Conflict management and complaints in service encounters
Conflict management and complaints in service encounters
This dissertation adopts a qualitative approach to conflict management and complaints in service encounters in English, using analytical tools from Cognitive Pragmatics and Interactional Sociolinguistics. Data are gathered using a mixed-method approach, combining sets from three different sources, including face-to-face communication from the TV documentary soaps 'Airline' and 'Airport', telephone conversations from the company 'Eurostar', and role plays based on two situations frequently occurring in the data sets of naturally-occurring discourse. This novel combination of data elicitations allows for a comparison ofrole plays and naturally-occurring discourse, testing role plays as to their value for drawing conclusions about actual speech behaviour, and as a source for speaker evaluations and expectations regarding norms and appropriateness in specific situational contexts. The analysis focusses on customer complaint behaviour, stressing the importance of viewing this speech event as one element of a multi-faceted problem-solving process, taking its discursive nature into account. The results of the close sequential analysis of the data highlight the importance that negative emotions such as anger and frustration have in a conflictual service encounter frame and reveal the interplay of key elements such as goal orientation and planning, power relationships, participant roles and expectations, and (im)politeness considerations. The thesis contributes to the field of politeness research by highlighting a paradoxical relationship between speaker expectations of normative behaviour, corresponding to traditional theories of politeness, and actual speaker behaviour, which runs counter to such expectations, using (im)politeness as a tool, and showing heightened awareness of impoliteness considerations predominantly for self and not for other.
University of Southampton
Kraft, Bettina
f0eaaa5a-e7bf-40d9-b521-dffdeccbd3f0
2007
Kraft, Bettina
f0eaaa5a-e7bf-40d9-b521-dffdeccbd3f0
Kraft, Bettina
(2007)
Conflict management and complaints in service encounters.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
This dissertation adopts a qualitative approach to conflict management and complaints in service encounters in English, using analytical tools from Cognitive Pragmatics and Interactional Sociolinguistics. Data are gathered using a mixed-method approach, combining sets from three different sources, including face-to-face communication from the TV documentary soaps 'Airline' and 'Airport', telephone conversations from the company 'Eurostar', and role plays based on two situations frequently occurring in the data sets of naturally-occurring discourse. This novel combination of data elicitations allows for a comparison ofrole plays and naturally-occurring discourse, testing role plays as to their value for drawing conclusions about actual speech behaviour, and as a source for speaker evaluations and expectations regarding norms and appropriateness in specific situational contexts. The analysis focusses on customer complaint behaviour, stressing the importance of viewing this speech event as one element of a multi-faceted problem-solving process, taking its discursive nature into account. The results of the close sequential analysis of the data highlight the importance that negative emotions such as anger and frustration have in a conflictual service encounter frame and reveal the interplay of key elements such as goal orientation and planning, power relationships, participant roles and expectations, and (im)politeness considerations. The thesis contributes to the field of politeness research by highlighting a paradoxical relationship between speaker expectations of normative behaviour, corresponding to traditional theories of politeness, and actual speaker behaviour, which runs counter to such expectations, using (im)politeness as a tool, and showing heightened awareness of impoliteness considerations predominantly for self and not for other.
Text
1204676.pdf
- Version of Record
More information
Published date: 2007
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 466524
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/466524
PURE UUID: 8968882c-1a7d-43b1-8d02-a43533a5a0fc
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 05 Jul 2022 05:37
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 20:45
Export record
Contributors
Author:
Bettina Kraft
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics