Revisiting Service Encounter Genre – Some Reflections

Abstract

Service encounters between the customer and the server are everyday interactions whereby some commodity (material and/or linguistic goods) will be exchanged. This paper argues that the rich nature of service encounters is best revealed by multisystemiotic analyses (semiotically oriented systemic-functional analyses; the term ‘systemiotic’ was first introduced in Ventola 1988). The analyses involve considerations of traditional linguistic levels and e.g. non-verbal behaviour which are seen to be realising other kind of semiosis, register organisation in contexts of situations and genre organisation in contexts of culture, as suggested e.g. by Martin (1992). Genre displays an understanding of our cultural systems and highlights intercultural contrasts when ‘things are achieved differently’. Register captures the richness of activity-and-object orientations (Field), interactant relations (Tenor), and various communication media realisations (Mode) possible in these encounters. Language analyses (discourse semantics, lexicogrammar, phonology/orthography) capture a detailed and integrated analysis of the language used in particular instances. In addition to the linguistic level analyses, we also need to consider other semiotic realisations of genre and register and thus always also attempt to cover the various multimodal and multimedial realisations in any interaction. Although modelling these semiotic relations and justifying them by detailed linguistic (and non-linguistic) analyses has advanced considerably, there still are various areas where there is considerable amount of work to be done. The present contribution reflects on the previous work and attempts to highlight some of the ‘fuzzy’ areas concerning these planes and makes some suggestions on how to enhance the previous exploratory work.