Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T15:52:25.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

When names fail: Referential practice in face-to-face service encounters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2008

ROBERT J. MOORE
ROBERT J. MOORE
Affiliation:
The Multiverse Network, 1923 Landings Drive, Mountain View, CA 94043, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Referential practice – the variety of ways in and through which speakers refer to things in social interaction – involves a range of very different methods. When referring to physical objects or processes in face-to-face interaction, people may choose from a variety of resources, including verbal categories, names, pointing, verbal descriptors, depictive gestures, and prop demonstrations. This raises the question: Under what circumstances do speakers choose particular resources over others? To address this question, this study examines referential practice in a particular kind of face-to-face workplace setting, the service counter of a quick print shop. At the service counter, not only do customers use alternative resources in referring to the document services they want, but these resources appear to be ordered relative to one another in terms of a preference for minimization. In referring to document services, customers first try the most minimal form, the official name, but if that fails or is unknown, customers fall back on more expanded forms of reference, such as pointing or depicting.

Keywords

gesturereferential practiceservice encounterconversation analysisvideo analysis
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 385 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Atkinson, J. Maxwell, & Heritage, John (eds.) (1984). Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., & Wilkes-Gibbs, D. (1986). Referring as a collaborative process. Cognition 22:1–39. [Reprinted in P. R. Cohen, J. L. Morgan, & M. E. Pollack (eds.), Intentions in communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990.]CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Garfinkel, Harold (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Charles (1986). Gesture as a resource for the organization of mutual orientation. Semiotica 62:29–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist 96:606–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, Charles (2003). Pointing as situated practice. In Kita, Sotaro (ed.), Pointing: Where language, culture, and cognition meet, 217–43. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Marjorie Harness, & Goodwin, Charles (1986). Gesture and coparticipation in the activity of searching for a word. Semiotica 62-1/2:51–75.Google Scholar
Hanks, William (1990). Referential practice: Language and lived space among the Maya. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hindmarsh, Jon, & Heath, Christian (2000). Embodied reference: A study of deixis in workplace interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 32:1855–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1972). Side sequences. In: D. Sudnow (ed.), Studies in social interaction, 294–338. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Gail (1987). On exposed and embedded correction in conversation. In Button, G. & Lee, J.R.E. (eds.), Talk and social organisation, 86–100. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordan, Brigitte, & Henderson, Austin (1995). Interaction analysis: Foundations and practice. Journal of the Learning Sciences 4(1):39–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendon, Adam (1980). Gesticulation and speech: Two aspects of the process of utterance. In Key, M. R. (ed.), The relation between verbal and nonverbal communication, 207–27. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendon, Adam (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard, Douglas W., & Clayman, Steve (1991). The diversity of ethnomethodology. Annual Review of Sociology 17:385–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNeill, David (1992). Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Merritt, Marilyn (1975). On questions following questions in service encounters. Language in Society 5:315–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, Bertrand ([1910]1953). Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. In his Mysticism and logic. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, & Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1979). Two preferences in the organization of reference to persons in conversation and their interaction. In Psathas, G. (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology, 15–21. New York: Irvington.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1972). Notes on a conversational practice: Formulating place. In Sudnow, D. N. (ed.), Studies in social interaction, 75–119. New York: MacMillan/Free Press.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1987). Analyzing single episodes of interaction: An exercise in conversation analysis. Social Psychology Quarterly 50.2:101–14.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A. (1996). Some practices of referring to persons in talk-in-interaction: A partial sketch of a systematics. In: B. Fox (ed.), Studies in anaphora, 437–85. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Streeck, Jürgen (1996). How to do things with things: Objets trouvés and symbolization. Human Studies 19:365–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whalen, Marilyn R.; Whalen, Jack; Moore, Robert J.; Raymond, Geoffrey; Szymanski, Margaret; & Vinkhuyzen, Erik (2004). Studying workscapes as a natural observational discipline. In LeVine, Phillip & Scoloon, Ron (eds.), Discourse and technology: Multimodal discourse analysis, 109–29. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Whalen, Jack; Zimmerman, Don H.; & Whalen, Marilyn R. (1988). When words fail: A single case analysis. Social Problems 35.4:335–62.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1961). Tractatus logico-philosophicus. D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness (trans.). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wootton, Anthony J. (1990). Pointing and interaction initiation: The behaviour of young children with Down's syndrome when looking at books. Journal of Child Language 17, 565–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmerman, Don (1988). On conversation: The conversation analytic perspective. In Anderson, J. (ed.), Communication yearbook 11, 406–32. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Google Scholar