Diana Hornoiu -
The Discourse of Service Encounters in Post Communist Romania: Iconicity and Polite Routines of American Descent
(pag. 127-140)
The research reported in this study is based on the analysis of empirical data gathered in McDonald’s restaurants in Constanta and Bucharest. The corpus contains 100 excerpts which are uncontrolled samples of face-to-face naturally occurring interactions in service encounters and amounts at approximately 5 hours of face-to-face naturally occurring interactions in service encounters. The data have been gathered through ethnographic observation by noting down on paper (immediately after the interaction) the natural speech event in which the researcher was a passive participant without revealing his role and identity. Two types of talk have been identified within the matrix interchange transactional talk having to do with eliciting customers’ orders and payment and an ‘overlay’ of small talk. Both components, transactional and phatic, are realized exclusively by formulaic sequences. The preliminary analysis of the data has shown the interaction to be conducted on an impersonal level. No detail of the interaction relates to the customer in any way: the interaction is pre-patterned, predictable, simplified. The aim of the paper is to establish the patterns of reception regarding the phatic component reduced to formulaic sequences in the context of a positive-politeness oriented communicative ethos.