1.1 Introduction
This chapter focuses on regional pragmatic variation during the realization of the request for service in naturally occurring interactions in small shops in three varieties of Spanish, namely, Mexico City; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Seville, Spain. From a regional perspective, sociolinguistic differences have been observed at other levels of linguistic analysis across varieties of Spanish (phonology, lexicon, morpho-syntax) (e.g., Blas-Arroyo, 2005; Díaz-Campos, 2011), and little has been investigated with regard to similarities or differences in the norms of interaction by contrasting ways of speaking among Mexicans, Argentineans, and Spaniards. Mexico shows a complex dialectal regional distribution, ranging from four general regions (North, Central, Coastal regions, and the Yucatán Peninsula) to at least ten regional dialects. Mexico City belongs to the same dialectal region as Central Mexico and shows regional differences at the phonological and lexical levels (e.g., Lipski, 1994; Martín Butragueño, 2014). Buenos Aires Spanish belongs to Rio de la Plata Spanish, spoken on the southeast coast of South America. While many studies have given emphasis to the phonological, morphological, and lexical characteristics of Argentine Spanish (Lipski, 1994) and the alternation between voseo and ustedeo in Argentine Spanish (Kaul de Marlangeon, 2011), few have focused on the pragmatic uses of these characteristics in Argentinean service encounters in boutiques (Ferrer & Sánchez Lanza, 2002) and small shops (Yates, 2015). Finally, Seville Spanish is spoken in the autonomous community of Andalusia, which comprises one of the eight provinces of Southern Spain. Given the linguistic diversity of Andalusian Spanish, two main dialectal regions are identified as East and the West, and Seville belongs to the East region (García Moutón, 2014).
Adopting a variational pragmatics approach with a focus on region, we take a fresh look at the pragmalinguistic resources that Mexicans, Argentines, and Spaniards of the aforementioned regions use during the negotiation of service (Barron & Schneider, 2009; Félix-Brasdefer, 2015; Schneider, 2010; also, Schneider, this volume). Of the different levels of pragmatic analysis (formal, actional, interaction, stylistic), we focus on two: actional and stylistic. While the actional level looks at the realization of the request for service (head act and internal modification), in the stylistic level we focus on the selection of the pronominal forms tú/vos (T, “you-informal”) and usted (V, “you-formal”) and the use of nominal forms when addressing the vendor or the customer. For a review of service encounter interactions at other levels of analysis and in diverse contexts, see Félix-Brasdefer (2015, 2017), Márquez Reiter and Bou-Franch (2017), and Schneider and Placencia (2017).
This chapter is organized as follows. First, we provide a selective account of studies that examine intralingual variation across varieties of Spanish (Section 1.2). Second, we describe the data collection method used, including a description of the data (face-to-face interactions), the stores in each region, and data analysis (Section 1.3). Then, we present the results and discussion (Section 1.4). The chapter closes with concluding remarks and future directions (Section 1.5). The following convention superscripts are used in the examples: Tú = T, Vos = vos, Usted = V, Diminutive = D). In Spanish, vos (Argentina) and tú (México and Spain) (T, second person singular-informal) convey familiarity and solidarity, where usted (V) is used to show deference and respect.
1.2 Theoretical framework
With regard to requests, most research in cross-cultural pragmatics adopts Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper’s (1989) classification of direct and indirect requests. Unlike other languages (e.g., English) where conventional indirectness represents the predominant strategy during the realization of the request for service, interactions in Spanish service encounters are mainly realized by means of direct strategies (Félix-Brasdefer, 2015 [chapters 3, 4, and 5]; Placencia, 2008). Contrary to conventional indirectness (e.g., ¿Me puede vender un kilo de tomates? ‘Can youV sell me a kilo of tomatoes’), direct requests are realized by means of the following variants: performative (e.g., Le pido que me venda… ‘I request youV sell me…’), want need statements (e.g., Quiero/necesito… ‘I want/need’), elliptical requests (e.g., Un pan, por favor ‘bread, please’), assertions regarding the hearer’s course of action (e.g., Me da… ‘YouV give me’), or direct questions that are interpreted as a request for action by the interlocutor (e.g., Customer: ¿Tiene café? ‘Do youV have coffee?’ Vendor: Con o sin azúcar? ‘With or without sugar?’). Implicit requests are also common in service encounter interactions: The customer selects the product, shows it to the vendor and pays. Furthermore, the request head act can be modified internally by means of expressions such as the diminutive, a politeness formula, and epistemic verbs (e.g., Creo/pienso/parece ‘I think/believe/guess’) as well as the conditional and the imperfect to express distance and politeness.
In this section we provide a selective account of empirical studies that have examined pragmatic variation in the context of service encounters in face-to-face interaction in naturalistic contexts. Given that the present study focuses on the actional and stylistic levels, we will limit the discussion below to these two levels. For a general overview of pragmatic variation across the Spanish-speaking world in different contexts, see Félix-Brasdefer (2015, 2017), García and Placencia (2011), and Márquez Reiter and Placencia (2005, chapter 5).
1.2.1 Pragmatic variation in service encounter interactions
Research on service encounters has contrasted a few varieties at the national level. For example, Placencia (2005) examined 148 interactions in four small shops, two in Quito (68 interactions) and two in ...
