Loughborough University Institutional Repository The order of ordering: analysing customer-bartender service encounters in public bars ThisitemwassubmittedtoLoughboroughUniversity’sInstitutionalRepository by the/an author. Additional Information: • A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University. Metadata Record: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/14293 Publisher: (cid:13)c Emma Richardson Please cite the published version. This item was submitted to Loughborough University as a PhD thesis by the author and is made available in the Institutional Repository (https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/) under the following Creative Commons Licence conditions. For the full text of this licence, please go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ THE ORDER OF ORDERING: ANALYSING CUSTOMER-BARTENDER SERVICE ENCOUNTERS IN PUBLIC BARS by Emma Richardson A DOCTORAL THESIS Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy at Loughborough University February 2014 © Emma Richardson 2014 Acknowledgments Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Elizabeth Stokoe for encouraging me to begin this journey. I can’t thank Liz enough for her support and guidance over the past three years. Liz has always gone above and beyond her role as a supervisor; I am so grateful to her for taking me on as her student. I appreciate, and I am thankful in more ways than I can express, for her investment in me, and my research. Secondly, my thanks go to Charles Antaki for supervising my second year of study. I give thanks to Charles for creating a space to engage in thoughtful debate about my data, my findings and my future. I am extremely thankful to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), for funding my research and providing me with the means to undertake this project. At Loughborough University, particularly within the Social Sciences department, I have been provided with a supportive learning environment full of people who are always willing to help with whatever is needed. I offer my thanks to the Discourse and Rhetoric Group (DARG). The members, and visitors, of this group have contributed to nurturing my conversation analytic skills; the group is an invaluable resource. I also thank members of the group for their interest, comments, and suggestions on my data. My thanks are also given to colleagues of the Loughborough Qualitative Digital Research Laboratory (LiQUiD Lab), past and present. In particular, I thank Nicola Clarke and Gareth Wiltshire for their friendship. Through this group, and the members within it, I’ve had the chance to meet and work with some exceptional PhD students who have enriched my personal and academic development over the past three years. i To Sarah Lewis, Jo Meredith and Pauline van Romondt Vis, you three have been an absolute joy to share this experience with. I thank you for your engaging conversation, for office yoga, for your tolerance of my relentless, dramatic, exclamations of “I hate my life”, as, in reality, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. Additional thanks go out to Chloe Shaw, who I started this journey with; thanks for showing me the ropes! I’d like to thank all of my friends outside of university; who have each supported me in different, but equally important, ways over the last three years. I thank them for the wine and the listening ears, for the nights out, for the nights in, for always understanding when I have to miss an event due to ‘work’. My friends are all brilliant and I don’t know what I would do without them. Special thanks go out to my dear friend Chloe Mcsweeney. You are always interested in my research, always proud of my achievements and I’m so pleased I get to officially thank you for the last seven years. I thank you for listening to me, no matter what the problem, no matter what the hour, no matter how many times you have heard the same problem. I also send my thanks to Danny Ball for his continued interest and support, “You’re always there when I call, but you’re never on time”. Much love to you friends. Finally, I give thanks to my family. I extend a huge thank you to my parents who have prioritized my education for seven long years. In reading this, you can both breathe a sigh of relief. I couldn’t put into words the gratitude I feel for the sacrifices you have made to advance my gains. Because of you two, I’ve achieved more than I ever dreamed of. Thank you for believing in me. I dedicate this thesis to Terrence William Bradford, my Grandad. Over the years, my Grandad has taught me if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing right and that no job is impossible; there is always a way. Consider that lesson learned. ii Material based on the research of Chapter 4 has been published in part as: Richardson, E., & Stokoe, E. (in press). The order of ordering: Requests, objects and embodied conduct in a public bar. In T. Heinemann & M. Rauniomaa (Eds.). Interacting with things: The sociability of objects. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. iii Abstract This thesis will explore how customers and bartenders accomplish the service encounter in a public house, or bar. Whilst there is a body of existing literature on service encounters, this mainly investigates customer satisfaction and ignores the mundane activities that comprise the service encounter itself. In an attempt to fill this gap, I will examine how the activities unfold sequentially by examining the spoken and embodied conduct of the participants, over the course of the encounter. The data comprise audio -and video- recorded, dyadic and multi- party interactions between customer(s) and bartender(s), occurring at the bar counter. The data were analyzed using conversation analysis (CA) to investigate the talk and embodied conduct of participants, as these unfold sequentially. The first analytic chapter investigates how interactions between customers and bartenders are opened. The analysis reveals practices for communicating availability to enter into a service encounter; with customers being found to do this primarily through embodied conduct, and bartenders primarily through spoken turns. The second analytic chapter investigates the role of objects in the ordering sequence. Specifically, the analysis reveals how the Cash Till and the seating tables in the bar are mobilized by participants to accomplish action. In the third analytic chapter, multi-party interactions are investigated, focusing on the organization of turn-taking when two or more customers interact with one or more bartenders. Here, customers are found to engage in activities where they align as a unit, with a lead speaker, who interacts with the bartender on behalf of the party. In the final analytic chapter, the payment sequence of the service encounter is explored to investigate at what sequential position in the interaction payment, as an action, is oriented to. Analysis reveals that a wallet, purse, or bag, may be displayed and money or a payment card retrieved, iv in a variety of sequential slots, with each contributing differentially to the efficiency of the interaction. I also find that payment may be prematurely proffered due to the preference for efficiency. Overall, the thesis makes innovative contributions to our understanding of customer and bartender practices for accomplishing core activities in what members come to recognize as a service encounter It also contributes substantially to basic conversation analytic research on ‘openings’, which has traditionally been founded on telephone interactions, as well as the action of requesting. I enhance our knowledge of face-to-face opening practices, by revealing that the canonical opening sequence (see Schegloff, 1968; 1979; 1986) is not present, at least in this context. From the findings, I also develop our understanding of how objects constrain, or further, progressivity in interaction; while arguing for the importance of analysing the participants’ ‘semiotic field’ in aggregate with talk and embodied conduct. The thesis also contributes to existing literature on multi-party interactions, identifying a new turn-taking practice with a directional flow that works effectively to accomplish ordering. Finally, I contribute to knowledge on the provision of payment, an under-researched yet prominent action in the service encounter. This thesis will show the applicability of CA to service providers; by analysing the talk and embodied conduct in aggregate, effective practices for accomplishing a successful service encounter are revealed. v Table of contents Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................... i Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iv Table of contents ..................................................................................................................... vi Table of figures ......................................................................................................................... x Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: The social life of the bar: A literature review .............................................. 6 1.0 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 6 1.1 What we know about bars ................................................................................................ 6 1.2 What we know about service encounters ......................................................................... 9 1.3 What we know about workplace and institutional studies ............................................. 12 1.3.1 CA studies of service encounters on the telephone ............................................... 16 1.3.2 CA studies in face-to-face service encounters ....................................................... 18 1.4 What we don’t know about service encounters ............................................................. 22 Chapter 2: Methodology ................................................................................................. 25 2.0 The problem ................................................................................................................... 25 2.1 Approach to data collection ........................................................................................... 25 2.2 Locating the research setting ......................................................................................... 27 2.3 The ethical considerations .............................................................................................. 31 2.3.1 The bar managers .................................................................................................. 31 2.3.2 The bartenders ....................................................................................................... 32 vi 2.3.3 The customers ........................................................................................................ 33 2.4 The data .......................................................................................................................... 36 2.4.1 Preparation of the data ........................................................................................... 37 2.4.2 Transcription of the data ........................................................................................ 38 2.5 Conversation analysis: Talk and embodied conduct ...................................................... 44 2.5.1 Basic concepts in conversation analysis ................................................................ 46 2.5.2 Turn-taking ............................................................................................................ 46 2.5.3 Turn design and action .......................................................................................... 47 2.5.4 Sequence organization ........................................................................................... 48 2.6 Analytic steps taken ....................................................................................................... 49 Chapter 3: Opening encounters at the bar counter ...................................................... 51 3.0 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 51 3.1 Openings in interaction .................................................................................................. 52 3.1.1 Openings on the telephone .................................................................................... 52 3.1.2 Face-to-face openings ............................................................................................ 55 3.2 Analysis.......................................................................................................................... 59 3.2.1 The practice of hovering ........................................................................................ 60 3.2.2 Opening interaction with “You all right” .............................................................. 73 3.2.3 Practices for identifying the next customer ........................................................... 77 3.2.4 Customer speaks first ............................................................................................ 84 3.3 Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 90 vii