Aspects of polite behaviour in French and Syrian

Aspects of polite behaviour in French
and Syrian service encounters:
A data-based comparative study
VÉRONIQUE TRAVERSO
Abstract
This paper presents a data-based comparative study of polite behaviour in
French and Arabic (Syrian) service encounters. It focuses on the use of
conversational routines and rituals, which are not only an important component of interactions in any service encounter, but also a prominent characteristic of Arabic interaction. The first part of the paper is devoted to a
presentation of these two notions. The methodological problems raised by
contrastive data analysis are then discussed, especially that of choosing
comparable situations for conducting fieldwork, and of establishing a linguistic grid of reference for the contrastive analysis. The results of the
study presented in part four lead to a discussion of what appear to be
specific features of polite behaviour in the French and Syrian corpora. The
corpora are composed of interactions audio-recorded in small shops.
Keywords: ritual acts; conversational routines; French; Arabic; comparative study; service encounter
1. Introduction
This paper presents some results emanating from a contrastive study of
interaction in French and Syrian service encounters, carried out as a part
of a research programme on service encounters, developed in Lyons.
The aim of the programme was to examine variations in the interaction
depending on the types of shops and the culture involved (Kerbrat-Orecchioni and Traverso forthcoming).
Amongst the broad range of phenomena that are relevant for analyzing polite behaviour, the paper focuses on the use of conversational routines and ritual acts. This choice is due not solely to the fact that this
type of utterance is easily picked out in the data, or to the fact that
utterances of this sort are important in any service encounter as a means
Journal of Politeness Research 2 (2006), 105!122
1612-5681/06/002!0105
! Walter de Gruyter
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Véronique Traverso
by which participants come to an agreement on a frame for the interaction, but also and most importantly to the fact that they constitute a
prominent feature of Arabic interaction, a fact highlighted by a number
of researchers, among them Ferguson (1967, 1981, 1997). Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1996: 51) has defined politeness as “tous les aspects du discours
qui sont régis par des règles, et dont la fonction est de préserver le caractère
harmonieux de la relation interpersonnelle” (‘all those aspects of discourse
which are organised according to rules and whose function it is to preserve the harmonious nature of interpersonal relations’) and, although,
by this definition, routines and ritual acts make up only a small part of
the full range of politeness phenomena, they form a particularly interesting part. This is especially the case in the context of a contrastive study:
because of their pre-patterned nature, routines and ritual acts are interactional practices that are nearly invisible to the members of a given
culture while immediately noticed by outsiders.
2. Theoretical background
The notions of conversational routines and ritual acts do not derive from
the same theoretical background, the former being mainly related to a
linguistic approach of discourse and interaction, the latter to a sociological one. Coulmas’ definition of conversational routines emphasizes their
stereotyped feature:
Expressions whose occurrence is closely bound to specific social
situations and which are, on the basis of an evaluation of such
situations, highly predictable in a communicative course of events.
Their meaning is pragmatically conditioned, and their usage is motivated by the relevant characteristics of such social situations
(Coulmas 1979: 240).
The starting point for studying these components of discourse thus lies
in identifying pre-patterned uttterances. It is based on formal features
and is not necessarily linked, in the first analytical step, to any symbolic
value. Goffman, on the other hand, defines a ritual act as a “conventionalized act through which an individual portrays his respect and regard
for some object of ultimate value” (Goffman 1971: 62).
The core feature of rituals lies in their symbolic value, through which
a participant in a social encounter shows his good will towards his interlocutors and his attention to the social and situational context as a
whole. Ritual acts can be distinguished from the other acts achieved in
the course of a speech-event in that they possess a symbolic instead of a
functional or pragmatic value. In a service encounter, for instance, the
Polite behaviour in French and Syrian Service Encounters
107
act of requesting an item has, above all, a functional value, whereas
thanking for having been provided with that product has a symbolic
one. Similarly, in relation to the shopkeeper, we can distinguish between
functional acts such as eliciting information in order to be able to complete the transaction (“what is your size?”) and acts that are mainly
ritual such as thanking or well-wishing: even if they constitute devices
used in a commercial strategy and thus also have a pragmatic value, they
remain ritual acts.
I will not distinguish these two notions further for my purpose in this
paper1, but rather exploit the link between them, a link which is particularly useful in a comparative analysis. Most of the (verbal) ritual acts
are achieved by means of conversational routines. If we take the example
of service encounters, we could say that there is a small range of formulas (conversational routines) for accomplishing the ritual act of thanking
the shop-keeper for having provided the requested product (in French
merci, merci beaucoup, je vous remercie ‘Thanks, thanks a lot, I thank
you’). Conversely, routines are not always used to perform rituals: the
request for a product in a shop is generally achieved through the use of
a conversational routine (such as, in French, je voudrais une baguette s’il
vous plaı̂t ‘I would like a baguette please’), but it remains a functional
act, not a symbolic one, even if some of its linguistic components fall
within the sphere of politeness.
The aims of the study were, firstly, to identify the conversational routines in the data and then 1) to decide which of these routines are used
to perform rituals, and 2) to investigate the ways in which the French
and Syrian data differ in this respect.
3. A methodology for comparing speech events
The study is based on naturally-occurring events that have been audiorecorded in France and Syria. The methodology consists of comparing
those speech events, i. e., the activities that participants develop and the
devices they use in this context. This methodology raises the issue of
comparability at, at least, two levels. On one level, it requires comparability between the situations where the data are collected ! which consists of a sort of “external comparability”. The second level concerns the
interactional and linguistic reference for the description, i. e., the terms
in which comparison will be carried out (tertium comparationis).
3.1. The situations (external comparability)
In order to choose comparable situations in which to conduct fieldwork,
one can rely on the following very general classification of service encounters, which is based on minimal oppositions:
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3.1.1. Open or closed settings
This opposition distinguishes the small corner shop from the open marketplace. It has proved to play an important role in the choice of conversational styles (cf. Lindenfeld 1990).
3.1.2. Type of products purchased
Here I differentiate between those items which are foodstuffs or everyday
consumer items and those which are not. This characteristic has an influence upon several aspects of the interaction such as frequency, degree
of routinization, the extent to which talk is expected, types of verbal
activity etc.
3.1.3. Type of sales outlet, i. e., self-service stores versus other venues.
This distinction influences the whole of the participants’ behaviour (for
instance, their way of moving in the shop, the need to talk, the type of
verbal activity, etc.).
More than the shops themselves and what is sold in them (in the sense
of the grocer’s vs. the newsagent’s, for instance), it is the distinctions
which may be made according to these main defining characteristics that
are important. These features also enable us to categorize the shops into
types depending on the need to talk and on conversational styles (Traverso 2001a, 2001c).
The corpora for the present study were recorded in closed settings of
the “shop type”, selling non-foodstuffs and non-everyday consumer products.
The French corpuswas recorded in a shoe-shop in Lyons (Lepesant
1996).
The Syrian corpus was recorded in several shops in various districts
of Damascus (Cha’lan, Hamra, Jisr al-Abyad in the modern town, and
Souk al-Harı̂r (‘Silk market’) and Souk al-Sâgha (‘Jewel-makers’ market’) in the old town): sewing-shops, shoe-shops, cosmetics shops, jeweller’s, and clothes-shops (Traverso 2001a, 2001b, 2001c, 2002, forthcoming)2.
With respect to verbal activity, in these shops, the interaction generally
lasts a rather long time, as the customer chooses the products according
to a wide range of criteria (size, colour, comfort, price, taste, etc.). Most
of the time this choice involves trying the product on and the participants are generally expected to talk (explain, describe, give advice, justify
a choice or a refusal, etc.) in order to complete the transaction. For these
reasons, these shops can be described as “lengthy exchange shops” and
“speech intensive shops” (Traverso 2001c).
Polite behaviour in French and Syrian Service Encounters
109
3.2. Bases for the comparison (internal comparativity)
On this level, two main elements have to be specified:
An overall unfolding of the encounter (the script), that will be applied
as a basis for the comparison.
A grid of references for the analysis and comparison of routines.
3.2.1. The script
A very minimal script is enough for the comparison (a more detailed
one, such as that of Ventola (1983), might conceal points which are common to both corpora). The one used here is composed of the four phases
which allow us to categorize this speech-event as a service encounter:
Opening sequence of the encounter
Sequence including the request
(Payment sequence)
Leave-taking sequence
In the analysis, I will concentrate on the first two phases: the opening
and request sequences.
3.2.2. A reference grid for comparing conversational routines
The grid that is used to compare the types and use of routines is composed of four levels:
3.2.2.1. The occasion on which the routine is used
One and the same situation may trigger off a routine in the French interaction and not in the Syrian interaction, and vice versa. It is in terms of
presence/absence that the differences on this first level are to be described.
For instance, the entering of a customer in a shop may provoke the utterance of a formula in one of the corpora but not in the other.
3.2.2.2. The location of the routine in the speech event
Routines can have a more or less fixed place in the interaction. For
instance, terms of address are used in French and Syrian service encounters, especially by shopkeepers as part of their polite behaviour. The
analysis shows that in the French corpus they are usually positioned
along with greetings at the opening of the interaction (bonjour Madame,
‘good morning Madam’), whereas they are never positioned here in the
Syrian data, although terms of address are more frequent in Arabic interactions than they are in French ones3.
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3.2.2.3. The exchange organization
This level concerns two aspects of the routinized exchange, the degree of
expectation for a reactive move and its pragmatic nature. They can be
illustrated with the example of thanking.
The degree of expectation for a reactive move
A high range of frequency of thanking characterizes French service encounters. The exchanges in which they take place can be distinguished
according to the expectation of a third turn:
A- Act
B- thanking (merci, ‘thank you’)
A- minimization (de rien, ‘that’s nothing’)
According to the type of act that has been performed in the first turn,
the third turn is required or not. For instance, although in a service
encounter the customer’s “thank you” at the end of the interaction may
very well be followed by a shopkeeper’s returned “thank you” or minimization (third turn), this is not the case when the customer says “thank
you” after being given his change. In this situation, a third turn would
sound ill placed.
The pragmatic nature of the expected reactive move:
The reactive move expected after a thanking in French is generally a
minimization (de rien, ‘that’s nothing’) or a returned thanking (c’est moi
qui vous remercie, ‘it’s me that thanks you’), but is never a wish (“welcome”) or a blessing.
3.2.2.4. The fourth level concerns the linguistic realization of the routine
(paradigms of formulas and variants)
The French greeting formula is a totally frozen routine with the fixed
phrase bonjour (along with its expected response bonjour). To wish someone well, on the other hand, speakers use fixed structures (“bon " noun”
or “verb in the imperative mood " bien”) which can be realized in various forms (bon travail ‘good work’, bonnes vacances ‘good holidays’;
travaille bien ‘work well’, rentre bien ‘’Lit. come back (home) well’, etc.)
(Katsiki 2002). Compliments are even less predictable or formulaic than
greetings and well-wishing, though some recurring structures are to be
found in the manner in which they are formulated (Traverso 1996).
Polite behaviour in French and Syrian Service Encounters
111
4. Analyses
Within the two sequences that I have chosen to concentrate on in this
paper, i. e., opening sequences and sequences which include the request,
I have selected two exchanges for detailed analysis: the exchange including the request and the acceptance of the product.
In this type of transactional speech event, the request is uttered as a
reactive move, coming after an elicitation, and is generally followed by a
third turn acknowledging it. These three turns (elicitation-request-receipt
token) form the basic format of the “exchange including the request”:
Shopkeeper: request elicitation
Customer: request
Shopkeeper: acknowledgement of the request
As for the acceptance of the product, it is one of the possible alternatives
(refusal being the other one) that come after a more or less extended
string of talk that may consist of various activities (criticizing, eliciting
advice, bargaining, chatting, etc.). Once the acceptance has been uttered,
the participants generally begin to move towards the end of the transaction.
4.1. In the French corpus
4.1.1. The exchange including the request
(1) An old customer
1 Vde madame
2 Cle bonjour (.) j’aurais voulu des nu-pieds (.) j’pensais des Mephisto
par’c’que c’est pour mes problèmes de pied droit
3 Vde oui
4 Cle alors comme j’ai déjà des chaussures d’hiver Mephisto parce que
ça isole bien
5 Vde oui (.) quelle pointure vous faites Madame?
6 Cle alors j’fais du trente-huit à cause de c’pied
7 Vde d’accord on va regarder
(1) Translation. An old customer
1 SK
2 C
2 SK
Madam
hello (.) I was thinking of buying some sandals (.) I thought of
Mephistos because of the problems with my right foot
yes
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3 C
4 SK
5 C
6 SK
so as I already have winter Mephistos because they protect
pretty well *from the cold+
yes (.) what is your size Madam?
well thirty-eight because of this foot
okay let’s have a look
In this excerpt, in uttering the address term in line 1, the shopkeeper
simultaneously performs the opening of verbal interaction, the attribution of the turn to this particular customer and an elicitation of her request.
Line 2, after a reactive greeting, the customer makes her request, that
is acknowledged by the shopkeeper, line 4. The formulation of the request goes on line 5 and is followed line 6 by a second receipt token
(oui, ‘yes’).
The Lyonnese Research Programme on service encounters has shown
that requests in French small shops are generally softened by various devices4:
Indirect formulation of the request (in the form of an assertion je
vais prendre, je cherche, je voudrais, j’aurais voulu, ‘I’ll take’, ‘I’m
looking for’, ‘I would like’, ‘I would have liked’ or of a question
about the availability of the product: vous avez …?, ‘have you
got ...?’);
Use of past and conditional tense and mood (je voudrais/ je voulais/
j’aurais voulu, ‘I would like / I liked / I would have liked’),
Politeness formulas such as (s’il vous plaı̂t, ‘please’).
In the excerpt, we can notice the use of a past conditional (j’aurais voulu
des nu-pieds, literally ‘I would have liked sandals’ # ‘I was thinking of
buying some sandals’).
The third turn in the exchange, the acknowledgment of the request
(lines 4 and 6), is not routinized. It is uttered in the form of oui, which
is regularly the case in the data (in alternation with hm). It is noticeable
in this example that the shopkeeper makes regular use of address terms
(lines 1, 6).
4.1.2. Acceptance of the product
In this corpus, the most commonly used formula for accepting the shopkeeper’s proposal is: je vais les prendre, ‘I will take them’, oui je les
prends, ‘yes I’m taking them’ (or je prends les …, ‘I’m taking the … ones’,
when several shoes have been tried on):
Polite behaviour in French and Syrian Service Encounters
113
(2) The customer has tried several shoes on
Cle oui oui oui oui j’vais prendre le (inaud.) j’sais pas si je prends la boı̂te
Vde ben d’toute façon j’vais la garder hein
(2) Translation. The customer has tried several shoes on
Cle yes yes yes yes I’ll take the (inaud.) I don’t know if I’ll take
the box
Vde well anyway I’ll keep it’
The other attested formulation is linked to the specific situation of buying shoes: the customer has tried the shoes on and says that she will
keep them on. The two variants can be used successively:
(3) The customer is explaining that she sews her own clothes
Cle j’mets surtout des jupes comme ça parce que c’est moi qui les fais
(elle touche sa jupe) alors bon j’fabrique avec un bout de tissu
Vde ah bon
Cle oui mais avec des trucs simples hein (.) bon ben d’accord j’crois
qu’j’vais prendre ça
Vde (inaud.) pour faire ça toute seule
Cle oh mais je fais pas des choses difficiles hein (.) j’fais des choses
simples (.) même pour moi j’achète rien hein (.) j’arrive à me débrouiller (.) j’ai jamais appris mais j’- j’arrive comme ça (.) j’crois
que je vais même les garder
Vde les garder aux pieds ?
Cle ben oui
Vde voilà […]
(3) Translation. ‘The customer is explaining that she sews her clothes herself
C
I mostly wear skirts like that because I sew them myself (she points
to her skirt) so well I run them up from odds and ends
SK oh do you
C
yes but with easy stuff (.) right well okay I think I’ll take that
SK (inaud.) to make it by yourself
C
oh but I don’t sew difficult things (.) I sew easy things (.) even for
myself I don’t buy anything (.) I manage somehow (.) I did never
learn but ! I manage (.) I think I’ll even keep them on
SK keep them on your feet ?
C
well yes
SK here we are […]
The first point that can be made about these excerpts is that the acceptance of the product is slipped into a string of talk about other topics.
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The second point lies in the fact that, although the utterances used to
accept a product are somehow stereotyped, this is not at all the case for
the response they get to them. In fact, what comes after this acceptance
can hardly be considered as a response, it is talk focused on practical
matters such as the labels or the shoeboxes.
4.2. In the Syrian corpus
4.2.1 The exchange including the request
In a very similar way to what goes on in the French corpus, the first
turn of the exchange including the request in the Syrian corpus has no
specific linguistic realization. It is achieved either by the last formula
used in the opening sequence, more precisely at the end of the “welcoming activity” in this sequence: tfadø dø al, ‘if you please’, as in excerpt 4:
(4) Jisr al-Abyad! Vêtements 4
J Vd
?ahla u-sahla (.) tfadø dø alu
Cle min! fadø lak f=¯ barra bi-lwā ha qam=¯sø nesø kam
q
Vd
am=¯sø nesø kam baddik
nafso ?
J ‘SK welcome (.) if you
please {plur}
C
please there is outside in
the window a shortsleeved blouse
SK a short-sleeved blouse you
want the same one ?’
or by the pause that appears at the end of the opening sequence:
(5) Jisr al-Abyad- Vêtements 2
Cle jaøtø¯=ki l-øāfje
Vd ?ahlēn
J
(pause)
Cl2 tanōra bi-qijās=¯
Vde tanōra bi-qijāsek
Cl2 ?e
C
SK
J
C
SK
C
‘hello ‘Lit. God give you
strength’
welcome5
‘(pause)
a skirt in my size
a skirt in your size
yes’
The formulation of the request is more or less softened.
In example 5, the customer uses an ellipsis (“a skirt in my size”). This
usage is the only one in the data. More frequently, the request is performed in an indirect way, with a question on the availability of the product:
Polite behaviour in French and Syrian Service Encounters
115
(6) Souk al-Harı̂r- Tissus 1
Vd jā ?ahlan
!
J Cle ø f=¯ ?ndak qemā mdaqdaq ?ahø mar
Vd (il montre des rouleaux
de tissu exposés)
‘SK welcome
uh have you got any maJ C
terial with red spots
SK (he shows the dispayed
rolls of material)’
The question is found in two forms: f=¯ … ?, ‘is there?’ et øendak… ?,
‘have you (got)’ (or f=¯ øandak… ?, ‘have you?’). The politeness formula
min fadø lak/ik ‘please’ can be added, but it does not seem to be very frequent.
The third turn in the exchange, the receipt token, may come in the form
of a repetition:
(5) Jisr al-Abyad ! Vêtements 2
Cl2 tanōra bi-qijās=¯
J Vde tanōra bi-qijāsek
‘a skirt in my size’
‘a skirt in your size’
But it is rather performed in the form of a specific formula, which is
used by the one who is addressed a request, as in excerpt 7:
(7) Hamidiyyé ! Cosmétiques
!
Cle f=¯ øendak ¯= kehø le øarabijje
Vd kehø le øarabijje (.) ?e
bzzamalek jā
Cle (bruit très violent d’un
plateau qui tombe) bass
bednaha
tkūn ?asølijje mū
!
¯= [
J Vd
[?e øala øajni
‘C
SK
C
J SK
have you got arabic khôl
arabic khôl (.) yes I
gather it for you
(violent noise of a tray
that falls) but we want it
real not something [
[yes
“on my eye” [Equ. at
your service]
This formula øala øajni (Lit. ‘on my eye’), and its variants øala rāsi (Lit.
‘on my head’), øala rāsi u-øajni (Lit. ‘on my head and my eye’), of which
equivalent English formulas could be ‘willingly’ or ‘at your service’, is
frequently uttered in service encounters. It essentially has a ritual value,
as is shown by the fact that it may very well be performed before the
customer has finished uttering her request:
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Véronique Traverso
(8) Jisr al-Abyad ! Vêtements 5
!
Vd ?ahlēn u-sahlēn erfi
øajni tfadø dø ali
Cl2 al-blūz jilli [ “inaud.’
J Vd
[øa-rāsi tfadø dø ali
(Il les fait avancer vers le
fond du magasin)
‘SK welcome honour (me/us)
‘my eye’ if you please
C
the blouse which is
[ (inaud.)
J SK [‘on my head’ if you
please
(He makes them come further into the shop)’
In this excerpt, the shopkeeper utters the acknowledgement formula in
overlap with the customer’s request, so that he cannot hear which blouse
is requested.
4.2.2 Acceptance of the product
To accept the product, the customer resorts to one of a small
! range of
formulas that are very
close
to
those
used
in
French:
mā
¯=, ‘all right’
!
!
(Lit. it goes), ?e mā ı̄, ‘yes all right’, mā ¯= mnāχod wahø de, ‘all right we
take one’. But in contrast to what is generally the case in France, the
shopkeeper frequently utters a blessing as a following turn to the customer’s agreeing to buy the product. They come in the form of the mabrūk6 formula:
(9) Hamra ! Chaussures
!
Cl1 ?e mā ¯= l-bajdø a lakān
Vd ?ajj wahø de
Cl1 hajj!
J Vd mā ¯= (.) mabrūk
Cl1 ?aløøla ibārik f=¯k
(silence)
‘C
SK
C
J SK
C
yes it’s all right with the
white one then
which one?
this one
it’s all right (.) may it be
blessed
God bless you
(silence)’
This exchange is composed of a blessing formula in the first turn, that is
reciprocated in the second turn in a typical "“root-echo response” format
(Ferguson, 1967), built on the verbal root brk, ‘blessing, benediction’:
mabrūk ! ?aløøla ibārik f=¯k, ‘may it (this pair of shoes) be blessed ! God
bless you’. This mabrûk formula is generally uttered again in the closing
sequence of the interaction.
Polite behaviour in French and Syrian Service Encounters
117
4.3. Results of the comparison
Similarities and differences in French and Syrian interactions can be
summarized in the following way, which follows the successive activities
that are performed by the participants.
Eliciting the request
Although there are conversational routines for eliciting the customer’s
request in a shop, such as que puis-je faire pour vous?, ‘What can I do
for you?’ in French and tfadø dø al, ‘if you please’ in Arabic, none of them
is used in our corpora. It is often the last turn in the opening sequence
that also constitutes the first turn of the exchange including the request.
In the Syrian corpus, it can also be the pause left after it.
Formulating the request
In the French corpus, the request is performed in a routinized way, by
the use of few formulas, including indirect and softening devices:
je voudrais, j’aurais voulu, je cherche
‘I would like’, ‘I would have liked’, and ‘I’m looking for’
In the Syrian Corpus, the request is routinized through the use of even
fewer formulas, including indirect devices:
f=¯, øendak, f=¯ øendak
‘Is there?’, ‘have you got?’, ‘have you got?’
It is noticeable that in neither of the two corpora do the participants
make use of the imperative mood for performing their request (which
would, however, be possible in the two languages), but rather of indirect
acts (questions or assertions). In the French corpus, we find in addition
softening devices through the use of the conditional mood and past
tense, which is not the case in the Syrian corpus.
Acknowledging the request
In the French corpus, acknowledging the request is not routinised. All
goes on as if the participants were, first and foremost, oriented towards
the next step of the interaction, that is the actual completion of the
request by the shopkeeper’s proposal of a product that will meet the
customer’s needs.
In the Syrian corpus, the acknowledgement of the request by the shopkeeper is routinised, either by a repetition or by the use of a ritual formula
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øala øajni, øala øajni u-rāsi
‘at your service’, ‘willingly’ {Lit. ‘on my eye’, ‘on my eye and my
head’}
With that response, the exchange is led to a verbal completion point. It
must be emphasized that this exchange is frequently not connected with
the transaction as such, as the acknowledging third turn in the exchange
is uttered in overlap with the request. Therefore, the act performed is
more the acceptance of a request in general than that of receiving a
specific request for a given product.
Accepting the product
In the French corpus, this act is routinized. It is performed with one of
a small range of formulas, in the present tense or more frequently in the
immediate future tense:
je vais le prendre, je vais prendre les … (specifically for the shoes
when the customer wears it on je les garde, je vais les garder)
‘I’ll take it’, ‘I take the ... ones’, (‘I’m keeping it’, ‘I’ll keep it on’)
Similarly in the Syrian corpus, the act of accepting the product is routinized. The few formulas used in the corpus are built in active participle
form:
!
!
mā ¯=, ?e mā ¯=
‘it’s all right’, ‘yes it’s all right’ (Lit. It goes)
Another similarity between the two corpora concerns a point that has
been emphasized by Kerbrat-Orecchioni for French: “[…] dans les magasins français, on ne vend ni n’achète, on “donne” et on “prend”: il
s’agit d’ “euphémiser” la relation marchande, en gommant son caractère
“vénal”” (2001: 110, note 12) (‘in French shops, objects are not bought
or sold, they are “taken” or “given” : this is a way of “euphemizing” the
commercial aspect of the relationship, obscuring its “venal” quality’).
We find the same avoidance of the verb “to buy” in the Syrian corpus.
A semantic difference can nevertheless can be underlined, related to the
choice of the verb: whereas in French the choice of “to take” implies a
grammatical subject in the first singular person (I) referring to the customer, in Arabic, the verb “to go” is conjugated in the third singular
person referring to the product (‘It’s OK’). Therefore, the acceptance
sounds much more like an assessment of the product.
Another difference lies in the fact that, in French, this acceptance of
the product is slipped into talk about other topics, and thus is not uttered
as constituting the first part of an exchange.
Polite behaviour in French and Syrian Service Encounters
119
Acknowledging the acceptance of the product
In the French corpus, no conversational routine is used as a reactive
move after the acceptance for buying the product. The next turn that
comes after this acceptance is focused on the practical side of the
transaction (keeping the shoes on, taking the shoebox or not, etc.).
In the Syrian corpus, acknowledging the acceptance of the product is
performed with the mabrūk formula, that entails the root-echo response
ibārik f=¯k. These two turns form a ritual exchange, that marks a boundary into the transactional sequence for, after it, no more talk about the
item (like bargaining about its quality or about its price) takes place.
5. Concluding remarks
In order to draw a conclusion, I will turn back to the four level grid of
description presented in part 3. As for the occasion on which a routine
is used, except the fact that the opening sequence lasts longer in the
Syrian data than it does in the French, due to the fact that an actual
welcoming activity is acted out in Arabic, no culturally specific occasion
appears. On the level of the location of the routine in the speech event,
no noticeable difference between the two corpora has been identified,
either. The similarity between the two corpora on these two levels constitutes a sort of after-the-event justification for the comparison: the events
are similar enough to allow a relevant comparative analysis.
On the level of the linguistic realization of the routine (paradigms of
formulas and variants), the exchanges that have been studied do not
permit us to identify a significant difference between the two languages
(but see Traverso forthcoming). The main difference lies in the organization of the routinized exchange. It is illustrated by the two cases of acknowledging the request with a specialized formula and of acknowledging the acceptance of the product.
The formulas used for acknowledging the request in the Syrian corpora are glossed by native speakers as expressions of closeness and familiarity. They are also presented as deference markers (as they are used
to address a superior: a boss would certainly not use them for his employee). They are widespread in the frame of commercial relationships,
where they keep these two values of affectivity and deference.
The acknowledgement of the acceptance of the product is described
by Ferguson as an “acquisition-wish”: “At the purchase or receiving by
gift of a new article the one who is acquiring the item is addressed with
a wish that the new article may serve him well and happily and he replies
with a root-echo response. For instance, at the purchase of a piece of
clothing the shopkeeper or a bystander might say malbūs l-hana “clothing of happiness” and the purchaser ?aløøla jhann=¯k, or the exchange could
120
Véronique Traverso
be the more general one mabrūk “blessed” ?aløøla jbārek f=¯k” (Ferguson
1997: 223)
This difference in the organization of the exchange can be interpreted
in several ways. First, we can sum up by saying that a reactive move
after a formula is less frequently performed in French than in Arabic.
This tendency has also been brought to the fore with other data (Traverso 1998, 2001c, forthcoming), it could be called a preference for exchange completion. Second, in the French corpus reactive moves are less
routinized than they are in the Syrian corpus. In the French corpus,
when a receipt token is uttered after a formula, it is generally not a
formula. In the Syrian corpus, not only is a reactive formula used in this
situation, but it is also chosen on the basis of the initial formula, and
built in the format of a root-echo response. This difference has also been
identified in other data (Traverso 1998, forthcoming).
The last comment leads us back to our initial issue, concerning the
link between conversational routines and ritual acts. The comparison
has shed light on the fact that some acts that are achieved in the form
of a simple conversational routine in French, become ritual acts in Arabic. Thus, whereas in the French corpus acknowledging a request is no
more than a practical matter, dealt with by a functional act, in the Syrian
corpus it becomes the occasion for stating a certain type of relationship
and for assuring the co-participant of one’s good will.
In conclusion, it can be said that politeness in French and Syrian
service encounters does not emerge from the same elements in interaction. It has been shown, in numerous studies in the Lyonnese research
programme that French service encounters are particularly polite, as
participants use many linguistic devices such as minimization, additional
devices and substitutive devices (see for these notions, Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1992). This study has shown that, though Syrian interaction contains
fewer of these devices, polite behaviour is expressed throughout the interaction through ritual acts, which are produced in a systematic way
and which tend to transform it into a real “little ceremony of everyday
life”.
Transcript notation
In the Arabic corpora, the API transcript does not claim to correspond to the most
complete and comprehensive phonetic version
! vowels: brief vowels i, u, a, e, o, e; long vowels
! ¯=, ū, ā, ē.
! consonants: ?, b, t, s, z, h
», χ, d, z [d], r, z, s, , »s, d
», »t, »z, ø, ø, f,
w, j.
q
/q, k, l, m, n, h,
Polite behaviour in French and Syrian Service Encounters
121
C means customer, SK means shopkeeper.
The numbering of lines is arranged so that the numbers in the Arabic and English
translations correspond.
[
#
(.)
[...]
is used for simultaneous utterances and overlapping utterances.
is used for contiguous utterances
notes a very short pause. Silences (between turns) are noted (silence).
Non verbal actions are described within parentheses, in italics.
(inaud.) notes an inaudible passage.
indicates that a part of the dialogue has been excised.
Notes
1. This point is examined in Aijmer (1996) and in several papers in Coupland (2000).
2. An important difference between the two corpora is the fact that the shopkeepers
in the Syrian shops are almost always men whereas they are women in the French
shop. This gender aspect is not taken into account in this study. It would require
appropriate data (allowing comparison between what goes on between male/female shopkeepers and male/female customers). Such a study would certainly underscore the overwhelming importance of gender in interactional behaviour in
Syrian interaction (some elements can be found in Traverso forthcoming).
3. For an analysis of address terms in French, Lebanese and Tunisian service encounters, see Dimachki and Hmed (2002).
4. Trinh Duc Thai (2002), Hmed (2003), Dumas (2003), Kerbrat-Orecchioni (2001,
and this issue).
5. This exchange C: jaøtø¯=ki l-øāfje ! SK: ?ahlēn ’C: hello ‘Lit. God give you strength’
! SK: welcome’ is the more usual greeting exchange in the Syrian data. The
shopkeeper’s part in it consists of one of the variants of ’welcome’ (?ahlēn, ?ahlan,
?ahla). This exchange is frequently followed by a “welcoming activity” performed
by the shop-keeper with formulas by which he invites the customer to enter further in the shop and he welcomes him/her (for instance tfadø dø al ‘if you please’, as
in excerpt 4) (Traverso 2001c).
6. This exchange takes place when fairly valuable items are being bought which
are not foodstuffs (for foodstuffs there are other formulas, which refer to the
customer’s health)
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