The bargaining genre:A study of retail encounters
in traditional Chinese local markets
W I N N I E W.  F.O R R
Department of Linguistics &TESOL
Box 19559
University of Texas at Arlington
Arlington,TX 76019-0559
orwf@uta.edu
A B S T R A C T
This article characterizes a spoken genre,bargaining,found in retail encoun-ters in traditional markets in southern China.Analysis of substantive acts in 38tape-recorded interactions shows that verbal and nonverbal actions within the event carry a small set of illocutionary forces germane to negotiating price a
nd quantity.Analysis of ritual acts that mark boundaries of the event shows that participants behave primarily as outgroup persons seeking to transact business.Bargaining hence constitutes a primary genre (Bakhtin 1986),a textual form that shows domination of a transaction frame over a consultation and a valet frame,and a communicative purpose that is tightly circumscribed around the exchange of commodities and not relationship.A socially oriented form of genre analysis is apt for elucidating the speakers’strategic use of generic resources,as well as investigating development in retail marketing in the PRC,marked by growing popularity of new retail outlets and changing consumer attitudes.(Bargaining,discourse of negoti-ation,spoken genre,service encounter,traditional Chinese markets.)
I N T R O D U C T I O N
The vital role played by encounters between different kinds of service personnel and their clients has attracted the attention of various groups of researchers.Among those are language analysts who are drawn by the regularities in the form of the interaction to see service encounters as constituting a genre,and to seek to describe its schematic structure.To begin,the researchers create a data-set for analysis by collecting instances of service encounters that they have intu-ited as being of “the same kind”(Ventola 1987:3).The analysis that follows consists of identifying the common linguistic features shared by all instances of service encounters.Hasan 1989,for example,focuses on the level of convers
a-tional moves and identifies the Generic Structure Potential (GSP)for service encounters,which comprises a set of elements that defines the “total range of textual structures available within a genre”(Hasan 1996:53).Ventola 1987ap-proaches the topic by considering similarities in lexico-grammatical choices made Language in Society 36,73–103.Printed in the United States of America DOI:10.10170S0047404507070042
©2007Cambridge University Press 0047-4045007$12.0073
W I N N I E W.  F.O R R
on the planes of conversational structure,lexical cohesion,reference chain,con-junction,and boundary marking in instances of service encounters.The linguis-tic description produced of the genre serves two further purposes:classificatory and predictive.To classify an event as belonging to the genre of service encoun-ters,Hasan1989looks within the speech event for the obligatory elements in the service encounter GSP:Sale request,Sale compliance,Sale,Purchase,Purchase closure.The presence or absence of optional elements such as Greeting or Finis would classify the events as belonging to different subgenres.Similarly,Ventola 1987argues that the similar lexico-grammatical realizations of the different planes of ,conversational structure,lexical cohesion,reference chain) would clas
sify the events in her data as belonging to the genre of service encoun-ters;the differences in the realizations would classify the events as having dif-ferent registers.1To predict how service encounter discourse will unfold,Hasan 1978,for example,hypothesizes that given the same contextual configuration (values of Field,Tenor,and Mode)in a situation,the instances of service encoun-ters that are produced will resemble one another in having the same optional GSP elements,and in having the GSP elements sequentially organized in the same way.Although Ventola1987makes no explicit claim that her work is pre-dictive,both Fawcett(who penned the forward for the book)2and Ellis1989,in a review of the book,infer generative or predictive properties in her description of lexico-grammatical choices in service encounter texts.
Genre studies that focus narrowly on describing textual forms and typologies have given rise to some misapprehensions.In a review of Ventola1987,Ellis questions the theoretical status of her notion of genre:“It remains unclear,how-ever,whether genres are generative or actualized systems,since V addresses this point only parenthetically”(1989:859).He goes on to criticize her theoretical position in the book as being“circular”:
It is difficult to shake the feeling that V uses her knowledge of the service-encounter genre to predict certain patterns of cohesion and reference.Then, when she finds these patterns,she uses their existen
ce as proof of the linguis-tic realization of generic structure.(Ellis1989:861)
What Ellis finds problematic in Ventola’s work,I suggest,results from a lack of social orientation in the narrow conception of genre in some studies of“type-ness”in instances of service encounters.A purely linguistic or textual approach to genre is prone to the danger of confusing the description of the“what”of genre with explanation of the“why.”
A broader conception of genre is found in the work of researchers such as Kress1985,1987,Swales1990,Martin1992,Bhatia1993,Lemke1994,and Hanks1996.Here,the communicative purpose of the social event is taken to be the defining property of a genre and a privileged criterion for member texts (Swales1990),which typically exhibit patterns of similarity in terms of content, 74Language in Society36:1(2007)
T H E B A R G A I N I N G G E N R E
speaker orientation,and textual organization.This is so because social events,as Kress1985observes,are often more or less thoroughly structured in terms of the participants’goals,the conditions that give rise to them,the expectations and constraints on behaviors,and so on.From this perspective,a genre is a“conven-tionalized communicative event”(Bhatia1993),or as Johnstone(2002:1
genre
58)puts it,“a recurrent verbal form(or‘text type’)associated with a recurrent purpose or activity.”A more elaborate definition of genre that highlights its dual nature as both a linguistic entity and a cultural artifact is found in Swales1990.The defi-nition is later adapted by Bhatia,who claims that a genre is
a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of communicative purpose(s)identified and mutually understood by the members of the profes-sional or academic community in which it regularly occurs.Most often it is highly structured and conventionalized with constraints on allowable contri-butions in terms of their intent,positioning,form and functional value.These constraints,however,are often exploited by the expert members of the dis-course community to achieve private intentions within the framework of so-cially recognized purpose(s).(Bhatia1993:13)
Following this definition,a proper analysis of genre should involve asking the following three questions:
1.What is a distinct grouping of texts recognized by a community as consti-
tuting instances of the same communicative event?
2.What are the linguistic forms and structures characteristic of the group of
texts?
3.What do these textual characteristics tell us about the socioculturally rec-
ognized purpose(s)that are being fulfilled by the genre and the conditions of the situation within which the texts occur?
The present study aims to provide a socially oriented characterization of the spoken genre found in retail encounters in traditional Chinese local markets.The culturally familiar genre is sometimes referred to metalinguistically in the local dialect3as si5coeng4maai5maai6‘market buying and selling’.In the follow-ing section,I describe the traditional markets and small shopping centers where the discourse data were collected,and the method used.To characterize the genre, I shall first examine what is contained within the speech event by analyzing substantive ,those actions whose performance directly pertains to the task at hand).I will show that moves for negotiating price and quantity dominate the speech event.I then turn to examining where the boundaries for the speech event are placed by analyzing ritual ,those actions that function to sig-nal interpersonal relations).I will show that shoppers and vendors engage with each other primarily for the purpose of transacting business.I then summarize the analysis by arguing that the everyday event of buying and selling in local Language in Society36:1(2007)75
W I N N I E W.  F.O R R
markets constitutes a primary genre(Bakhtin1986)that has a tightly circum-scribed communicative purpose of exchange of commodities,rather than social relations.I will also conclude with some remarks on the importance of a socially oriented form of genre analysis.
T R A D I T I O N A L L O C A L M A R K E T S A N D S M A L L S H O P P I N G M A L L S To outsiders,the local market can be a daunting place.It appears chaotic,with some vendors who rent designated spots from local market authorities,and others who have more informal arrangements,simply displaying their wares on the ground.A broad center aisle divides the market into two halves:On one side is the wet market,with stalls that sell meat,vegetables,fruit,and so on; on the other side is the dry market,with stalls that sell inexpensive clothes, shoes,household products,and various gadgets.The stalls are rarely parti-tioned and are identified by a casually displayed license with the vendor’s num-ber on it.The interactions are brief and functional.Shoppers rarely spend more than a couple of minutes at a stall and move swiftly from one to another.Except between vendors and longtime customers,interaction is usually minimal.Dur-ing the bustling periods from7:and4:,the market is a noisy,dirty,and rather chaotic place,but nevertheless robust, dynamic,and efficient.The market brings together a mix of people with a wide range of regional backgrounds.Some merchants and shoppers are from the local area,but there are al
so many immigrants from other provinces who can be heard speaking Cantonese,the local dialect,with heavy accents from their home towns.Recently,a lot of the small businesses in the dry market have moved into small,downscale shopping malls for the comfort of air con-ditioning and the convenience of adjacent facilities such as restrooms and eateries.
Over a nine-month period in1998,I conducted ethnographic observations of a local market in southern China and a small shopping center in the neighbor-hood.I was able to observe the goings-on in the market and the shopping mall rather inconspicuously because these are naturally busy places during certain hours of the day.The data for this article include38audio recordings of natu-rally occurring interactions between salespersons and customers recorded over several weeks.Friends and family members who are local residents(except for two females who were visitors)agreed to help with collecting the data for the project by carrying small tape recorders on their daily trips to buy food and other necessities,as well as weekend visits to shops that sell leisure items.Occasion-ally I accompanied them(with my companion being the primary shopper).Other times I observed them at a distance.The customers in the data include both males and females,and teenagers as well as middle-aged persons,all of whom are na-tive speakers of Cantonese.The recordings were played back to the shoppers, 76Language in Society36:1(2007)
T H E B A R G A I N I N G G E N R E
who confirmed that they represented typical instances of the everyday event of buying and selling in local markets and shopping malls.
S U B S T A N T I V E A C T S:C O N T E N T S O F M A R K E T R E T A I L
E N C O U N T E R S
Previous studies of service encounters in different cultural ,Mitch-ell1957,Hasan1989,French2001)have shown that the array of activities that salespersons and customers may engage in fall into three generally groups.The GSP for service encounters proposed in Hasan1989,for example,contains the following obligatory and optional elements:Greeting,Sale Initiation,Sale Enquiry,Sale Request,Sale Compliance,Sale,Purchase,Purchase Closure,Finis. Using the different kinds of activities that previous studies have identified as the basis,I posit three potentially operative frames in service encounters.The first is a valet frame,in which an attender waits on the attended,ascertain-ing his or her wants and needs and striving to satisfy them.The second is a consultation frame,in which the professional provides expert opinions and advice to the client,with or without prompting by the latter.The last is a trans-action frame,in which the seller and buyer seek to sat
isfy their competing economic interests and maximize their personal gain.The activities involved in the valet and consultation frames make up what is generally thought of as“ser-vice,”which is ancillary to and supportive of the activity of negotiating an exchange in the transaction frame.The three frames,thus,are often inter-twined in service encounters.
In this section I focus on substantive acts,those actions whose performance pertains to the task(s)to be accomplished in the encounter.I will show that a wide range of verbal and nonverbal forms that commonly occur within market retail encounters are consistently and predictably produced and interpreted within a transaction frame as having one of a small set of illocutionary forces.In the first subsection,I examine talk that revolves around the topic of price,which is by far the most common topic in market interactions.In the second subsection,I turn to talk related to the product in two different environments:pre-and post-initial offer.In the third subsection,I summarize the findings on substantive acts. Price talk
Interaction in market negotiations often revolves around the topic of price:ask-ing about the price of merchandise,naming the price,complaining about and justifying the price,and so on.This section will show how different kinds of price talk(including verbal and nonverbal actions)are produced and interpreted as acts of soliciting,making,or rejecting an offer,which make up the minimal set of bargainin
g moves belonging to a transaction frame in which buyer and seller negotiate price and quantity.
Language in Society36:1(2007)77

版权声明：本站内容均来自互联网，仅供演示用，请勿用于商业和其他非法用途。如果侵犯了您的权益请与我们联系QQ:729038198，我们将在24小时内删除。