27.2533, Review: Discourse; Pragmatics; Socioling: Fernández-Amaya, de la O Hernández-López (2015)

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Subject: 27.2533, Review: Discourse; Pragmatics; Socioling: Fernández-Amaya, de la O Hernández-López (2015)

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Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2016 13:26:06
From: Wei Ren [renweixz at yahoo.com]
Subject: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Service Encounters

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36124417


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-2657.html

EDITOR: María de la O  Hernández-López
EDITOR: Lucía  Fernández-Amaya
TITLE: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Service Encounters
SERIES TITLE: Studies in Pragmatics
PUBLISHER: Brill
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Wei Ren, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

Reviews Editor: Robert Arthur Cote

SUMMARY

Service encounters are pervasive in our lives and crucial to international
business. Research on service encounters is an interdisciplinary field.
However, this field has traditionally been related only to business and
marketing (p. 3) ( see Félix-Brasdefer, 2015) for a recent linguistic study on
this topic). The book “A Multidisciplinary Approach to Service Encounters”
edited by María De La O. Hernández-lópez and Lucía Fernández-Amaya consists of
contributions by marketing researchers, anthropologists, and linguists, and
thus provides readers with studies from various research perspectives.

Part 1, “Merging Communications Studies and Business” includes one chapter
only, which serves as an introduction. In Chapter 1, “Service Encounters and
Communication: Why a Multidisciplinary Approach?”, Fernández-Amaya and
Hernández-lópez provide a state-of-the-art review of research on service
encounters from an interdisciplinary standpoint followed by  an overview of
the following chapters. 

Part 2, “Online Service Encounters”, contains three chapters focusing on
online service encounters. In Chapter 2, “Setting the Linguistics Research
Agenda for the E-service Encounters Genre: Natively Digital versus Digitized
Perspectives”, Pilar Garces-Conejors Blitvich proposes a research agenda for
e-service encounter genre from a linguistic perspective. The author argues
that in order to ascertain the antecedents to e-customers’ satisfaction, a
first-order approach should be followed rather than analysts deciding what the
research foci on e-service encounters must be. The data was based on responses
to institutional/private surveys and the detailed responses of 30 informants.
The findings indicate that it is informed choice, rather than
customer/provider interaction, that is at the core of e-customers’ preference
for the online medium. The chapter also reviews some prominent theories
developed for Internet communication, for example, Social Presence Theory, the
Social Model of Deindividuation Phenomena, Media Richness Theory, the
Hyperpersonal Model, and the Uses and Gratifications Theory.

In Chapter 3, “Address Forms and Relational Work in E-commerce: The Case of
Service Encounter Interactions in MercadoLibre Ecuador”, María Elena 
Placencia investigates address usage in e-service encounters on the basis of a
corpus extracted from an online commerce platform in Quito, which had received
very little attention. Regarding pronominal address, it was observed that the
respectful << usted >> was still more frequently used than the familiar form
among both shoppers and sellers although the familiar form, << tu >>, was on
the increase. Omission of pronominal address was found to be more frequent
than the familiar << tu >> among shoppers, and it was the most frequent form
among sellers. Regarding nominal forms, the findings include that most users
opted for avoiding nominal forms. Among those who employed a nominal form,
there was a preference for the affiliative term of friendship, << amigo >>.
Differences between online and face-to-face service encounters were observed
in terms of the co-occurrence of pronominal and nominal forms, and the
co-occurrence of greetings and address forms. Individual variation is analyzed
and discussed as well. 

Chapter 4, “The Genre of Web-Mediated Service Encounters in Not-for-Profit
Organizations: Cross-Cultural Study” by Patricia Bou-Franch, examines
web-mediated service encounters in non-for-profit organizations based on a
corpus of 20 websites in Spain and the UK (10 in each country). The content
analysis of the non-for-profit organizations websites revealed that both
Spanish and British non-for-profit organizations were oriented to four
communicative purposes of the genre: providing information about organization
activities, offering any type of membership, asking to become a volunteer, and
asking for online donations. However, giving advice on the organization’s
cause was frequent in the British data but infrequent in the Spanish data.
Regarding politeness strategies, the analysis showed that both data sets
heavily relied on saliently positive politeness strategies. The saliently
negative politeness strategy of giving options was found to be recurrent in
all websites. 

Part 3, “Interpersonal Communication in Small Business”, investigates the
significant role of interpersonal communication and politeness in face-to-face
interactions in small businesses such as restaurants and cafeterias. In
Chapter 5, “Customer Perceptions of Politeness as a Differentiating Element in
Spanish Restaurants Encounters”, Antonio Carmona-Lavado and Hernández-lópez
examine the effect of employee’s politeness as perceived by customers
(university students in the study) on their evaluations of service encounters
in restaurant interactions. The results indicated that service quality,
expectancy disconfirmation, customer satisfaction, repurchase intention, and
recommendation were all positively influenced by perceived politeness. In
addition, customer delight, content, surprise, amazement, and happiness were
also positively influenced by perceived politeness. Thus, the results showed
that the evaluation of the customer experienced was enhanced by the presence
of politeness. 

Chapter 6, “Pragmatic Variation in the Performance of Requests: A Comparative
Study of Service Encounters in Valencia and Granada (Spain)” is a subnational
variational pragmatic study, in which Rebeca Bataller compares and contrasts
the performance of requests in service encounter interactions at cafeterias in
Valencia and Granada, two different regions in Spain. Analyses were conducted
at the illocutionary, discourse, and stylistic levels. At the illocutionary
level, the study examined request strategies and internal modifications. At
the discourse level, the study analyzed the use of phatic tokens at the
opening and request phases of the exchanges. At the stylistic level, the study
investigated the type of address pronoun and address terms that customers and
bartenders used to address each other. Overall, the Granada individuals
employed more interpersonal strategies and showed more solidarity with their
interlocutors than the Valencia participants. 

Part 4, “The Influence of Cultural Dimensions on Service Encounters”,’
explores the impact of culture on the development of the interaction in
service encounters. In Chapter 7, “The Impact of Cultural Dimensions on the
Engagement Markers of Spanish, British and US Toy Selling Websites”, Francisco
Miguel Ivorra-Pérez investigates the impact of cultural dimensions on the uses
of the engagement markers and words/phrases explicitly referring to or
building relationship with readers on Spanish, UK, and US toy-selling
websites. The findings demonstrated important differences in the use of
interactional meta-discourse strategies in English and Spanish, particularly
on Spanish and US toy-selling websites. To be specific, Spanish websites used
more indirect linguistic markers, like depersonalization strategies, to
interact with customers. US websites employed direct interactional strategies
to explicitly address consumers. However, British websites used a combination
of both direct and indirect linguistic markers.

In Chapter 8, “The Evolution of Communication with Foreign Population in
Medical Settings in Spain”, Raquel Lázaro-Gutiérrez explores the influence of
interpreters in the quality of communication with foreign population patients
with limited Spanish competence in healthcare service encounters in Spain. It
reports on some research results of the FITISPos-UAH (the Training and
Research on Public Service Translation and Interpreting) Group, which focused
on training and research in public service interpreting and translation. The
findings indicated that the assistance of a natural interpreter, who was
without formal training or qualifications, reduced the linguistic asymmetry
between healthcare staff and patients. In addition, interpreters in the
medical setting helped improve encounters between healthcare staff and foreign
population patients. 

Part 5, “Beyond Service Encounter Interaction”, explores issues that are
previously underexplored. Marilyn Merritt in Chapter 9, “Service Encounters in
the Natural World: Bringing Children Along discusses face-to-face service
encounters involving customers who bring along a baby, child, or youth
(typically offspring of the adult customer). Merritt carried out a small
ethnographic study by collecting observation data from naturally occurring
face-to-face interactions. The observations showed that service encounters
with children were a rich site for exploring the sociocultural socialization
of children’s acceptable and  appropriate behavior in service encounters. The
author analyzed the data with respect to territory and authority. The analyses
indicated that the presence of a child changed the dynamics of territorial
authority in the service encounters.

In Chapter 10, “The Role of Nonverbal Communication in Service Encounters”,
Sundaram Dorai and Cynthia Webster examine the role of four types of nonverbal
communication cues: kinesics, paralanguage, touch, and physical appearance, on
customers’ evaluations of service providers in service encounters in the North
American cultural context. With respect to kinesics, the chapter discusses the
positive role of smiling, light laughter, frequent eye contact, head nodding,
and head shaking. With respect to paralanguage, the chapter discusses speech
rate, pitch, pause, vocal intensity and inflection. In addition, touch and
physical appearance are discussed as well. The chapter ends with managerial
implications.

In the last chapter (11), “Seeking Attention: Testing a Model of Initiating
Service Interaction”, Sebastian Loth, Kerstin Huth and Jan P. de Ruiter
investigate people’s responses to identifying customers’ natural behavior when
bidding for attention. The authors aim to test a model of initiating service
interactions to enable a bartending robot to recognize customers’ intention. A
corpus of real-life customer-bartender interactions was recorded and
participants were required to imagine they were in the role of a bartender and
to assess whether the snapshot showed a customer bidding for their attention.
The results of the experiment showed that it was necessary for customers to be
right at the bar and to look at the bartender if they wanted to attract the
attention of bar staff. 

EVALUATION

This edited book has many strong points. First, this volume consists of papers
contributed by authors from various backgrounds such as marketing, healthcare,
anthropology, pragmatics, and communications. The collection is truly
multidisciplinary focusing on the same research interest, i.e. service
encounters. The scope it covers and the perspectives it provides will
definitely broaden readers’ knowledge on and deepen their insight into the
field of service encounters. Second, the chapters have considered issues that
are up-to-date and under-researched, or even ‘controversial or marginal in the
literature’ (p. 5). Many topics are in need of further exploration and
understanding, thus guiding interested readers for possible research
directions. Third, the collection integrates a series of various
methodologies. All the chapters are connected by providing different angles
that complete the topic of service encounters.

There are some limitations, however. First, the book relies on service
encounters in European contexts, with many chapters focusing on Spanish. More
studies are needed to explore service encounters in other contexts. Second, it
would be of benefit if the book included a chapter serving as a prologue to
summarize the studies according to their academic fields and methodologies and
to provide some systematic suggestions for future research. Third, it may not
be fair for such a multidisciplinary collection, but some chapters are rather
descriptive. It would be more persuasive if empirical analyses were included. 

To sum up, despite the few weaknesses indicated above, the book makes
important contributions to the existing literature of service encounters. It
consists of multidisciplinary studies from various research backgrounds and
explores many topics that are underexplored. In addition, the studies employ a
variety of methodologies, which will contribute to readers’ future research.
To conclude, this book is highly recommended for researchers and students in
the fields of linguistics, anthropology, and market research, particularly who
are interested in service encounters, and also to professionals in the
industries of tourism, health care, restaurants, hotels, and commerce.

REFERENCES

Félix-Brasdefer, J. César 2015. The Language of Service Encounters: A
Pragmatic-Discursive Approach. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Wei Ren is currently Professor of Applied Linguistics and a Yunshan Young
Scholar at the National Key Research Center for Linguistics & Applied
Linguistics at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China. His research
interests include L2 Pragmatics, Cross-Cultural Pragmatics, and Pragmatics in
English as a Lingua Franca Communication. His recent publications include a
monograph L2 Pragmatic Development in Study Abroad Contexts (Peter Lang) and
articles in Applied Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, Pragmatics, ELT
Journal, and System.





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