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5 - Attributing the Decision to Buy

Action Ascription, Local Ecology, and Multimodality in Shop Encounters

from Part I - Constituents of Action Ascription

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2022

By
Lorenza Mondada
Edited by
Arnulf Deppermann  and
Michael Haugh
Arnulf Deppermann
Affiliation:
Universität Mannheim, Germany
Michael Haugh
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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Summary

This chapter deals with action ascription in shop encounters. The study relies on video-recordings in cheese shops in twelve European countries and focuses on sequences in which the seller recognizes when the client has taken the decision to buy, even if s/he has not explicitly announced or manifested it, and displays this ascription in order to progress to the next phase of the encounter. The study analyses the sequential environment of such events, the local ecology of the activity and the multimodal resources the participants rely on for ascribing actions. Decision-making and the ascription of that decision by the other party is a crucial moment in a sales encounter. When a customer hesitates which product to buy, the seller often offers a sample to taste. After tasting, the client decides whether to buy. In this sequential environment, positive assessments (“excellent”), as well as minimal responses (“yes”, or a nod) are treated as grounds for ascribing the decision to buy to the client. The analyses highlight the role of embodied actions in the ascription of action and the multimodal formatting of the actions preceding it, showing the relevance and intricacy of these praxeological and sequential environments.

Keywords

action ascriptionmultimodal interactionshop encountersbuying/sellingconversation analysis
Type
Chapter
Information
Action Ascription in Interaction , pp. 105 - 132
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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