A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

Task-Completing Assessments in Service Encounters




AuthorsJan Lindström, Catrin Norrby, Camilla Wide, Jenny Nilsson

PublisherTaylor & Francis

Publication year2019

JournalResearch on Language and Social Interaction

Journal acronymROLSI

Volume52

Issue2

First page 85

Last page103

Number of pages19

ISSN0835-1813

eISSN1532-7973

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2019.1581468

Web address https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2019.1581468

Self-archived copy’s web addresshttps://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/40650519


Abstract

This study examines positive low- and high-grade assessments in service encounters between customers and salespersons conducted in Swedish and recorded in Sweden and Finland. The assessments occur in a regular sequential pattern as third-turn moves that complete request-delivery sequences, longer coherent requesting sections, or request sequences in a pre-closing context. The positive valence of the assessments coheres with the satisfactory outcome of task completion, but their function is primarily pragmatic, used for segmenting the flow of task-oriented institutional interaction. The assessments stand as lexical TCUs, and their delivery is characterized by downgraded prosody and the speaker’s embodied shift away from the other. The analysis reveals distributional differences in the interactional practice: Customers produce task-completing assessments more often than the salespersons, and high-grade assessments are more frequent in the data from Sweden than from Finland. The data are in Sweden Swedish and Finland Swedish with English translations.


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Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 19:21