be less familiar, and thus show a lower rate of elliptical offers. However, an analysis that takes into account users’ perspectives of TF is needed to corroborate this. Regardless of gender, the majority of the posts (71%; 170/​240) show an absence of greetings, internal modification, and/​or relational talk, highlighting the transactional focus of these service encounters. Placencia (2015) also notes that on sites like Mercado Libre, vendors have to interact with multiple potential buyers at the same time, which relegates the interpersonal component of these interactions to secondary importance, just as it does on TF in the present study. Along the same lines, Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich (2015) argues that in virtual service encounters, the interpersonal component of service encounters has been lost. If interpersonal communication is being lost, we would expect a homogeneous sample of vendor offers, as participants do not need to accommodate their speech to their interlocutor. This lack of accommodation results from the missing information about the interlocutors’ characteristics; that is, vendors do not know if a male or a female customer is going to see the product, which produces a more generic, “genderless” post. Thus, it is the task itself (i.e., selling a product) that results in the use of one strategy over another. 6.4.4  Research question 2: structure of vendor strategies by gender Despite the aforementioned results, it is worth pointing out that there are some small but noteworthy differences between males and females in TF within the actual structure of elliptical and explicit offers. The present study’s second research question explored the existence of any differences in the way offers are structured according to the vendor’s gender. Figure 6.2 represents the types of internal modifiers that were present in the data. While the majority of the data (71%; 170/​240) showed no internal modification, 29% (70/​240) of the offers were internally modified by emoticons, uppercase letters, exclamation points, or a combination of these. Women are

124

124  Laura M. Merino Hernández 180

170

150

120

90

60

28

30

21 13

8

0 No modification

Emoji

Upper-case

Combination

Exclamation

Figure 6.2 Types of internal modification

more likely to show internal modification (36%; 43/​120) than men (23%; 27/​ 120); however, the kind of modification varies by gender. Women use more emoticons (47%; 20/​43) and a combination of modifiers (23%; 10/​43). For instance, example (7) shows how female Vendor 193 uses flower, heart, and sun emoticons to decorate the size of the clothes she is selling: (7) VENDOR 193 🌸❤talla xl🌸❤   💥❤❤❤❤💥   ‘❤size xl🌸❤   ❤❤❤❤’   [16 pictures of blouses] (8) VENDOR 180 😍😍 Hermosos conjuntos de falda y blusa nuevos en   EXISTENCIA!!! Cada foto tiene la talla disp.   ‘Beautiful new of skirt and blouse outfits AVAILABLE!!! Every picture has the available size.’   [21 pictures of pairs of blouses and skirts]

 125

Role of gender in e-service encounters 125 In example (8), we notice how female Vendor 180 starts the post with three emojis (😍😍😍), then proceeds to describe the items and specify that the items are in “existence.” This specification is sometimes necessary because some people sell via catalog; thus, they do not have the items on hand when customers place orders. Vendor 180 is aware of this, and she explicitly emphasizes the fact that these items can be owned immediately by using uppercase letters and exclamation signs. Men, on the other hand, tend to use more uppercase letters throughout entire posts. Of the 12 uses of uppercase letters by men, nine were used in the entire post, as shown in ­example (9). (9) VENDOR 188 FORD MUSTANG 2007 6 CILINDROS AMERICANO    AUTOMATICO $$$$3675 DLS O MEJOR OFERTA MAS INFORMACION AL XXXX    ‘Ford Mustang 2007 6 cylinders American automatic $$$$3675 dollars or best offer more information at XXXX’   [3 pictures of a car] It is noted, then, that the use of uppercase letters by men and women is different. Men highlight the entire post, whereas women use them more strategically to highlight something special about their product. Capital letters have also been attested to in other platforms such as not-​for-​ profit websites where they are used to intensify the interest of the visitor (see, e.g., Bou-​Franch, 2015). Therefore, capital letters represent a commonly used strategy to attract the customer’s attention, regardless of platform. Similarly, capitalization is a frequent strategy in other online environments (e.g., Tucker, 2011) as well as in advertising (Asmukovich, 2015) to draw the interlocutor’s attention. For example, Tucker (2011) found that reviewers in Yelp use capital letters to emphasize their point of view, which users of the site categorize as useful. With regard to the use of emoticons in service encounters, this strategy is a double-​edged sword, as Li, Chan, and Kim (2018) show. On the one hand, the use of emoticons can give a sense of warmth. On the other, it can make the employees (vendors) who use them look incompetent. Future research should look into the buyers’ perspective on the usefulness of emoticons and capital letters. It will also be elucidating to see if the use of certain emoticons is stereotyped (i.e., if the use of certain emoticons is associated with one gender). Another element that distinguishes females from males is the use of visual imagery in their posts. It has been noted (see, e.g., Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich, 2015) that in virtual environments, consumers count on visual images and detailed descriptions to make an informed purchase, making the presence of product pictures a necessary component of the offer. Moreover, in e-​service encounters the service provider must “anticipate the potential requests and needs of service recipients or web visitors, and therefore provide all the information believed to be of potential use to visitors” (Bou Franch, 2015, p. 78). Hence, vendors must anticipate that a picture of the item being sold is essential

126

126  Laura M. Merino Hernández to the successful realization of the transaction. We see that of the 240 posts examined, only four contained no pictures, and these four came from male vendors. It appears that some males are less likely to anticipate the vital need for a picture in an offer. Nonetheless, the token count of posts without a visual image is minimal, so these results must be considered prudently. When taking a closer look at the data, one is confronted with more differences. For instance, when analyzing the level of formality, measured by the use of tú ‘you (informal)’ and usted ‘you (formal),’ it was found that an overwhelming 230 cases did not show any signs of formality or informality at all; rather, impersonal posts were the most frequent. Example (10) shows how Vendor 162 limits himself to describing the product without addressing anyone in particular. As pointed out by one of the reviewers, this behavior is normal because vendors are not addressing anyone in particular; that is, the buyer could be anyone. (10) VENDOR 162        

Motorola g 3ra generacion nuevo poco uso. ‘Motorola g 3rd generation new little use.’ [2 pictures of a cellphone]

Not addressing the customer directly can be attributed to the fact that this site is an amalgam of FTF interaction and computer-​mediated communication in which the vendor’s identity is still at stake. Since the vendor’s identity is not anonymous, their reputation needs to be protected, as opposed to anonymous environments like Mercado Libre (Placencia, 2015). Therefore, it is preferable to take a “let the product speak for itself ” approach and upload a generic post rather than to risk possible offense by using the wrong address form. The few cases in which some sort of explicit formal or informal form was used involved male vendors. Six cases used a formal form, and all of these vendors were males. For instance, vendor 193 in the explicit offer in (11) addresses the potential customers using the formal verbal form (V, usted) in pregunte (‘askV’) and guste (‘likeV’): (11) VENDOR 193 Se vende bbb   Pregunte por lo qe guste en perfecto estado todo   ‘For sale bbb   AskV about whatever youV like everything in perfect condition.’   [10 pictures of cellphones] (12) VENDOR 133 Fantastic Stars Show   Tienes una fiesta y no sabes como entretener a los niños?…   ‘Are youT having a party and don’t know how to entertain the kids?…’   [No picture]

 127

Role of gender in e-service encounters 127 Similarly, there were four offers made by men in which vendors addressed their potential customers in an informal manner, as can be observed in example (12). While the vast majority of offers on TF are impersonal in nature, the instances in which some type of address to the customer is made (either formal or informal) involve men. As was previously mentioned, this could be attributed to their unfamiliarity with the site. It could also be the case that women are more conservative than men, whereas males tend to deviate more from the norm than women. In other words, women may be more conservative and thus more likely to stick to the site’s preestablished behaviors. However, regarding the internal modification of the offers, it could be concluded that women are in fact more adventurous than men in their posts, as noted in their use of emoticons, uppercase letters, and exclamation marks. Indeed, while men personalize their posts by addressing the speaker or writing a greeting (2/​120), females also do so by adding more internal modification to their posts.

6.5  Conclusion This study investigated gender differences in e-​ service encounters in the Facebook group TF. First, it was noted that the presence of female vendors is higher than that of male vendors in TF, as evidenced by the higher rate of posts made by women. It was also found that, regardless of gender, vendors only use two strategies to formulate virtual offers: elliptical and explicit offers, the latter being the most frequent. The lack of information about the interlocutor has led to a greater homogenization of virtual offers as indicated by the existence of only two offer strategies. Since sellers must showcase their product in a single post intended for a wide array of customers with multiple characteristics, there is less room for improvisation or variation. However, even though both genders pattern in similar ways, their rates of use for each strategy differ: Women’s use of elliptical offers is higher than that of males. This was attributed to the males’ lack of familiarity with the site based on their underrepresentation in the total number of posts. Even if there is a tendency toward the homogenization of vendor offers in online environments, there is still room for personalization, and this personalization varies by gender. Both genders use capital letters, to intensify one aspect of the product being sold, as in the case of females, or to make the entire post more salient, as in the case of males. Men are less likely to include a picture of the item being sold, whereas women always include one. Women tend to use more internal modification (e.g., emoticons, capital letters), whereas men tend to use more greetings and/​or address forms. This study represents a small but important step toward developing a more comprehensive understanding of online service encounters; however, there is still much work to be done. Future studies should look into the types of items being sold in order to see if females and males sell the same items (e.g., cars) in the same manner. Moreover, since sites like TF are also used for other

128

128  Laura M. Merino Hernández purposes, such as requesting items or information, a further step is required to determine if there are any differences regarding gender in terms of demands. Another interesting path would be to look into buyers’ perspectives on the use of certain strategies. For example, is the use of emoticons or capital letters seen as useful? Are these uses stereotyped?

Notes 1 The text in the examples presented in this chapter are maintained intact regardless of prescriptive spelling conventions. 2 The author understands that gender is a social construct that must not be confused with biological sex. However, the term gender is used in order to follow the line of study of previous work in service encounters

References Antonopoulou, E. (2001). Brief service encounters. In A. Bayraktaroğlu (Ed.), Linguistic politeness across boundaries: The case of Greek and Turkish (pp. 241-​270). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Asmukovich, I. V. (2015). Semantic and pragmatic peculiarities of aviation slogans. Вісник Житомирського державного університету імені Івана Франка, 2, 116-​120. Bayyurt, Y., & Bayraktaroğlu, A. (2001). The use of pronouns and terms of address in Turkish service encounters. In A. Bayraktaroğlu & M. Sifianou (Eds.), Linguistic politeness across boundaries: The case of Greek and Turkish (pp. 209-​ 240). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Bou-​Franch, P. (2015). The genre of web-​mediated service encounters in not-​for-​ profit organizations: Cross-​cultural study. In M.  de la O. Hernández-​López & L. Fernández-​Amaya (Eds.), A multidisciplinary approach to service encounters (pp. 65-​83). Leiden/​Boston, MA: Brill. Félix-​ Brasdefer, J. C. (2012). Pragmatic variation by gender in market service encounters in Mexico. In J. C. Félix-​Brasdefer & D. Koike (Eds.), Pragmatic variation in first and second languages: Methodological issues (pp. 17-​49). Amsterdam/​ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The language of service encounters: A pragmatic-​discourse approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich, P. (2015). Setting the linguistics research agenda for the e-​ service encounters genre: Natively digital versus digitized perspectives. In M. de la O Hernández-​López & L. Fernández Amaya (Eds.), A multidisciplinary approach to service encounters (pp. 15-​36). Leiden/​Boston, MA: Brill. Garcés-​Conejos Blitvich, P., & Bou-​Franch, P. (2008). Cortesía en las páginas web interactivas: El comercio electrónico. In A. Briz, A. Hidalgo, M. Albelda, J. Contreras, & N. Hernández Flores (Eds.), Cortesía y conversación: de lo escrito a lo oral. Actas del III Coloquio Internacional del Programa EDICE (pp. 468-​487). Valencia: Universitat de Valencia. Herring, S. C., & Androutsopoulos, J. (2015). Computer-​mediated discourse 2.0. In D. Tannen, H. E. Hamilton, & D. Schiffrin (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (vol. 2, pp. 127-​151). Oxford: Wiley. INEGI (2015). Retrieved from www.inegi.org.mx

 129

Role of gender in e-service encounters 129 Li, X., Chan, K. W., & Kim, S. (2018). Service with emoticons: How customers interpret employee use of emoticons in online service encounters. Journal of Consumer Research, 45(50), 973-​987. doi.org/​10.1093/​jcr/​ucy016 McCole, P. (2002). The role of trust for electronic commerce in services. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 14(2),  81-​87. Merino-​Hernández, L. M. (2016). Tianguis Friki: Intracultural pragmatic variation of e-​service encounters in a northern Mexican community. IULC Working Papers, 15(1), 159-​ 180. Retrieved from https://​scholarworks.iu.edu/​journals/​index.php/​ iulcwp/​issue/​view/​1715 Merritt, M. (1976). On questions following questions in service encounters. Language in Society, 5(3), 315-​357. Placencia, M. E. (2005). Pragmatic variation in corner store interactions in Quito and Madrid. Hispania, 88(3), 583-​598. Placencia, M. E. (2008). Requests in corner shop transactions in Ecuadorian Andean and Coastal Spanish. In K. Schneider & A. Barron (Eds.), Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages (pp. 307-​332). Amsterdam/​ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Placencia, M. E. (2015). Address forms and relational work in e-​commerce: The case of service encounter interactions in Mercado Libre Ecuador. In M. de la O Hernández-​López & L. Fernández-​Amaya (Eds.), A multidisciplinary approach to service encounters. (pp. 37-​64). Leiden/​Boston, MA: Brill. Placencia, M. E. (2016). Las ofertas en el regateo en Mercado Libre-​Ecuador. In A. M.  Bañón Hernández, M.  d.  M. Espejo Muriel, B. Herrero Muñoz Cobo, & J. L. López Cruces (Eds.), Oralidad y análisis del discurso. Homenaje a Luis Cortés Rodríguez (pp. 521-​544). Almería, Spain: Edual. Ruzickova, E. (2007). Customer requests in Cuban Spanish: Realization patterns and politeness strategies in service encounters. In M. E. Placencia & C. García (Eds.), Research on politeness in the Spanish-​speaking world (pp. 213-​244). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Schneider, K. P., & Barron, A. (Eds.). (2008). Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages. Amsterdam/​ Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Solon, M. (2013) Cross-​cultural negotiation: Touristic service encounters in Yucatán, Mexico. In C. Howe, S. E. Blackwell, & M. Lubbers Quesada (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 15th Hispanic linguistics symposium (pp. 252-​268) Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Traverso, V. (2001). Syrian service encounters: A case of shifting strategies within verbal exchange. Pragmatics, 11(4), 421-​444. Tucker, T. (2011). Online word of mouth: Characteristics of Yelp.com reviews. Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 2(1),  37-​42.

130

7  Forms of address and gender in Costa Rican service encounters Jorge Murillo Medrano

7.1  Introduction The aim of this chapter is to analyze variation in the use of forms of address (vocatives and second person singular pronouns) in two corpora of customer service interactions in Costa Rica: one in a grocery store and the other in telephone interactions at a call center in a public institution. The analysis considers the gender variable and participants’ roles, as well as the purposes of the communicative exchange, to determine what effect these factors have on participants’ use of (im)politeness in each type of interaction (Economidou-​ Kogetsidis, 2005; Kong, 1998; Placencia, 2015). Customer service interactions have been studied as a discursive genre (see, e.g., Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015). Numerous studies also exist on customer service interactions in different varieties of Spanish, such as the Buenos Aires variety (Rigatuso 2000, 2003, 2008, 2011), Bolivian Spanish (Placencia, 2001), the Peninsular variety (Placencia & Mancera Rueda, 2011a, 2011b), Uruguayan Spanish (Gabbiani, 2006; Márquez Reiter, 2006), as well as contrastive studies of different varieties of Spanish (Placencia, 1998, 2005, 2008). For Costa Rican Spanish, see Hasbún (2003), Uber (2004), and Murillo (2010). Regarding the way (im)politeness functions in these service encounters, Márquez Reiter and Bou-​Franch (2017) offer an account of studies carried out from different theoretical and methodological perspectives. The authors emphasize how electronic communication media affect the way interpersonal relationships are constructed, and thus pose new challenges when it comes to what can be considered polite or impolite. Worth noting, also, is the work of Placencia (2001) on the use of forms of address in institutional interactions in La Paz, Bolivia. Further, Bayyurt and Bayraktaroğlu (2001) and Antonopoulou (2001) examine participants’ gender and its effect on the discursive construction of service encounters in Turkey and Greece, respectively. This chapter first looks at theoretical (Section 7.2) and methodological (Section 7.3) considerations. These are followed by results and discussion (Section 7.4), ending with conclusions in Section 7.5.

 131

Forms of address and gender 131

7.2  Theoretical considerations 7.2.1  Service encounters This study uses the definition of service interaction proposed by Félix-​ Brasdefer (2015): Service encounters are interactions in which some kind of commodity, be it goods, information, or both, is exchanged between a service provider (e.g., clerk, vendor) and a service seeker (e.g. customer, visitor). The participants in a service encounter may be physically present at a designated public setting, or the transaction can be carried out by telephone, online, in writing via mail, and in face-​to-​face interactions. (p. 1) This definition considers the specificity of institutional service interactions (Drew & Heritage, 1992), and is complemented by the distinction made by Drew and Sorjonen (1997) between “institutional” and “sociable” talk (see also Placencia, 2007, p. 140). For these authors, the speakers are very aware of the roles they play; those who take calls at a public service center have a well-​defined script, and the customers also stick to that script in their capacity as service seekers. Although service interactions can generally be considered a type of institutional talk, the essential element of the interaction being the transactional function, there can be variation in the occurrence of small talk, depending on the type of service interaction. This is precisely the case for service interactions in small businesses where the speakers may know each other (unlike the interactions in a call center), and thus small talk appears much more frequently here than it does in institutional telephone interactions, where it is practically nonexistent. 7.2.2  Politeness work and its relation to forms of address The concept of politeness employed in the present study follows the model proposed by Spencer-​Oatey (2000), which attempts to overcome important criticism of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) model. This model seeks to be more inclusive and allow for different types of facework carried out by speakers, namely, saving the face of the other as well as one’s own face (Hernández-​ Flores, 2004), not just saving the face of the hearer, as in Brown and Levinson (1987). In addition, Spencer-​Oatey’s rapport management model accounts for the full scope of both politeness and impoliteness, without weighting one over the other. With regard to the use of forms of address and their intrinsic relationship to politeness work, mention must be made of the pioneering work of Brown and Gilman (1960), who propose analyzing pronouns of address

132

132  Jorge Murillo Medrano according to whether they are familiar (T, which in this study includes vos and tú) or polite (V, for usted). This analysis should always consider the axes of power (degree of power of one speaker over another) as well as solidarity or social distance between the speakers. Regarding forms of address in service interactions, Placencia (2015) proposes that they “have been found to play a role in constructing (face to face) service encounter interaction as respectful and deferential, perhaps, friendly and egalitarian, or maybe overfriendly or abusive in some respects” (p. 38). In considering vocatives, this study follows the proposal of Leech (1999), who states that the fundamental pragmatic function of these forms is to refer to the speaker within the exchange in which they appear. Vocatives are used to call the speaker’s attention, identify him or her, and to establish or maintain the social relationship between the participants in the interaction. In addition, Leech classifies them into the following categories: endearments, such as “dear,” “my love”; family terms, such as “grandpa” (for “grandfather”) or “cuz” (for “cousin”); familiarizers, such as “buddy” or “pal”; familiarized first names, such as “Gaby” (for “Gabriela”); first names in full; and titles and surnames. Relevant to the present study are Leech’s familiarizers and endearments, in addition to the use of proper names or first names. 7.2.3  Second person singular pronouns in Costa Rican Spanish Until the early 1990s, second person singular personal pronouns in Costa Rican Spanish alternated between the polite form of usted and the familiar form of vos, the only exception being that usted was also used in very close or intimate relationships. However, for more than two decades now, the use of the familiar form of tú has been recorded as an exogenous variant of the traditional vos-​usted pronoun dyad. This has upset the dual system of address and led to the current existence of a second person singular pronoun system with three forms—​even though the use of tú is not highly frequent—​that sometimes alternate, without any definitive explanation (see, e.g., Moser, 2008; Michnowicz, Despain & Groham, 2016; Quesada Pacheco, 2010). This chapter thus studies the use of forms of address (second person singular pronouns and vocatives) in two corpora of service encounters, taking into account the gender of the participants, the type of interaction (institutional or commercial), and the context of the interaction (face-​to-​face or telephone interactions).

7.3  Method 7.3.1  Data The corpus consists of 120 audio recordings. Sixty of these were recorded in two small grocery stores located in the province of Alajuela in the center of Costa Rica. The other 60 come from a corpus of recordings obtained from

 133

Forms of address and gender 133 August to November 2016 by the customer service call center of a public institution located in San José. The speakers in the stores in Alajuela as well as all those participating in the call center interactions belong to the same variety of Costa Rican Spanish (i.e., the country’s central valley). These two contexts were selected for comparing two different types of interactions: institutional and commercial. The speakers who participated in the recordings in the two grocery stores were not initially informed that they were being recorded, but their permission was asked immediately after they finished interacting with the store clerk. If they agreed to the present study’s use of the data, they were asked to sign the informed consent form.1 In the case of those whose telephone calls were recorded, they were informed beforehand that they were being recorded, but only for the purpose of monitoring call quality. Once the interaction ended, the operator asked the caller if the recording could be used for a study on the language of service interactions. If they agreed, they were given the informed consent form to complete, and then they were asked to send it by e-​mail to the researcher. In both the grocery store and the call center, the people handling the transactions (clerks and service operators) knew in advance that they were being recorded for the purpose of this study, and they also signed the informed consent form. Sixty operators participated in the telephone transactions (some of them handled more than one call); 34 operators were women and 26 were men. With respect to the customers, 26 were women and 34 were men. In the grocery store interactions, the clerks were men aged 41 and 45. There was a total of 60 customers: 30 in the first store (18 men and 12 women) and 30 in the second store (7 women and 23 men). Due to sample disparity, strict percentage comparisons cannot be made between the two genders, although qualitative comparisons will be made regarding the two groups’ use of pronoun forms of address and vocatives. 7.3.2  Data transcription and analysis The interactions were transcribed using orthographic transcription (Llisterri, 1999), indicating context features that the researcher considered relevant to the study (especially in the stores). The appearances of second person singular pronouns and vocatives were then counted. The results are presented as follows: The call center interactions are analyzed first, followed by those recorded in the grocery stores. For each of these corpora, the analysis is divided into two sections: One discusses the use of pronoun forms, and the other addresses vocatives. As stated above, the interactions were transcribed orthographically, without marking any parts in terms of either suprasegmental elements (e.g., pitch, duration, volume), pauses, or overlaps (which, at any rate, are very infrequent due to the nature of the exchanges). In the case of the call center, the name of the public institution is omitted, as are the full names of the speakers and

134

134  Jorge Murillo Medrano call center operators. Similarly, the names of the grocery store clerks and customers are also omitted. Any names that appeared in the dialogues were replaced by “XXX.”

7.4  Results and discussion 7.4.1  Public institution telephone interactions The fundamental purpose of these interactions is to request one of the services provided by the company. The people who take these calls have an obligation to follow an institutionally established routine of identifying both themselves and the company. They also use formulaic phrases such as “How can I help you?” or “How can I be of service?,” as shown in example (1, male operator and male customer). (The following convention superscripts are used in the examples: Tú = T; Vos = vos; Usted = V; Diminutive = D). (1) Operator: Gracias por llamar al XXX, XXX le atiende.   ¿Con quién tengo el gusto?    ‘Thank you for calling XXX. This is XXX. Who am I speaking with?’ CUSTOMER: Gracias, con XXXX, para servirle.   ‘Thank you, this is XXX, at yourV service.’   Operator: Buenas, ¿cómo le puedo ayudar, caballero?   ‘Morning, how can I help youV, sir?’ These interactions are characterized by their level of formality; thus, the interaction transpires without turn overlaps and is commonly structured with an opening sequence (such as in the above example), a development sequence (which includes the reason for the call), and a closing or goodbye sequence. 7.4.1.1  Pronominal forms Since these interactions take place between two unknown people, the use of the polite pronoun usted is imposed from the start. Invariably, the operator uses the usted form when addressing the customer, regardless of age or gender. In the 60 analyzed interactions, not a single record was found in which the operator employed another form, and in the case of customers, there were only a few cases where the vos pronoun form was employed. Of the 482 cases of pronominal forms analyzed, usted was the predominant form (95%; 458/​482), while vos appeared infrequently (5%; 24/​482), as shown in Figure 7.1. One use of vos appeared in a call made by a woman who wanted the e-​mail address of the institution in order to send them some personal information. A female operator answered, and the female caller used vos (the vos verbal forms are underlined), as shown in (2):

 135

Forms of address and gender 135 100% 80%

95%

60% 40% 20%

5%

0% Usted

vos

Figure 7.1 Pronoun use in telephone interactions

(2) OPERATOR: Buen día, gracias por llamar al XXX, Fernanda   le atiende. ¿Con quién tengo el gusto?   ‘Good morning. Thank you for calling. This is Fernanda. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?’ CUSTOMER: Aló, disculpe, ¿con quién tengo el gusto?    ‘Hello, pardonV me, who do I  have the pleasure of speaking with?’   OPERATOR: Con Fernanda.   ‘Fernanda’ CUSTOMER: Fernanda, disculpá la molestia, es que vi una publicación   para enviar el currículum al XXX.   ‘Fernanda, pardonVOS me, but I saw an announcement for   sending CVs to XXX.’   OPERATOR: Correcto.   ‘That’s right.’ CUSTOMER: Entonces, era para saber los datos porque lo que decía ahí   eran los números de servicio al cliente.    ‘So, I  was calling for more specific information because what it said there were the customer service numbers.’   OPERATOR: Gracias, mi amor, que tengás un hermoso día.   ‘Thank you, love, haveVOS a beautiful day.’ CUSTOMER: Con mucho gusto.   ‘You’re very welcome.’ The interaction started with the use of usted, but there was an element that triggered the pronoun change: The operator just gave her first name, without a surname, which was perceived by the customer as a sign of familiarity. For this reason, in her second intervention she uses the vos form with the operator, even when using the same verb she had used in her first intervention. At no time during the interaction did the operator use the vos form with the customer, even though the customer uses the familiar form when saying goodbye

136

136  Jorge Murillo Medrano and wishes her a good day. Analyzing the interaction as a whole, there is no evidence that the operator perceives the change in the form of address as an impolite or face-​threatening act. In example (3), the female customer employed vos almost exclusively (both interlocutors are women in this interaction), but this form seems to be explained by the fact that this is the customer’s second call to the same operator. (3) OPERATOR: Buenos días, ¿con quién tengo el gusto?   ‘Good morning. Who am I speaking with?’   CUSTOMER: Buenos días, Karen. Con XXX, ¿cómo le va?   ‘Good morning, Karen. This is XXX. How are youV?’ OPERATOR: ¿Qué tal, doña XXX? Muy bien ¿y usted?   ‘Hi, doña (‘madam’) XXX? Fine, and youV?’ CUSTOMER: Bien, por dicha. Es que me dijiste que te llamara despuesito   de las 10 para ver si habían llegado los documentos.   ‘Fine, fortunately. You toldV me to call you just afterD 10 to see if the documents had arrived.’ OPERATOR: ((Gives an extensive explanation of the status  of the   documents)) CUSTOMER: Ah! Ok. ¿Y qué hacemos?¿Te vuelvo a llamar o te llamo más   tarde?   ‘Ah, OK. So, what do we do? Do I call youV again or do I call youT later?’ OPERATOR:  Si usted desea, yo puedo dejarme este número de celular por acá y cualquier cosa yo le estaría devolviendo la llamada al finalizar las labores para que usted esté enterada de la situación.   ‘If you wantV, I can keep this cell phone number here and whatever happens I  will call youV back at the end of the day so youV know what the situation is.’ CUSTOMER: Ah! ¿Y a qué hora terminás labores, no sé si a las 5?   ‘And what time do youvos get off work, I don’t know if at 5?’   OPERATOR: A las 4 de la tarde.   ‘At 4 in the afternoon.’ CUSTOMER: A las 4.   ‘At 4.’   OPERATOR: Correcto.   ‘That’s right.’ CUSTOMER: Bueno, esperemos entonces. Te agradezco montones,   muchísimas gracias.    ‘Well, we’ll wait, then. I’m really grateful, Thank youT so much.’ In the preceding interaction there is asymmetry in the form of address insofar as the customer addresses the operator using vos, while the operator keeps a

 137

Forms of address and gender 137 distance at all times by using the V pronoun (the only pronoun she is permitted to use according to the institutional script). Moreover, on two occasions in the same intervention the operator uses the explicit V form, which could be understood as a sign that she wishes to follow the institutional standards with regard to pronoun use, or that she wants to signal to the customer the pronoun that she should use during the transaction. The customer, for her part, assumes that a second interaction with the same person can be understood as a situation of more familiar communication and translates that concept into the use of vos (‘And what time do youvos get off work?’). Despite the asymmetry, the interaction transpires normally; that is, the operator is not perceived as being made uncomfortable or bothered by the customer’s use of vos. Aside from the preceding interactions in which both participants are women, the corpus contains no other occurrence of the use of vos or tú. There were cases where the customer used primarily V forms with some T forms but in constructions that appear to function more as discourse markers (mirá ‘lookVOS’; vieras? ‘you see?T’) that do not necessarily count as occurrences of pronoun change within the analysis. However, since these verbal forms are not fully pragmaticalized as discourse markers (following the concept of pragmaticalization of Watts, 2003), they accept pronoun variation (viera/​ vieras ‘you seeV/​you seeT’; mire/​mirá ‘lookV/​lookVOS’). In the context of the interactions they may affect the relationship between the speakers, since the vos forms are much more familiar than the usted forms, as seen in (4, female operator, male customer) and (5, male operator, female customer): (4) OPERATOR: Buenos días, gracias por llamar al XXX,   ¿con quién tengo el gusto?   ‘Good morning. Thank you for calling XXX.   Who am I speaking with?’ CUSTOMER:  Con XXXX. Vieras que a mí me operaron el 13 de diciembre y me dieron las pastillas…    ‘This is XXX. You knowT, they operated on me on December 13 and they gave me some pills…’ (5) OPERATOR: Buenos días, gracias por llamar al XXX, XXX le atiende.   ¿con quién tengo el gusto?   ‘Good morning. Thank you for calling XXX.   This is XXX. Who am I speaking with?’ CUSTOMER: Disculpe, mirá, es que tengo una consultita…   ‘Excuse meV, lookVOS, I just have a questionD…’ Analyzing the use of pronominal address forms as a whole, we can conclude the following:

• •

There is an almost absolute predominance of V forms (Figure 7.1). The call center operators always use the V pronoun to address customers (on the other hand, see Márquez Reiter, 2006, who describes how, in

138

138  Jorge Murillo Medrano

•

hospital contexts, T pronouns are used as an expression of the desire to help patients). There are occurrences of vos forms, but these are only employed by female customers when speaking with a female operator. It should be pointed out that in these cases there is alternation of pronoun use; that is, the vos forms alternate with the usted forms.

7.4.1.2  Use of nominal forms of address The most frequent forms of address in the corpus are señor (‘sir’) and señora (‘madam’), and they are mostly used by the operators when addressing customers. These constitute the most respectful and polite way to address a speaker in Spanish, as in (6, female operator, male customer): (6) OPERATOR:         CUSTOMER:   OPERATOR:  

Buen día, gracias por llamar al XXX, XXX le atiende, ¿con quién tengo el gusto? ‘Good morning. Thank you for calling XXX. This is XXX. Who am I speaking with?’ Gracias. Mi nombre es XXX. Una pregunta. ‘Thank you. My name is XXX. One question.’ Sí señor, ¿en qué le puedo ayudar? ‘Yes, sir. How can I help youV?’

If the speaker is a man, the señor form alternates in some cases with the vocative caballero (‘gentleman’, as in 7 [female operator, male costumer]); if the speaker is a woman, only señora appears: (7) OPERATOR:       CUSTOMER:     OPERATOR:   CUSTOMER:   OPERATOR:  

Gracias por llamar al XXX, XXX le atiende, ¿con quién tengo el gusto? ‘Thank you for calling XXX. This is XXX. Who am I speaking with?’ Gracias, con XXX, para servirle. ‘Thank you, this is XXX, at yourV service.’ Buenas, ¿cómo le puedo ayudar, caballero? ‘Afternoon. How may I help youV, gentleman?’ Sí, muchas gracias. ¿Me escucha? ‘Yes, thank you. Can you hearV me?’ Sí, señor. ‘Yes, sir.’

Other very common forms used for addressing the speaker were don (respectful appellative for a man) or doña (respectful appellative for a woman), followed by the person’s name. Usually, as part of the routine, the operator asks the customer’s name, which sets the stage for the operator to address the customer as don or doña. Regardless of the speaker’s age (which can be

 139

Forms of address and gender 139 80% 70%

68%

60% 50% 40% 32%

30% 20% 10% 0%

Don, señor, caballero

Doña, señora

Figure 7.2 Vocative use in telephone interactions

inferred by the timbre of the customer’s voice and other contextual elements), operators address them by don or doña, which are forms commonly used in Costa Rican Spanish (Quesada Pacheco, 2007) to address older people in polite interactions. Figure 7.2 summarizes the frequencies with which these vocatives are used by the operators when addressing customers. In all, 101 vocatives were counted, and as can be seen, 68% (69/​101) were used to address male customers (don, señor, and caballero), while 32% (32/​101) of vocatives were used to address women (e.g., doña, señora). This percentage difference is substantial, since the number of vocatives used to address men is more than double the number used to address women, even though women comprised 43% and men 57% of all customers. The use of different vocatives, and in some cases the operator’s first name, was also recorded on the part of customers, although with a much lower frequency than that of the operators. It is surprising, however, that some of the customers used don (4 cases), señor (5 cases), señora (3 cases), and caballero (two cases) to address the operators, since the operators are obviously young and should not be addressed that way. The above vocatives alternated with the use of more familiar vocatives, such as muchacho (‘boy’ or ‘young man’) or muchacha (‘girl’ or ‘young woman’) (one case each), the operator’s given name (five cases), and three vocatives that only appear in very familiar interactions in Costa Rican Spanish: mi amor (‘love’), linda (‘sweetie’), and corazón (‘dear’), used by male customers in addressing female operators. In the following interaction (8), a female operator addresses a male customer, and from the start the customer calls her by name and uses the vocatives ‘love’ and ‘sweetie’:

140

140  Jorge Murillo Medrano (8) OPERATOR: Buen día, gracias por llamar al XXX, le atiende   Gabriela, ¿Con quién tengo el gusto?    ‘Good morning. Thank you for calling XXX. This is Gabriela. Who am I speaking with?’ CUSTOMER: Buenos días, Gabriela, con Roberto.   ‘Good morning, Gabriela. This is Roberto.’ OPERATOR: ¿En qué le puedo ayudar?   ‘How can I help youV?’ CUSTOMER: Mire, mi amor, es para hacerle una consulta…   ‘LookV, love, it’s just to ask youV a question…’   ((The query proceeds with short answers from the operator)) CUSTOMER: Perfecto, linda, muy amable   ‘Perfect, sweetie, very kind’   OPERATOR: Con gusto, en el XXX estamos para servirle.   ‘You’re welcome. At XXX we’re here to serve youV.’ The operator started the interaction in the usual way, but once the customer addressed her as ‘love,’ her tone of voice was perceived to change, becoming drier and more abrupt, though not impolite. For her part, at no time did the operator use polite vocatives such as caballero, don, or señor to address the customer. The same change in the female operator’s tone of voice and absence of polite vocatives in addressing the customer were seen in another interaction where a male customer addressed the female operator as corazón ‘sweetheart.’2 Overall, these interactions show a type of politeness oriented toward maintaining social norms, as well as showing deference, which is proper in an institutionalized interaction in which the participants stick to their assigned roles (Drew & Sorjonen, 1997). To do so, the two groups (customers and operators) resort to different strategies, among which we have analyzed the pronominal and nominal forms of address that foster the establishment of an atmosphere of politeness and respect in the interactions. The gender of the participants affects the customers’ attempts to vary the institutionalized framework and slip the interaction into a more personal arena (more person oriented than task oriented, Fant 1995), and this is seen by the change in the pronoun use from usted to vos. The call center’s operators stick to their institutional roles, however, and do not allow any change to the participatory framework or to the potential discourse sequences inherent to that framework (Drew & Heritage, 1992). 7.4.2  Customer service interactions in grocery stores This section analyzes 60 face-​to-​face interactions recorded in two grocery stores. In these transactions, customers entered the establishments to buy a grocery item that is typically sold there. They were generally either residents of the neighborhood in which the store is located, or passersby. The interactions were usually short, since these types of supplies are self-​service (except for

 141

Forms of address and gender 141 items sold by weight), and occurred when the customer came in and asked for an item, when they went up to the cash register to pay for it, or both. In addition to their degree of informality and familiarity (Bayyurt & Bayraktaroğlu, 2001), a marked orientation toward the interactional functions of the language was evident in these interactions. This is seen in the appearance of T forms, a greater use of colloquial vocatives, an abundance of forms associated with politeness, and the appearance of small talk. 7.4.2.1  Variation of pronominal forms Figure 7.3 shows the distribution of pronominal forms during the negotiation of service in grocery stores. As can be seen in this figure, usted predominates (89.6%; 95/​106), while vos appears in 8.5% of the interactions (9/​106). It should be noted that the tú form does appear in these interactions, though only on two occasions (1.9%). As for the usted form, it is used in three possible situations: asymmetric relationships, distant relationships, and close or trusting relationships. In the first of these groups are the uses in interactions where there is social distance (the clerk and the customer do not know each other) or when the customers are older people, as seen in example (9, female customer and male clerk): (9) CUSTOMER:   CLERK:  

100

Buenas ‘Afternoon’ ¿Cómo le va, señora? ‘How are youV, ma’am?’

95

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 9

10 0

2 USTED

VOS

Figure 7.3 Frequency of pronouns in grocery stores

TÚ

142

142  Jorge Murillo Medrano CUSTOMER:   CLERK:   CUSTOMER:  

Bien ¿y a usted? ‘Fine, and youV?’ ¿Qué le sirvo? ‘What can I get youV?’ Eh, una Tabcín para niños si me hace el favor. ‘Uh, a Tabcín for children, if you’d beV so kind.’

In this case, the customer is an older woman, so the appropriate way for the clerk to address her is with a polite form of address accompanied by the appellative señora (‘ma’am’), which reinforces this asymmetrical relationship between customer and clerk. It should be noted that the interaction is carried out between the female customer and a man who is younger than she. Although there appears to be little social distance between the interlocutors, the age asymmetry calls for the use of usted. In other cases, such as in example (10), what predominates is the social distance, since the customer is addressed as usted because he is unknown, even though he is not older than the clerk (male interlocutors): (10) CLERK: ¿Qué buscaba?   ‘What were youV looking for?’   Customer: Popis   ‘Lollipops’ CLERK: ¿Popis?   ‘Lollipops?’ CUSTOMER: Sí   ‘Yes’ CLERK: ¿De cuáles?   ‘Which ones?’ CUSTOMER: Seis rojos y dos anaranjados.   ‘Six red ones and two orange ones.’ The most idiosyncratic use of usted occurs when the customer and clerk know each other well and express their closeness with the use of this pronoun, as seen in example (11, male interlocutors). The degree of familiarity can be seen through the use of vocatives of closeness and the joking that takes place between them. This was the predominant use of usted in the corpus: (11) CUSTOMER: Primo /​¿usted no puede /​no tiene un fosforito ahí que me   haga el favor para para prenderme un cigarrillo?   ‘Cousin /​can’t youV /​don’t youV have a matchD there, do meV the favor to light me up a cigarette?’ CLERK: Pa’ quemarse un pichu /​un puro.   ‘To light up a smoke /​a stogie.’ CUSTOMER: Yo ando chispa, voy a agarrarlo /​pura vida.   ‘I have a lighter, I’m going to grab it /​great.’

 143

Forms of address and gender 143 CLERK:  

La hice toda. ‘I did it all.’

The degree of closeness between customer and clerk can also be seen in the pronominal alternation between the use of usted and vos within the same interaction, as in example (12, male interlocutors): (12) CLERK:  

¿Qué pasó?¿Qué hubo? ‘What’s up? How’s it goin’?’ CUSTOMER: Qué calor está haciendo. Está madre.   ‘Whew, is it hot. It’s killer.’ CLERK: Usted con ese hijueputa manteado.   ‘YouV with that son-​of-​a-​bitch hoodie.’ CUSTOMER: Uff Dios mío, mirá yo tenía una camisa y se me olvidó   ponérmela, vos sabés.   ‘Uff, my God, lookVOS, I had a shirt and I forgot to put it on, youvos know it.’ CLERK: ¿Usted anda camiseta? Aquí lo caliente hace /​   es… tostada, aquí está fresquito   ‘YouV’re wearing an undershirt? Here with this heat /​   it’s…toasted, here it’s cool.’ CUSTOMER: No seás tonto, así está Guápiles, viera ayer ayer   andaba en Guápiles   ‘Don’tV be an idiot, Guapiles is like that, youV should have   seen yesterday, yesterday I was in Guapiles’ CLERK:  Está está fresquito todavía, aquí está riquísimo viera fresquito, usted que anda con ese manteado, siente calor.    ‘It’s, it’s still cool, here it’s great, seeV, really nice, youV with that hoodie on, you feelV hot.’ It should be noted that both pronouns, usted and vos, had the same function of establishing an atmosphere of camaraderie between the two men; that is, these pronouns are interchangeable even within the same sentence. The customer came in looking for a service or article, but first there is a conversation about the weather, which here constitutes the topic for fostering an exchange aimed at reinforcing an interpersonal relationship (see, e.g., Rigatuso, 2008). No variation was found in the analyzed corpus in pronoun use by gender when female customers were involved. Regardless of age, they were all addressed using usted, and in all cases they, in turn, used this same pronoun to address the clerk. The alternation in the use of usted/​vos/​tú only happened in interactions where both were males, as in examples (13) and (14): (13) CUSTOMER:   CLERK:  

Buenas ¿tenés bolis mi amigo? ‘Afternoon. Do youvos have lollypops buddy?’ Sí /​a veinticinco ‘Yes /​at twenty-​five’

144

144  Jorge Murillo Medrano CUSTOMER: Regáleme tres /​puedo robarle un poquito de agua /​gracias.   ‘GiveV me three /​can I  steal a little water from youV /​ CLERK:  

thanks.’ Bueno. ‘Sure.’

(14) CUSTOMER:   CLERK:   CUSTOMER:   CLERK:   CUSTOMER:   CLERK:   CUSTOMER:   CLERK:   CUSTOMER:   CLERK:  

Jefe ¿tiene Panadol extra fuerte? ‘Chief, do youV have extra strong Panadol?’ Sí, sí hay. ‘Yes, yes, I do.’ Regáleme una /​y un fresquillo ahí para tomar, güevón. ‘GiveV me one /​and a soda there to drink, dude.’ ¿Qué le hecho? ‘What do youV want?’ ¿Tropical tienes? /​¿Tropical? ‘Do youT have Tropical? /​Tropical?’ Mora piña o té ‘Blackberry, pineapple or tea’ Regáleme un té mejor /​¿qué le debo? ‘Better giveV me a tea /​what do I owe youV?’ Trescientos diez. ‘Three hundred ten.’ Pura vida así campeón /​oquey /​gracias ‘Great, that’s the way, champ /​OK /​thanks’ Bueno. ‘Sure.’

Unlike example (12), the pronoun alternation in examples (13) and (14) is not necessarily associated with establishing an atmosphere of camaraderie, but can rather be explained by the different illocutionary force of the speech acts and its relationship to their degree of politeness. As can be seen, the T forms appear in interrogative illocutionary acts, while the changes to V forms occur when resorting to the request illocutionary act. It cannot be said, then, that in these cases the pronouns are interchangeable without producing a pragmatic effect (see Murillo, 2010). Indeed, in the few cases where the customer uses the vos form in a request, he always does so by using the verb regalar (‘to give,’ literally, ‘to give away’) as a positive polite recourse to mitigate it, as in examples (15, male interlocutors) and (16, male interlocutors). (For a more in-​depth analysis of how pronoun alternation functions in politeness work and facework in Costa Rican Spanish, see Murillo, 2010). (15) CUSTOMER (A): Regalame un juguillo de /​de tarro.   ‘GiveVOS me a small juice of /​in a can.’

 145

Forms of address and gender 145 CUSTOMER (B): Bueno entonces vamos a la casa a /​a pedir plata.   ‘Well, then, let’s go home to /​to ask for money.’ CUSTOMER (A): Y unas galletas de esas Cuqui.   ‘And some of those Cuqui cookies.’ CUSTOMER (B): Eh /​ Pedro.   ‘Uh /​Pedro.’ CLERK: ¿Cuál?   ‘Which  one?’ CUSTOMER (B): Ya venimos eh /​para pagar esto.   ‘We’ll be right back, uh /​to pay for this.’ CLERK: Oquey.   ‘OK’

(16) CUSTOMER: Regalame un angelito.   ‘GiveVOS me a little angel.’ CLERK: ¿Qué color?   ‘What color?’ CUSTOMER: Gracias.   ‘Thanks.’ With regard to pronoun use, the use of usted predominates as the way to indicate asymmetry or social distance between the speakers, or to signal closeness and help build an atmosphere of camaraderie and good interpersonal relationships between the speakers. The vos forms appear with low frequency, while the tú forms are very sparse and always appear in interactions between male speakers, with the likely intention of establishing a relationship that is less distant, though not close or familiar, between the speakers. 7.4.2.2  Variation of nominal forms Nominal forms (vocatives) also appear mainly in interactions between male speakers. Of the 19 instances of vocatives, 5 were used by the clerk to address female customers and 14 were employed by both the clerk and the customer. Only señora (‘madam’) and joven (‘young man’) appeared more than once (4 and 3 times, respectively), while all the rest were only used once (don, doña, linda, muchachos [‘boys’], mi jefe [‘my chief ’], niña [‘little girl’], mi hermano [‘my brother or my bro’], primo [‘cousin or cuz’], jefe [‘chief ’], güevón [‘lit. well-​hung’ ‘dude’], campeón [‘champ’], and mi amigo [‘my friend or buddy’]). Women did not use any vocatives to address the clerk, even though some of them were young and others were old. The clerk used señora to address one customer, possibly because she was an older woman (­example 9). The same clerk utilized the vocatives linda and joven to address two young women; these forms express politeness and respect, though not familiarity.

146

146  Jorge Murillo Medrano Unlike the relationships involving female customers, camaraderie relationships were established between clerks and male customers, evidenced by the use of vocatives that reinforce the ties of belonging to the same social group. The use of vocatives related to the semantic field of family nexus (primo ‘cousin,’ hermano ‘brother’) or those alluding to positions of power (jefe ‘boss,’ mi jefe ‘my boss’) as well as those highlighting qualities culturally associated with being a strong man (campeón ‘champ,’ güevón ‘dude’) show the establishment of a space in which both speakers feel like solidary partners belonging to the same social group. In the case of vocatives employed with women in this type of interaction, we can conclude that male clerks use polite forms appropriate to a formal or not very familiar relationship. If the female customer is young, the salesclerks (who in these two cases are middle-​aged men) allow themselves to use forms such as joven, linda, or niña, which are not interpreted in this context as impolite or face-​threatening to the customers. If the customer is an adult woman, the polite form of señora predominates, even when the customer and salesclerk know each other. Female customers, for their part, never use vocatives to address the clerks. The situation is different from interactions between men, in which vocatives such as jefe, campeón, or hermano do appear to reinforce group solidarity and camaraderie. From the analysis of vocatives in relation to forms of address, it can be concluded that there is a correlation between the speaker’s gender and the use of pronoun forms: with female customers, the clerks used usted, formal vocatives, or polite forms of address, while the female customers always used the pronoun form usted and did not use vocatives to address the clerks. When the interaction was between males, familiar or less formal forms of address such as vos and tú were used, in addition to the use of vocatives that reinforce the ties of camaraderie.

7.5  Conclusion The two types of interactions—​institutional and commercial—​vary in the use of pronominal forms of address and vocatives. While the telephone interactions followed an institutional script with a distance-​marking polite form of address, in the grocery store interactions there was evidence of a marked tendency to reinforce interpersonal relationships. These interactions were therefore characterized by the appearance of a larger number of familiar pronouns, and especially by the use of colloquial or familiar vocatives—​but only when the speakers were males (the same occurs in the farmers’ markets in Costa Rica, according to Hasbún, 2003). By contrast, in the telephone interactions, the speakers had to address the obligations imposed on them by the communicative situation (Spencer-​Oatey, 2000). The work context required them to use the formal pronoun usted, which predominated in both types of interactions (see Uber, 2004).

 147

Forms of address and gender 147 In the grocery store interactions, facework was governed by norms that require polite address, but this occurred within a much more relaxed and familiar context, considering that the clerks knew most of the customers. Although the function of socializing discourse was not analyzed in this study, it did appear in the grocery store interactions, and contributed to building an atmosphere of camaraderie, especially between the men, who used small talk for this purpose (cf. Placencia, 2004, 2005). Finally, differences in use were found with regard to gender. In both situations, the women tended to use polite forms and much more formal vocatives than men, and they received, in general, much more formal address in return than male customers.

Notes 1 The University of Costa Rica, where the author of this study works, has a very strict protocol for working with informants and requires every informant to fill out an informed consent form if they are going to be recorded directly by its researchers. The model form (which can be adapted to each study) can be found at the following address: https://​vinv.ucr.ac.cr/​es/​comite-​etico-​cientifico. 2 For a detailed study of vocatives in Costa Rican Spanish, see Camacho Alfaro (2011).

References Antonopoulou, E. (2001). Brief service encounters: Gender and politeness. In A. Bayraktaroǧlu & M. Sifianou (Eds.), Linguistic politeness across boundaries: The case of Greek and Turkish (pp. 241-​ 269). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Bayyurt, Y., & Bayraktaroğlu, A. (2001). The use of pronouns and terms of address in Turkish service encounters. In A. Bayraktaroǧlu & M. Sifianou (Eds.), Linguistic politeness across boundaries: The case of Greek and Turkish (pp. 209-​ 240). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Brown, R., & Gilman, A. (1960). The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), Style in language (pp. 253-​276). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Brown, P., & Levinson S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Camacho Alfaro, M. (2011). Análisis pragmático de los apelativos empleados por jóvenes Universitarios en el español de Costa Rica. Unpublished master’s thesis. Universidad de Costa Rica, San José. Drew, P., & Heritage, J. (1992). Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drew, P., & Sorjonen, M. L. (1997). Institutional dialogue. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction, vol. 2 (pp. 92-​118). London: Sage. Economidou-​Kogetsidis, M. (2005). “Yes, tell me please, what time is the midday flight from Athens arriving?”: Telephone service encounters and politeness. Intercultural Pragmatics, 3(2), 253-​273. Fant, L. (1995). Negotiation discourse and interaction in a cross-​cultural perspective: The case of Sweden and Spain. In K. Ehlich & J. Wagner (Eds.), The discourse of business negotiation (pp. 177-​201). Berlin/​New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter.

148

148  Jorge Murillo Medrano Félix-​Brasdefer, J. C. (2015). The language of service encounters: A pragmatic-​discursive approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gabbiani, B. (2006). La constitución de identidades institucionales en el reclamo telefónico. In V. Orlando (Ed.), Mecanismos conversacionales en el español de Uruguay (pp. 39-​60). Montevideo: Universidad de la República. Hasbún L. (2003). ¿Qué le vendemos, reina? El uso de vocativos en la feria del agricultor. Revista de Filología, Lingüística y Literatura, 29(1), 201-212. Universidad de Costa Rica. Hernández-​ Flores, N. (2004). Politeness as “face” enhancement: An analysis of Spanish conversation between friends and family. In R. Márquez Reiter & M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Current trends in the pragmatics of Spanish (pp. 265-​284). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Hernández-​López, M. de la O., & Fernández Amaya, L. (Eds.). (2015). A multidisciplinary approach to service encounters. Leiden: Brill. Kong, K. C. (1998). Politeness of service encounters in Hong Kong. Pragmatics, 8(4), 555-​575. Leech, G. N. (1999). The distribution and function of vocatives in American and British English conversation. In H. Hasselgard & S. Oksefjell (Eds.), Out of corpora: Studies in honor of Stig Johanson (pp. 107-​118). Amsterdam: Rodopi. Listerri, J. (1999). Transcripción, etiquetado y codificación de corpus orales. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada (Volumen monográfico Panorama de la Investigación Lingüística Informática), pp. 53-​82. Retrieved from http://​liceu.uab.es/​ ~joaquim/​publicacions/​RESLA_​99.pdf Márquez Reiter, R. (2006). Interactional closeness in service calls to a Montevidean carer service company. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 39(1),  7-​39. Márquez Reiter R., & Bou-​Franch, P. (2017). (Im)politeness in service encounters. In J. Culpeper, M. Haugh, & D. Kádár (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of linguistic (im)politeness (pp. 661-​687). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Michnowicz, J., Despain, S., & Gorham, R. (2016). The changing system of Costa Rican pronouns of address: tuteo, voseo, and ustedeo. In S. Rivera-​Mills & M. I. Moyna (Eds.), Forms of address in the Spanish of the Americas (pp. 246-​263). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Moser, K. (2008). Tres hipótesis acerca de la (des) cortesía en el tratamiento diádico informal familiar de San José, Costa Rica. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 6(11), 129-​145. Murillo Medrano, J. (2010). Cortesía, negociación de imagen y uso de los pronombres de segunda persona singular en el español de Costa Rica. Español Actual, 94, 141-​165. Placencia, M. E. (1998). Pragmatic variation: Ecuadorian Spanish vs Peninsular Spanish. Spanish Applied Linguistics, 2, 71-​106. Placencia, M. E. (2001). Inequality in address behavior at public institutions in La Paz, Bolivia. Anthropological Linguistics, 43, 198-​217. Placencia, M. E. (2004). Rapport-​ building activities in corner shop interactions. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 8, 215-​245. Placencia, M. E. (2005). Pragmatic variation in corner store interactions in Quito and Madrid. Hispania, 88, 583-​598. Placencia, M. E. (2007). Entre lo institucional y lo sociable: conversación de contacto, identidades y metas múltiples en interacciones en la peluquería. Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana, 1(9), 139-​161.

 149

Forms of address and gender 149 Placencia, M. E. (2008). Pragmatic variation in corner shop transactions in Ecuadorian Andean and Coastal Spanish. In K. P. Schneider & A. Barron, (Eds.), Variational pragmatics: A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages (pp. 307-​322). Amsterdam/​Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Placencia, M. E. (2015). Address forms and relational work in e-​commerce: The case of service encounter interactions in Mercado Libre Ecuador. In M. Hernández-​ López & L. Fernández Amaya (Eds.), A multidisciplinary approach to service encounters (pp. 37-​64). Leiden: Brill. Placencia, M. E., & Mancera Rueda, A. (2011a). Vaya, ¡qué chungo! Rapport-​building talk in service encounters: The case of bars in Seville at breakfast time. In N. Lorenzo-​Dus (Ed.), Spanish at work: Analysing institutional discourse across the Spanish-​speaking world (pp. 192-​207). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Placencia, M. E., & Mancera Rueda, A. (2011b). Dame un cortado de máquina, cuando puedas: estrategias de cortesía en la realización de la transacción central en bares de Sevilla. In C. Fuentes Rodríguez, E. Alcaide Lara, & E. Brenes Peña (Eds.), Aproximaciones a la (des)cortesía verbal en español (pp. 491-​508). Bern: Peter Lang. Quesada Pacheco, M. A. (2007). Nuevo diccionario de costarriqueñismos. Cartago, Costa Rica: Editorial Tecnológica de Costa Rica. Quesada Pacheco, M. A. (2010). Formas de tratamiento en Costa Rica y su evolución (1561-​2000). In M. Hummel, B. Kluge, & M. E.  Vázquez Laslop (Eds.), Formas y fórmulas de tratamiento en el mundo hispánico (pp. 647-​670). México City: El Colegio de México. Rigatuso, E. M. (2000). “Señora (…) ¿No tenés más chico?” Un aspecto de la pragmática de las fórmulas de tratamiento en español bonaerense. Revista Argentina de Lingüística, 16, 293-​344. Rigatuso, E. M. (2003). Cortesía, tratamientos e identidad cultural en encuentros de servicio en español bonaerense. In M. Del C. Vaquero & M. N. Cernadas de Bulnes (Eds.), Actas de las II Jornadas Interdisciplinarias del Sudoeste Bonaerense, Bahía Blanca, Archivo de la Memoria (pp. 157-​179). Bahía Blanca: Universidad Nacional del Sur. Rigatuso, E. M. (2008). ¡Qué! ¿Tienen calor? Conversación de contacto en español bonaerense: de interacciones institucionales, de servicio y sociales. Oralia, 11, 133-​168. Rigatuso, E. M. (2011). Conversación de contacto y variación situacional: la construcción de identidad en dos dominios interaccionales del español bonaerense actual. In C. García & M. E. Placencia (Eds.), Estudios de variación pragmática en español (pp. 243-​275). Buenos Aires: Dunken. Spencer-​Oatey, H. (2000). Rapport management: A framework for analysis. In H. Spencer-​Oatey (Ed.), Culturally speaking. Managing rapport through talk across cultures (pp. 11-​45). London: Continuum. Uber, D. R. (2004). Fórmulas de tratamiento en el discurso del trabajo en Latinoamérica. In Víctor Sánchez (Ed.), Actas del XIII Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Lingüística y Filología de la América Latina (ALFAL) (pp. 1501-​1513). San José, Costa Rica: Universidad de Costa Rica. Watts, R. J. (2003). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

150

8  Pragmatic variation by age in women’s use of post-​refusal small talk during service encounters in Rosario, Uruguay Heather R. Kaiser

1.  Introduction This chapter contributes to the growing body of research in Spanish from a variational pragmatics perspective (Schneider & Barron, 2008; Schneider, 2010) by analyzing the use of small talk (Coupland, 2000; Malinowski, 1972 [1923]; Schneider, 1988) in the context of service encounters (SEs) as it relates to participant age, and, secondarily, to social distance (Wolfson, 1988). The present study examines small talk made by female sales/​service agents and clients during SEs in Rosario, Uruguay, following a refusal, rejection, or similar dispreferred response (Pomerantz, 1984). It shows how this communicative strategy, termed post-​refusal small talk (PRST), was an effective means of mitigating rejection and maintaining/​building rapport (see Félix-​ Brasdefer, 2015; Placencia, 2004; Raevaara, 2011). Originally collected for a broader study on Uruguayan refusal behavior, the data come from recordings of naturally occurring, spontaneous interactions. Whereas some may argue that the main function of language is to transmit information, “it is clearly the case that a great deal of everyday human interaction is characterized by the primarily interpersonal […] use of language” (Brown & Yule, 1983, p. 3). Not only do we communicate transactionally and interactionally (Brown & Yule, 1983), but also we often do both simultaneously (McCarthy, 2000). Engaging in small talk during service encounters is evidence of this and has been cited as playing a key part in service exchanges around the world (e.g., Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015 (Mexico and the United States); Márquez Reiter & Placencia, 2004 (Ecuador and Uruguay); McCarthy, 2000 (England and Ireland); Raevaara, 2011 (Finland); and Rigatuso, 2008 (Argentina)). Small talk, including “phatic communion” (Malinowski, 1972 [1923]), has been the subject of a number of works (e.g., Boxer, 2011; Coupland, 2000; Placencia & García, 2008; Schneider, 1988), as have refusals in speech act literature (e.g., Félix-​Brasdefer, 2008; Gass & Houck, 1999; Martí-​Arnándiz & Salazar-​Campillo, 2013). To date, however, there is no study that foregrounds the use of small talk as a strategy for attenuating the potential face threat of a refusal. The chapter is organized as follows: First, I define the key concepts used in this study and summarize the guiding theoretical framework (Section 2).

 151

Pragmatic variation by age 151 Next, I explain how the data were collected and analyzed (Section 3). The results follow: first, the extent to which PRST was employed as a mitigation and/​or rapport-​maintenance strategy in SEs (Section 4.1) and, second, in terms of how macrosocial factors affected its use (Section 4.2). A discussion of the results ensues (Section 5), with the conclusions presented in Section 6.

2.  Theoretical framework 2.1  Small talk According to Schneider (2008), small talk is “ ‘casual conversation,’ ‘social talk,’ or ‘interactional language’ ” (p.  102) that can occur at any point in a given exchange. It is akin to Boxer’s (2011) conceptualization of the “good” schmooze (as opposed to “brown-​nosing” or “sucking up”), which in Yiddish means “to have a satisfying verbal exchange that makes the participants feel good just ‘shooting the breeze’ ” (p. xiv). Regarding transaction-​interaction, Holmes (2000) locates small talk on a continuum between the purely transactional and the purely phatic. In the context of SEs, this view is echoed in Félix-​Brasdefer’s adaptation of Placencia and Mancera Rueda’s (2011) model of relational talk.1 Relational talk refers to “non-​obligatory talk that is embedded in transactional talk,” including “phatic exchanges, social talk (e.g. small talk and individualized talk), and transactional-​ plus-​ relational talk” (Félix-​ Brasdefer, 2015, p.  184). The utterances considered for the present analysis extend beyond ritualized phatic talk (Malinowski, 1972 [1923]) and pertain to the categories of “social” and “transactional-​plus-​relational” talk. The tenets and functions of small talk are various. With some exceptions, for example, the verbal banter or sparring characteristic of small talk in couples talk (Jaworski, 2000) or among young male coworkers (Holmes, 1995), the foremost tenets of schmoozing reflect Brown and Levinson’s (1987) positive politeness strategies of seeking agreement and avoiding disagreement (e.g., raising safe topics, such as general remarks about the weather, and repeating a portion of what the previous speaker said) (Schneider, 1988, p. 79). Other positive politeness strategies include noticing or attending to the hearer (e.g., complimenting), exaggerating interest in or approval of the hearer, using in-​group identity markers, joking, and asserting common ground (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Schneider, 1988). Functionally, small talk creates “ties of union” (Malinowski, 1949, p.  15), “oils the interpersonal wheels” (Holmes, 2000, p.  49), “enacts social cohesiveness,” and “reduces inherent threat values of social contact” (Coupland, 2003, p. 1). In SEs specifically, it “establishes and maintains social and interpersonal relations between the service seeker and provider” (Félix-​Brasdefer, 2015, p. 184) and creates “transitions into and out of transactional talk” (McCarthy, 2003, p. 3).

152

152  Heather R. Kaiser 2.2  Domain The nature and frequency of small talk is tied to the discursive situation and environment, which are, in turn, closely related to the concept of domain. A  domain is defined as a “cluster of social situations typically constrained by a common set of behavioral rules” (Fishman, 1972, p.  452) that relates language choices to certain spheres of activity. Domains, for example, family, social, religious (Boxer, 2002), “enable us to understand that language choice and topic […] are related to widespread socio-​cultural norms and expectations” (Fishman, 1972, p. 19). In the sense of shared sociocultural norms constraining linguistic use, we may consider domains to be communicative spheres of interaction across which types of talk can be compared. As will be seen, examining PRST within a domain-​based framework (i.e., as part of the business domain) will allow us to appreciate the nuances of the participants’ linguistic behavior. 2.3  Rapport orientation Further, the concepts of rapport and rapport orientation are helpful for understanding speech behavior in SEs. Rapport refers to an interlocutor’s “subjective perceptions of (dis)harmony […] in interpersonal relations” that are influenced mainly by interactional goals, face sensitivities, and one’s “sociality rights and obligations” (Spencer-​Oatey, 2008, p. 335). Rapport orientation has to do with the extent to which interlocutors are deliberately (non)politic (Watts, 2003) in their behavior and consideration of rapport. To this effect, Spencer-​ Oatey proposes four rapport-​orientation types: rapport enhancement, rapport maintenance, rapport neglect, and rapport challenge (for details concerning each type, see Spencer-​ Oatey, 2008). Regarding SEs, and based on Félix-​ Brasdefer (2015) (see Section 2.1), the assumed rapport orientation is that of rapport maintenance: to preserve or protect harmonious relations between service agents and clients. In other words, it is in the interest of both parties (agent/​ seller and client/​buyer) for the exchange to go well, but not necessarily to the point of strengthening interpersonal bonds (i.e., rapport enhancement). As will be shown, analyzing refusals from a rapport orientation perspective helps explain the extent to which agents and clients entered into social and transactional-​plus-​relational talk, that is, schmoozed, following a refusal/​ rejection made by one of the participants during a SE exchange. It also sheds light on the use of this speech behavior relative to other domains and why its absence in Rosarian SEs may open up the exchange to a nonpolitic interpretation. Macrosocial factors are also known to affect speech behavior (Labov, 1972). In this study, the participants’ age arguably had an effect on the use of PRST. Thus, the present study investigates the following research questions: RQ1: To what extent is PRST a strategy for mitigating rejection in Uruguayan SEs? RQ2: How does the age of the participant affect the use of PRST?

 153

Pragmatic variation by age 153

3.  Method 3.1  Setting The data for this analysis were collected in Rosario, Uruguay, in 2009 with the objective of recording spontaneous discourse in various domains of interaction (for details of each domain, see Kaiser, 2014). The city of Nuestra Señora del Rosario (abbr. Rosario) (pop.  10,085) (INE Uruguay, 2012) is located in the southwestern department of Colonia. Geographically, it lies 32 miles (51.5 km) from the department’s capital, the historic Colonia del Sacramento, which is a major access hub to Buenos Aires, Argentina, by ferry. Montevideo is less than a two-​hour bus ride to the southeast and is highly accessible by private and public transport. Present-​day Rosario boasts a central plaza where people come together to pass the time and conduct business transactions. In addition to banks, schools, medical facilities, transport hubs, and social establishments, this central area hosts a plethora of locally owned and specialized shops (bakeries, butcher shops, clothing stores, etc.). It is in these shops that the majority of SEs for this study occurred. 3.2  Data collection procedures To recruit participants for this study, the researcher relied on previously established contacts and the snowball recruitment method (cf. Bernard & Ryan, 2010), where one participant led to another. Ten Uruguayan women, ranging from 19 to 61 years of age, wore a lapel microphone attached to a digital voice recorder for three days as they went about their daily routine; they did not know that the researcher would be examining refusal strategies, small talk, or communicative behavior during SEs. The researcher obtained Institutional Review Board approval and, prior to recording, each woman signed an informed consent document. Her interlocutors gave verbal consent before, during, or after the exchange and received a copy of the consent form if interested. For public transactions, such as in SEs, it was accepted practice to let the speakers know that they had been recorded after the fact (A. Elizaincín, personal communication, April 12, 2009). Each woman completed a background information form, maintained a conversation log, and received monetary compensation for participating (see Kaiser, 2014 for details of the instruments used). The researcher accompanied the participant for the first day of recording to have an idea of her routine; thereafter, participants were left alone in order to minimize the effect of the observer’s paradox (Labov, 1972). After each day of recording, the women granted follow-​up interviews regarding their activities, the people with whom they interacted, and if there were any conversational exchanges that stood out to them in some way. Eight hours of recording per participant were selected; stretches of talk containing refusals were identified and transcribed (see Appendix A for the transcription conventions employed).

154

154  Heather R. Kaiser Six of the ten female participants engaged in refusal behavior during SEs. All were Spanish monolinguals from Rosario between 19 and 47 years of age who engaged with other Spanish monolinguals from the area (including men). These women self-​reported their socioeconomic status (SES), resulting in four of middle and two of lower SES. Four participants were themselves the agents (i.e., shop owners or service providers) in 12 of the SE exchanges (32% of the data). In most of the exchanges, however, the participants were the clients (26 sequences or 68% of the data). Table 8.1 summarizes their profiles. 3.3  Data analysis The unit of analysis is the refusal sequence. A refusal is typically a dispreferred response that “[fails] to engage in an action proposed by the interlocutor” (Chen, Ye, & Zhang, 1995, p. 121). Because refusals follow another turn at speaking or an initiating act and are often negotiated over several turns at talk, a refusal sequence minimally consists of at least one refusal prompted by an initiating act. In the SE context, initiating acts typically revolve around offers and requests for goods and services, with refusals stemming from conflicts with the wants, needs, or abilities of the agent or client. The researcher identified 243 refusal sequences overall, each receiving a code for domain: business, social, or domestic. Within the business domain, talk during SEs was distinguished from workplace talk, such as that between the participant and her superior, same-​status colleagues, or subordinates. The data derived from talk during SEs totaled 38 refusal sequences. The majority took place in small shops, where an agent behind a counter attended to customers one by one (n = 32); others occurred within larger stores (n = 2), a concession stand (n = 2), in a hospital (n = 1), and over the phone (n = 1). These refusal sequences were analyzed according to Spencer-​Oatey’s (2000) five-​step coding process: 1) Identify the initiating act and the utterance(s) with the intent to refuse. 2) Identify the head act and any supportive moves (Blum-​Kulka, House, & Kasper, 1989). 3) Determine the (in)directness of the refusal head act. 4) Code for internal modification, including downgraders (e.g., cajolers, understaters, syntactic and lexical hedges distancing one from the offense) and/​or upgraders (e.g., repetitions, emotional expressions, loud voice relative to surrounding talk). 5) Identify the strategy types involved in the utterance(s) (e.g., saying no, requesting information, giving an explanation). During the analysis process, it was noted that participants often engaged in small talk following a refusal. Hence PRST emerged as a post-​refusal strategy, typically involving an abrupt topic switch and occurring just after the refusal

 155

Pragmatic variation by age 155 Table 8.1 Participant profiles* Alias

Role

Age

SES

Job

Ela Fabiana

C A, C

19 31

Low Low

Isabel

C

31

Middle

Mar

A

34

Middle

Moqui

A, C

35

middle

Rena

A, C

47

middle

homemaker sitter/​nanny, homemaker shop owner, homemaker shop owner/​ chauffeur secretary, homemaker shop owner

Edurank

SE sequences

7 9

7 3

11

5

8

4

12

7

12

12

*“Alias” is the nickname created for the purposes of this study; “Role” denotes the participant’s role(s) in SEs, agent (A) or client (C); “Age” is the participant’s age at the time of the study; “Edurank” is the number of years of formal education, including technical training; “SES” refers to low or middle socioeconomic status; “SE sequences” equals the number of SE refusal sequences attributed to each participant.

head act and supportive moves. PRST was judged as either present or absent, and could have been initiated by either the participant or the addressee. As an example, the exchange in (1) illustrates how Isabel (client) follows her refusal of more produce (line 2) with PRST (lines 4-​5): (1) Isabel at the shop; the clerk and the store owner, Juan, are both male 1 CLERK:      nada más Isabel?=       ‘nothing more Isabel?=’ 2 ISABEL:      =no ((tenso)). ((pausa)) no        ‘=no ((tense)). ((pause)) no

nada más ((relajado)). nothing more’ ((relaxed

pronunciation)). 3 CLERK:      muy bien.=       ‘very well.=’ 4 ISABEL: ☞  =ta? ((al dueño)) tu nena Juan?       ‘=ok? ((to store owner)) your daughter Juan?’ 5 JUAN: ☞      bien de bien. ((voz alegre))       ‘good really good.’ ((voice upbeat))

The software MAXQDA (VERBI Software, 2011) and SPSS Statistics for Windows (IBM Corp., 2012) were used for qualitative analysis and limited statistical analysis.2 An outside coder analyzed 10% of the data, and the results indicated agreement of 90% or better for the majority of sequences. Though this approach was less stringent than calculating an intercoder reliability coefficient for each code, the agreement achieved inspires confidence that another researcher using the same coding method would yield similar results.

156

156  Heather R. Kaiser

4.  Results 4.1  Post-​refusal small talk (PRST) as a refusal strategy RQ1 probes the extent to which PRST was a strategy for mitigating rejection in the context of Rosarian SEs. First, it is insightful to take a wide-​scale view of the same participants’ behavior in relation to other domains of interaction and including the entire corpus of refusal sequences (n = 243). PRST occurred least in the domestic, more in the business, and most in the social domain; pairwise comparisons of domain types using the Independent-​Samples Kruskal-​ Wallis Test were significant at the .05 level (see also Figure 8.2). This supports the claim that the use of small talk in refusal sequences was dependent on the domain of interaction, and that the use of PRST in SEs was relatively likely as part of the business domain. Second, if we consider PRST as a “strategy type” for managing refusals (see step 5, Section 3), it is necessary to compare its use with that of other refusal strategies present in SEs. PRST occurred in 14 (37%) of the 38 SE sequences. This ranks PRST as the third most frequent strategy, after the head act “no” (in 66% of sequences) and “repetition/​reiteration” as an upgrader within supportive moves (in 47%). It was more frequent than the head act strategy “negating the proposition” (in 29% of sequences) and the supportive move “reason/​explanation” (also 29%) (see Kaiser, 2014 for more details concerning refusal strategies in the business domain). Thus, however (un)consciously, the participants drew upon small talk as a top-​five resource for navigating refusals in SEs. Third, it is important to note the extent to which PRST was used as a mitigation and/​or rapport-​building tactic. Though space does not permit analysis of all examples of PRST, each exhibited one or more tenets of small talk (Section 2). The tenet of agreement, for example, was apparent in seven PRSTs (e.g., =sí, por eso ‘=yeah, exactly’). In-​group identity markers through which the interlocutors claimed common ground via shared interpersonal knowledge were present in six examples (e.g., cómo anda Yasmín ahora ‘how is Jasmine doing now’). Laughter, showing support for the hearer’s line, and showing interest in the hearer personally were found in four instances each (e.g., ah sí?…mirá vos ‘oh really?…wow (lit. look you)’; para tener vos, para vender ‘so you can have it, to sell’). Compliments (e.g., también es lindo. es precioso ‘that’s nice too. it’s gorgeous’), inquiries into one’s well-​being, and mentions of family members (as in (1)) were other prevalent tactics of PRST. Also, in three sequences the agent and client claimed a common hardship, such as lamenting the lack of a certain product. The SE in (2), where Rena (participant/​agent) was unable to satisfy a client’s request, illustrates various cooperative tenets of PRST, including claiming common hardships (i.e., the lack of men’s scarves and the cold weather) (lines 15-​21):

 157

Pragmatic variation by age 157 (2) Rena (positioned behind the counter of her small shop) greets a female client unfamiliar to her who enters looking to buy a scarf for a man. 1 RENA: hola cómo andás?   ‘hi how are you?’ 2 CLIENT: andás bien?   ‘you doing well?’ 3 RENA: bien, vos?   ‘well, you?’ 4 CLIENT: bie:n.   ‘goo:d.’ 5 RENA: qué puede ser?   ‘what can I help you with?’ ((lit. what can it be?)) 6 CLIENT:  alguna bufanda de hombre o que pueda usar un hombre

una   ne:gra o algo?   ‘some kind of

men’s scarf or that a man could wear? a bla:ck one or something?’ 7 RENA:  a:y no, creo que no me queda nada/​. xxx. había una negra ahí→   ((pausa)) ahí-​ah pero capaz que para hombre no.    ‘a:h no, I  think that I  don’t have anything left/​. xxx there was a black one over there→ ((pause)) there-​ah but maybe not for men.’ 8 RENA:  ((mira la bufanda y verifica)) no no no. no. ésa no es para/hombre.   ‘((looks at the scarf and verifies)) no no no. no. that one’s not/for a man.’ 9 CLIENT: xxx 10 RENA: ((se ríe)) no, no me queda ninguna!   ((laughs)) ‘no, I don’t have a single one left!’ 11 CLIENT: no te queda nada.   ‘you have nothing left.’ 12 RENA: no. no [me queda—​   ‘no. [I don’t have—​’ 13 CLIENT: [marrón o algo xxx   [‘brown or something xxx’ 14 RENA: ningun-​ninguna ninguna ninguna.   ‘not a-​not a one, not a one, not a one.’ 15 CLIENT: ☞ pero qué cosa [xxx   ‘unbelievable [xxx’ ((lit. but what a thing)) 16 RENA: [se me terminaron. sí? no hay?   [‘they ran out. really? there aren’t any?’ 17 CLIENT:   ay no, en ningún lado.   ‘ah no, nowhere.’

158

158  Heather R. Kaiser 18 RENA: ahh! 19 CLIENT: bueno, [gracias.   ‘well, [thank you.’ 20 RENA: ☞ [yo tengo que ir a Montevideo pero hace mucho frío.   [‘I have to go to Montevideo but it’s so cold.’ 21 CLIENT: sí y el frío no da ganas de ir tampoco.   ‘yeah and with the cold you don’t feel like going out 22 RENA:   23 CLIENT:  

either.’ ((risita)) chau. ((short laugh)) ‘bye.’ qué pases bien. ((la clienta sale)) ‘have a good day.’ ((client leaves))

Example (2) depicts how the various points on the relational talk spectrum (Section 2) can occur in the space of a single encounter. Lines 1-​4 and 22-​23 are phatic talk (i.e., greeting and parting rituals), while lines 5-​8 constitute the strictly transactional portion of the exchange. After the refusal and supportive moves (lines 7-​8), the transactional quickly gives way to transactional-​ plus-​ relational talk: for example, warm laughter while reiterating the refusal (line 10)  and repetitions of previous turns (lines 11-​14), showing high involvement (Scollon & Scollon, 2001) with the interlocutor. With the refusal settled, social talk in the form of PRST begins in line 15 with the client’s complaint pero qué cosa ‘unbelievable (lit. but what a thing)’ about the widespread dearth of men’s scarves. Rena overlaps her complaint (line 16) with a syntactically hedged account (se me terminaron ‘they ran out’), but immediately follows it with a show of empathy and exaggerated interest toward the client (sí? no hay?…ahh! ‘really? there aren’t any?…ahh!’) in reaction to the client’s utterance (undecipherable, due to the overlap). In line 19, the client initiates a pre-​closing sequence with the discourse marker bueno ‘well,’ but Rena again overlaps (line 20) claiming that the cold weather has impeded her ability to travel to Montevideo, presumably to obtain more men’s scarves. To this the client agrees (line 21), sympathizing with Rena and, somewhat jokingly, also blaming the weather. As the strategies of this example and others reflect the principle tenets of small talk outlined in Section 2, these data support the claim of PRST as a mitigating strategy and as a way to maintain—​even build—​rapport in the wake of a refusal. 4.2  Post-​refusal small talk and age RQ2 deals with the extent to which PRST was dependent upon macrosocial factors such as interlocutor sex, participant education level, SES, and age. Frequency-​wise, PRST in SEs occurred more with women than with men;

 159

Pragmatic variation by age 159 however, relative to the number of sequences with female (n  =  27) and male (n = 11) interlocutors, the percentage of PRST was nearly equal: 37% with women and 36% with men. Thus, interlocutor sex seemed to have little bearing on the use of PRST. Furthermore, there were no significant differences found for PRST use within the business domain based on the participants’ education level or SES, though a larger data set might alter these results. The data point to participant age as playing a role in the extent to which PRST was used. The method for delineating age groups was based, first, on sorting the participants by age decades (twenties, thirties, forties, etc.) and, second, on comparisons with other studies that took age into account. Sorting the participants by decade closely corresponded with the age groups of Chapman, Dubra, Martínez-​Gil, & Tritica (1983) who studied yeísmo in Covarrubias, Spain. Hence the following age groups: 25 and under (younger), 26 to 40 (middle), and 41 to 61 (older). Table 8.2 details the number of refusal sequences per age category and the extent to which PRST was observed at three levels of analysis: in the overall data set, in the business domain (i.e. workplace and SE data), and in SEs only. PRST was most frequent among those of the middle age group, moderately frequent in the sequences of older participants, and least frequent with younger participants. Half of the SE data come from four women belonging to the middle age group, with one participant each in the younger and older categories. While it is possible that the results of the younger and older categories reflect individual idiolects, the pattern of PRST distribution favoring increased use among middle age participants was consistent at all levels of analysis mentioned above and, also, in the social domain (Figure 8.1 below). Table 8.2, detailed by years in Figure 8.2 (also below), shows that the middle age participants were the most productive in terms of PRST; they employed this strategy an average of 38% more than the Table 8.2 Refusal sequences (RS) and post-​refusal small talk (PRST) by age group at three levels of analysis*

RS overall (participants) PRST overall (%) RS business (participants) PRST business (%) RS SEs (participants) PRST SEs (%)

> 25 (younger)

26-​40 (middle)

41-​61 (older)

Total

39 (2) 7 (18%) 7 (1)

164 (6) 58 (35%) 67 (6) 27 (40%) 19 (4) 11 (58%)

40 (2) 10 (25%) 15 (2) 4 (27%) 12 (1) 3 (25%)

243 (10) 75 (31%) 89 (9) 31 (35%) 38 (6) 14 (37%)

7 (1)

*An example of how to read this table: participants aged 26 to 40 engaged in PRST in 11 out of 19 SE refusal sequences or 58% of the time.

160

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 15

20

25

Overall (n = 243)

30

35

40

45

50

Business (n = 89)

55

60 SEs (n = 38)

Figure 8.1 Percentage of PRST use by actual participant age (19-​61): overall, in business domain, and in SEs

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Younger Overall (n = 243) Social (n = 47)

Middle Business (n = 89)

Older SEs (n = 38)

Domestic (n = 107)

Figure 8.2 Percentage of PRST use by age group (younger, middle, older): overall, by domain, and in SEs

 161

Pragmatic variation by age 161 younger participants and 19% more than the older ones (this increases to 23% in the social domain). In SEs, pairwise comparisons of the middle and younger age groups were significant at the .05 level and, in the overall data set, bivariate correlation analysis revealed a positive correlation between PRST and age (.164, p Manuelito ‘ManuelD’), among other familiarity terms. Furthermore, Félix-​Brasdefer (2015) noted that in Mexican Spanish service encounters, there was a higher use of titles, honorifics, family names, and endearing terms than in US English. 12.2.3  Situational variation In addition to the domains of analysis previously studied in service encounter data, situational variation may have some effect on the discourse-​pragmatic strategies speakers employ. Placencia and Mancera Rueda (2011a) show that situational variation is important in considering the pragmatic strategies employed during a service encounter interaction. Their findings show that, in the case of requests made in bars with regular customers, participants used rapport-​building strategies such as the reciprocal use of T as well as engaging in rapport-​building talk. On the other hand, for service encounters in commercial zone bars where participants interact only sporadically, interactions showed higher rates of deferent strategies, such as the use of V (see also Padilla Cruz, this volume). The present study examined the following research questions: RQ1: What are the similarities and differences in request realization across the two Puerto Rican locations (Río Piedras and Toa Baja)? What are the prevalent request strategies in Puerto Rican Spanish service encounters?

 235

Effects of social distance 235 RQ2: What are the similarities and differences in the overall organization of the encounters across these two locations? RQ3: What are the forms of address employed during the course of a transaction?

12.3  Method 12.3.1  Setting A panadería in Puerto Rico is a café-​store where bakery products (e.g., bread, sandwiches), delicatessen items (e.g., ham, cheese), and beverages (e.g., coffee, milk, soda, juice) are sold. A basic interaction at a panadería involves a customer ordering at one station and picking up items that require longer preparation at a different station. Most of the transactional talk occurs at the main station where the orders are placed and paid for; this is where the recorder was placed for this study. These transactions are often fast-​paced, especially during peak hours. Moreover, the participation framework at a panadería aligns with Placencia’s (2008) definition of polychronistic participation, where a service provider might be taking more than one request at a time. 12.3.2  Data collection procedures I recorded transactions from two panaderías in the San Juan metropolitan area. The TB [+FAM] store is located in the residential community of Levittown, TB, while SJ [-​FAM] is located in a commercial district in Río Piedras, San Juan. As per ethnographic observations, both stores conduct business in an almost identical fashion; their main difference is the clientele. In the TB [+FAM] store, the customers are members of the neighboring community. Additionally, the owner of the store often works at the cash register or the main station. On the other hand, in the SJ [-​FAM] store, the clientele may come from anywhere within or outside of the city. The owner of the store informed me that they often get customers who live in municipios durmientes ‘dormant municipalities,’ which is a term used to address predominantly residential municipalities whose residents often commute to work in San Juan. Given its commercial location, the clientele in the SJ [-​FAM] panadería is much more diverse. I asked the shopkeepers, the employees, and the customers for permission to record the sale transactions. Oral consent was received from the shopkeepers and the employees. Additionally, a small sign was placed by the register informing customers of the study and giving them the option to opt out. I  transcribed the interactions that occurred during the first hour after each store opened in the early morning (6:00 a.m.) on two different days during the week. To provide data from transactions during peak hours, I also transcribed 15 minutes of the interactions that occurred during these hours on the same two days. These transcriptions included transactions taking place

236

236  Juan M. Escalona Torres from 11:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. in the TB [+FAM] store, and from 12:00 p.m. to 12:15 p.m. in the SJ [-​FAM] store. The peak hours were determined by the owners of each store. A total of 165 transactions were transcribed: 86 from Toa Baja and 79 from San Juan. Social factors such as the age and gender of the participants were not accounted for given the lack of a balanced sample, as well as the unreliable nature of impressionistic coding when dealing with voice recordings alone. 12.3.3  Data analysis I focused on three levels of analysis: the illocutionary, the discursive, and the stylistic domains (Spencer-​Oatey, 2000). At the illocutionary level,3 I analyzed the request (sub)strategies according to directness (Blum-​Kulka et al., 1989). I identified direct and conventionally indirect request strategies. Concerning the former, customers predominantly used commands (e.g., Dame ‘give meT’), assertions (e.g. Me das ‘youT give me’), and ellipticals (e.g., un café por favor ‘a coffee please’), as well as a few instances of want statements (e.g., Quiero un café ‘I want a coffee’). Indirect strategies, however, only surfaced as query ability statements (Me puedes dar un café ‘Can youT give me a coffee?’). The total number of requests analyzed in this part of the analysis was 260 (119 from SJ [-​FAM] and 141 from TB [+FAM]). At the discursive level, I looked at the openings of each transaction (165 openings: 79 in SJ [-​FAM], 86 in TB [+FAM]).4 Each opening was coded for two possibilities; namely, either the server or the customer initiates the transaction. The greeting may be unidirectional (i.e., only the server or customer utters it) or reciprocal (i.e., both server and customer exchange the greeting). Furthermore, rapport-​building talk was quantified in terms of its absence or presence, and compared statistically between stores. This type of digression in service encounters may occur during the opening sequence, during the transaction, and/​or during the closing sequence (see, e.g., Placencia & Mancera Rueda, 2011a). Lastly, at the stylistic level, all transactions were coded for the use of the T/​V distinction. These cases were identified either through verb morphology (e.g., Dame ‘give meT’ versus deme ‘give meV’) or the explicit appearance of subject, object, or prepositional pronouns (e.g., Se lo di ‘I gave it to youV’ versus Gracias a ti ‘thanks to youT’). I also included nominal address forms with a special focus on vocatives, such as the use of personal names, as well as respect terms or honorifics (e.g., Caballero ‘gentleman,’ dama ‘lady’), and terms of endearment (e.g., Papito ‘my man’ lit. daddy, amiga ‘friend-​F E M ’ ).

12.4  Results and discussion 12.4.1  Illocutionary level As for the request head act strategies, there were two broad categories: direct and indirect request head acts. Direct request strategies predominated in both

 237

Effects of social distance 237 Table 12.1 Distribution of request strategies by store Request Type

Direct  Command  Elliptical  Assertion   Want statement Indirect   Query ability Total

Store San Juan (-​FAM)

Toa Baja (+FAM)

Frequency

Frequency

%

%

53 41 16 1

44.5 34.5 13.4 0.8

58 66 13 2

41.1 46.8 9.2 1.4

8 119

6.7 100

2 141

1.4 100

stores: 93.3% (111/​119) in the SJ [-​FAM] store and 98.6% (139/​141) in the TB [+FAM] store. Indirect strategies, on the other hand, were extremely rare in the TB [+FAM] store, occurring in 1.4% (or 2 cases), and uncommon in the SJ [-​FAM] store, occurring in 6.7% (or 8 cases). With respect to the request substrategies, Table 12.1 shows that the most common direct substrategies in both stores were commands (SJ [-​ FAM] 44.5%, 53/​119; TB [+FAM] 41.1%, 58/​141) and ellipticals (SJ [-​FAM] 34.5%, 41/​119; TB [+FAM] 46.8%, 66/​141) (see [1a] and [1d] above for examples of command and elliptical requests respectively). In the SJ [-​FAM] store, commands ranked the highest at 44.5% (53/​119), and in the TB [+FAM] store elliptical requests were the most preferred strategy at 46.8% (66/​141). Assertions ranked third in both stores: 13.4% (16/​ 119) in SJ [-​FAM] and 9.2% (13/​141) in TB [+FAM] (see [1b] for an example of an assertion request). As for want statements (example [1c]), these were the least common among the direct request strategies (SJ [-​FAM] 0.8%, 1/​119; TB [+FAM] 1.4%, 2/​141). Lastly, all indirect requests were realized as query ability (see example [2]‌), which was seen in 8 cases (6.7%) in SJ [-​FAM] and 2 cases (1.4%) in TB [+FAM]. A Pearson’s chi-​square test showed that the differences between the two stores were not significant (df = 5, p = .101). However, it is worth noting a few slight differences between the two stores. First, in SJ [-​FAM], commands were used slightly more often than elliptical requests, with a 10  percentile point difference (commands 44.5% and ellipticals 34.5%), whereas in TB [+FAM], commands and elliptical requests were each used with similar frequency, with a 5.7 point difference (commands 41.1% and elliptical 46.8%). Second, in TB [+FAM], the preference for elliptical requests is much higher than that of SJ [-​FAM], with a 12.3 percentile difference between the two stores (SJ [-​FAM] 34.5% versus TB [+FAM] 46.8%). Finally, indirect requests were performed with much more frequency in SJ [-​FAM] than in TB [+FAM] (6.7% in SJ [-​FAM] versus 1.4% in TB [+FAM]).

238

238  Juan M. Escalona Torres As these results suggest, the present data corroborate findings about other varieties of Spanish, such as Peninsular (Bataller, 2015; Placencia, 2005), Mexican (Félix-​Brasdefer, 2012, 2015), and Ecuadorean (Manta) Spanish (Placencia, 2008). The two stores, however, differed somewhat in their use of direct strategies and internal modification devices. In SJ [-​FAM], imperatives were preferred over ellipticals. In TB [+FAM], on the other hand, elliptical requests and imperatives are preferred nearly equally, with a slight elevated use of ellipticals. As Blum-​Kulka and Olshtain’s (1984) schema indicates, ellipticals tend to be more direct than imperatives. That is, elliptical requests presuppose the responsibility of the server given the interactional context. In turn, the server must infer from the bare noun phrase that the customer is requesting an item. This higher level of directness in the TB [+FAM] store may be attributed to two possible scenarios. In one, the direct approach to the interaction may be a reflection of a higher level of trust and familiarity between customers and servers. The much higher preference for ellipticals in TB [+FAM] reflects higher levels of established rapport, which has allowed (regular) customers to feel less wary of the potential threat that their requests pose. Alternatively, this high level of directness may be signaling a different perception of rights and obligations within the service encounter genre, in which the speech act of request in a service encounter is viewed as a low-​level imposition. The other analytical element was the use of internal modification devices embedded in the request proper. There were a total of 49 internal modification devices used among the 260 request acts. Table 12.2 shows the distribution of the internal modification strategies by store. While internal modifications were not common in either store (SJ [-​FAM] 24.2%, 29/​120 and TB [+FAM] 14.1%, 20/​142), the two stores showed inverse results for the type of internal modification device used. In SJ [-​FAM], cajolers (11.7%; 14/​120) and politeness markers (8.3%; 10/​120) were used much more frequently than diminutives (4.2%; 5/​ 120). Among instances where modifications were used, the SJ [-​FAM] data show that cajolers made Table 12.2 Distribution of internal modification by store Internal modification

Cajoler Diminutive Politeness marker No internal modification Total

Store San Juan (-​FAM)

Toa Baja (+FAM)

Frequency

%

Frequency

%

14 5 10 91 120

11.7 4.2 8.3 75.8 100

6 12 2 122 142

4.2 8.5 1.4 85.9 100

 239

Effects of social distance 239 up 48.3% (14/​29) of them, and politeness markers made up 34.5% (10/​29), while diminutives were the least frequent (17.2%; 5/​29). On the other hand, in TB [+FAM], the more common strategy for internal modification was diminutives, which accounted for 8.4% (12/​142) of the requests, and 60% (12/​ 20) of all modifications. Cajolers and politeness markers were very rare in TB [+FAM]. Cajolers in this store made up 4.2% (6/​142) of the requests, while politeness markers were used to an even lesser extent, making up 1.4% (2/​ 142) of the data. The results of a Pearson’s chi-​square test indicated that these differences were significant (X2 [3, N = 262], p