‘Are These Ones to Taste?’: Critical Moments in Persian Shops in Sydney

Abstract

Service encounters are ubiquitous in everyday life whereby commodities and information are exchanged between service providers and customers. A service encounter is by nature a goal-oriented speech event. However, goals at service encounters are not simply limited to achieving business transactions. Rather, they incorporate a range of social and discursive practices. This study investigates potential and actual critical moments that occurred in a Persian shop in Sydney which impacted upon the participants’ social interactions. Using Mediated Discourse Analysis, the study provides theoretically informed explanations of the nature of the conflicts demonstrating how these conflicts between the shop-owners and their customers are variously magnified and what strategies the participants have employed to resolve them.

In this paper, I use the term ‘Persian’ in the sense that it typically connotes the history, ethnicity and culture of which these retail shops are examples.

Transcription Conventions

(.):

pause of less than one second

↑:

marked rising intonation

↓:

marked falling intonation

(1.0):

pause timed to nearest second

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each colon indicates further lengthening of a sound

ones :

underlining indicates a stressed word or syllable

[:

Squares brackets aligned across adjacent lines denote the start of overlapping talks

]:

the point at which overlap stops is marked by right-hand square brackets

(( )):

A description enclosed in a double bracket indicates a non-verbal activity Alternatively double brackets may enclose the researcher’s comments on contextual features

yeah=:

Equals signs indicate no break or gap

hhh:

Laughter syllables

( ):

Unclear speech or noise to which no approximation is made