Women and Small Talk in Public Settings: Close-Contact Service Encounters
Women and Small Talk in Public Settings: Close-Contact Service Encounters

Summary/Abstract: The paper has addressed talk in public settings with the view to delineating the differences between transactional and relational talk and to unravelling the role played by the latter in two types of service encounters that basically involve female participants: an encounter with the dressmaker and a another one with the beautician. Our analysis has shown that in service encounters it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear distinction between small talk and transactional talk, since the overall structure of service encounters reflects the existence of a continuum rather than the discrete units of small talk and task-oriented talk we perceive. We distinguished four broad types of talk in service encounters: (1) phatic exchanges (greetings, partings); (2) transactional talk or task-oriented talk (instructions, requests); transactional-plus-relational talk (non-obligatory comments and task evaluations); (4) relational talk (small talk, anecdotes). The analysis of the data belonging to the fourth type has shown that small talk serves both transactional and interpersonal goals: it allows the opportunity to build up a good, sociable ongoing relationship that will stand the test of time and other captive encounters.

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