Rapport management by Spanish learners of English as an L2 at the opening phase of interaction in the tourist information office: A pragmatic analysis

RAPPORT MANAGEMENT BY SPANISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH AS AN L2 AT THE OPENING PHASE OF INTERACTION IN THE TOURIST INFORMATION OFFICE: A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS NURIA MARTÍNEZ LÓPEZ MANUEL PADILLA CRUZ EUSA and University of Seville RESUMEN Este trabajo analiza la gestión de las relaciones interpersonales por parte de estudiantes de inglés como L2 en Turismo en la fase inicial de la interacción en una oficina de turismo. Basado en los trabajos de Spencer- Oatey (2000, 2008, 2009) y Brown y Levinson (1987), explora las estrategias de cortesía que estos estudiantes emplean en tres sistemas de cortesía (Scollon y Wong-Scollon 1995) para gestionar sus relaciones sociales con su L2. Con ello, examina si el comportamiento de estos estudiantes en dicha fase interactiva difiere significativamente del de los hablantes nativos. Palabras clave: gestión de las relaciones interpersonales, estrategias de cortesia, sistemas de cortesia, oficina de turismo, fase inicial. ABSTRACT This paper analyses rapport management at the opening phase of interaction by Spanish students of English as an L2 in Tourism at the tourist information office. Based on Spencer-Oatey’s (2000, 2008, 2009) and Brown and Levinson’s (1987) works, it explores the politeness strategies these learners use in three politeness systems (Scollon and Wong-Scollon 1995) to manage rapport through their L2. Thus, this work examines whether these learners’ behaviour significantly differs from native speakers’. Keywords: rapport management, politeness strategies, politeness systems, tourist information office, opening phase. 1. INTRODUCTION Rapport management (Spencer-Oatey 2000, 2008, 2009) conceives of communication as aimed at transmitting information and establishing, maintaining or modifying social relationships. This paper applies its theoretical tenets to the analysis of interaction between L2 learners of English at a tourist information office. In this context, rapport management is essential, for one of the functions of such office is to dynamize tourism. Efficient rapport management may have positive outcomes and contribute to make tourism a thriving industry. Moreover, rapport management by the staff achieves a special relevance when it is not carried out in their native language, but in an L2, as there may arise pragmatic failures. Therefore, this work explores the linguistic means wherewith future professionals of the tourist industry manage rapport through their interlanguage in order to isolate possible problems. Due to space restrictions, the analysis will only focus on the opening phase of interaction. This paper firstly summarises the main theoretical concepts of Spencer-Oatey’s framework and relates them to the interactive context of this study. Secondly, it explains its methodology. Thirdly, it presents the analysis and a brief discussion of the data collected. Finally, it offers some conclusions. 2. RAPPORT MANAGEMENT AT THE TOURIST OFFICE Spencer-Oatey (2000, 2008, 2009) contends that interaction is governed by sociopragmatic interactional principles that social groups internalise and tacitly take for granted. She puts forward that, when defining, maintaining or modifying social relationships, interlocutors manage three contextual parameters: (i) face sensitivities, (ii) sociality rights and obligations, and (iii) interactional goals. Face is “[…] the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (Spencer-Oatey 2000: 14). It is related to dignity, honour, status, reputation and competence and has two aspects: quality face and identity face. The former alludes to every person’s desire to be positively evaluated by others on the basis of their personal features and skills, while the latter refers to everyone’s wish to be acknowledged within a group on the basis of more personal traits. At the tourist information office, the tourist information agent is expected to maintain or strengthen her quality face by providing the user –the tourist– with objective, true and complete information about tourist products. Thus, she presents herself as a skilful and qualified worker who tries to satisfy the user’s needs. By being polite, giving options and advice, making suggestions and paying due attention to the user, the agent also intensifies her own and the user’s quality and identity face. Sociality rights are social or personal expectancies or entitlements that individuals claim for themselves (Spencer-Oatey 2000: 14). Some are constantly negotiated, while others are culturally or situationally determined beforehand. Since interlocutors expect these rights to be respected, they create expectations which, if unsatisfied, may affect rapport management. At the tourist information office, these rights and obligations are determined by the institutional nature of the context. They comprise the agent’s obligation to give information about tourist products and the user’s right to be adequately informed. Consequently, for instance, the user may expect the agent to treat him appropriately and to provide him with helpful information, whereas the agent may expect the user not to question her information. Interactional goals may damage social interaction if they come into conflict. If they do not, their management may result in rapportmaintenance or rapport-enhancement. In the context of this study, the agent’s goals include giving information that satisfies the user, while the user’s goals involve getting true and complete information in a fast and concise way because of time availability. Agents’ awareness and efficient management of users’ interactional goals may be crucial in regions where tourism is an important source of income. Apart from these factors, interlocutors must be aware of their power, social distance and their acts. Users normally have legitimate power over agents, as they have the right to ask for information and are a potential source of income for the city. On the contrary, agents have expert power because they are knowledgeable about tourist products (Spencer-Oatey 1992)1. Since users go to tourist information offices sporadically, their frequency of contact, familiarity and affect would be non-existent, which renders their social distance high (Spencer-Oatey 1996; Lorés Sanz 1997-1998). However, their social distance may decrease if there arises comradeship between them, as a consequence of personal revelations and the user perceiving the agent as helpful (Hays 1984). Nevertheless, their social distance may be hierarchically determined owing to the interlocutors’ social roles and/or age (Thomas 1995). The typical acts at the opening phase of interaction are ritual –greetings, welcomes– and precede other substantive acts at the transactional phase (Edmondson and House 1981)2. Although beginning interaction may involve some threat (Brown and Levinson 1987), it is rather unlikely that in this context it does, for information is expected to be a free good as well as part of the interlocutors’ sociality rights and obligations. Rather, it would be a face-boosting act and contribute to rapport. Rapport may be threatened by means of behaviours that challenge face, sociality rights and obligations and/or interactional goals. Although these last two behaviours may be problematic, they do not necessarily involve a face-loss. This originates when individuals are criticised or feel they have lost credibility. When interacting, interlocutors may adopt any of four possible orientations: rapportenhancement, rapport-maintenance, rapport-neglect or rapportchallenge (Spencer-Oatey 2000: 29-31, 2008: 28-29). At the tourist information office it is expected that agents show a rapportenhancement or maintenance orientation to promote tourism. 3. METHODOLOGY Twenty-four conversations in a fictitious tourist information office have been analysed in this study. These data were collected through role-plays performed by 40 informants. Of these, thirty-six were Spanish students doing their second year of Tourism at EUSA, Seville. On average, they have studied English for thirteen years, so their level is A2/B1, and some have already had some experience with the tourism industry. Twelve students role-played in Spanish to supply the Spanish data and the other twenty-four in English to supply the interlanguage data, on which this study is focused. The four remaining informants were American English speakers. Two of them came from the University of North Carolina, but did not study Tourism, while the other two were studying Tourism at EUSA at the time of the study. They supplied the American English data used. Informants were grouped in pairs and instructed to role-play in three situations that correspond to three politeness systems (Scollon and Wong-Scollon 1995). The deference system [-P, +D] is reflected in a situation where the agent interacts with a 68 year-old tourist planning to spend some days in Seville. Their social distance is high because of lack of contact and the tourist’s age. The hierarchical system [+P, +/-D] is represented in a situation in which the agent interacts with a Norwegian tour-operator who wishes to include Seville in a tourist package. His legitimate power overrides the agent’s expert power because of his higher professional status and the possible economic consequences his decisions may have. The solidarity system [-P, -D] is displayed in a context where the agent interacts with a German backpacker. The power relationship would be balanced, but there would be little social distance because both interlocutors are young. Role-plays were recorded in May and June of 2010 in a classroom by means of Sound Recorder 6.1. Most of the informants were acquainted with the room and its equipment and were used to being recorded. Conversations were transcribed following the notational system used by Spencer-Oatey (2000) and segmented into turns3. 4. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION The opening sequences in the deference system show the occurrence of business greetings common in service encounters (Ebsworth et al. 1996). All of them are structured as full adjacency pairs, which suggests that greetings are well-learnt structures. As opposed to the American English conversations, where interlocutors only used one greeting and in some cases did not respond to it, in the interlanguage data speakers produce the second pair-element and even follow the first greeting by another one in the same turn, a possible transfer from their native language: (1) A: [1] Good morning sir, how can I help you? U: [2] Hello; my name is:: señor Smith (.) I would: like to visit Seville and I have my first time in the city (2) U: [1] Good morning, A: [2] Good morning, madam, how can I help you?, U: [3] Yeah, I (.) will like to visit Seville eh (.) in the summer and I (.) want some information about the city. (3) A: [1] Good morning madam how may I help you, U: [2] eh Good morning eh I would like to visit Seville in spring eh (-) a weekend (4) U: [1] eh: hello; good morning? A: [2] ah good morning; U: [3] eh: I am I eh: I am a retired person and I would like to: visit Seville: <<but I have never been there>>eh: could you: help me please?? A: [4] Oh great? eh: when would you like to come? In the first three examples, agents use deferential forms to address users, a negative-politeness strategy that enables them to acknowledge the users’ power and show social distance, as well as to attend to their quality and identity face. Agents also offer help in a ritualistic way and by means of negative politeness, perceptible in the modal verbs, show concern for users’ sociality rights and interactional goals. Although this offer does not appear in the fourth example, by listening attentively the agent also shows deference to the user and concern for his quality and identity face. In their turns, users identify themselves in (1) and (4) to make clear their social role and status and underline the social distance they perceive. They resort to what seems an off-record strategy in (1) and (3) to insinuate their interactional goals and compensate for the unlikely imposition of their subsequent requests for information. In contrast, this strategy is followed by a non-redressed explicit performative in (2) and an indirect question redressed with negative politeness in (4). These make manifest the users’ intentions and turn the previous strategy into a positive-politeness strategy that consists of giving reasons. Also, in (4) the user avoids a possible threat to his quality face by speeding up his acknowledgement that he had never been to the city before. In three of the conversations in the hierarchical system (5, 6, 7), users greet first and begin interaction, showing thus their legitimate power, while in (8) it is the agent that greets first. Conscious of users’ power, agents respond to their greetings in the first three examples with two greetings and ritual offers of help, thus attending to both the users’ and their own quality and identity faces. In (8) the user responds to the agent’s greeting with two greetings too. It is noteworthy that only in (6) does the agent select the negativepoliteness strategy consisting of being deferential to show her awareness of both the latter’s power and their hierarchical distance. Besides, in (7) the user unexpectedly greets the agent in an informal way in his second turn, maybe to lessen distance: (5) U: [1] Hello A: [2] Hello good afternoon how can I help you?? U: [3] yes, eh: I am a very important Norwegian (.) tour operator and: I want to: include Seville? In a package tour; you are? (6) U: [1] hello good morning (.) my name is: (.) John Carrey and (.) I come from eh (.) Norway Packaged Tours eh I (.) I would like to: to have eh sosome information about Se-Seville A: [2] hello good morning sir; eh so you come you come from Norway Packaged Tours and you like information from Seville? That’s right, eh <<first of all I would like to tell you […]>> (7) U: [1] Hello A: [2] Hello, good morning How Could I help you? U: [3] Hi, I work for a Norwegian packaged tour and I would like to visit Seville and what can I do in Seville. (8) A: [1] Good morning? U: [2] Hello good morning? A: [3] How can I help you? U: [4] I’m I work for a tour operator eh in: Nor Norway and I need some information for eh: my agency to know what opportunities we have eh if we come to Spain to Seville and I would eh like to know all the opportunities please; Users identify themselves after the offer of help in (5), (7) and (8), while in (6) the user does so in the same turn as the greeting. These identifications make explicit their social role and status and emphasise social distance. While in (5), (7) and (8) identifications are rather succinct and only contain basic information, in (6) the identification is longer and includes personal information, maybe to compensate for an excessive hierarchical distance and to create a relatively friendlier atmosphere. When introducing his request for information, in (5) the user chooses a bald on-record strategy, an unmitigated imperative, because of his power. In contrast, in (6) and (7) users redress their requests by means of negative-politeness strategies, namely conditionals. Finally, in (8) the user formulates his request as a need-statement, although he also resorts to conditionals. These enable users to show concern for their interlocutors and avoid challenging rapport through bald onrecord strategies, which could have been interpreted as unduly rude and over-impositive. The desire to maintain rapport may underlie the use of the first person plural pronoun in (8), which enables the user to dilute his agency. The only example that includes the response to the request is (6), where it appears in the agent’s first turn. Although the agent in this example resorts to negative politeness –the deferential form of address– she combines it with a positive-politeness strategy, repeating what the user has just said. Thus, she shows awareness of the user’s desires, seeks agreement with him and perhaps some proximity, as he implicitly suggests that they share a common interactional goal. When giving information, the agent takes a long turn to show her expert power and to attend to her own quality face. Finally, in two of the conversations in the solidarity system, users begin interaction. While in (9) the user produces two greetings, in (10) the user simply produces one before continuing with an identification that conveys personal information. Responding to the first turn, in (9) the agent greets deferentially, which could seem inappropriate to this system, as both interlocutors are young. However, by doing so the agent seems to protect his own quality face as informer by implying that he is a serious professional. In contrast, in (10) the agent does not produce a second greeting, probably because of the low distance. In the other two conversations, agents begin with a business greeting (11) and another double greeting (12). As in (10), in (11) the agent follows his greeting by an identification, while in (12) the user does not respond with a second greeting: (9) U: [1] Hello good morning, A: [2] Hello good morning sir, can I help you? U: [3] I would like to go to Seville eh can you recommend: anything please? A: [4] Sure do you li do you want eh to go to museum or centre histo historic?? of Seville? What type of tourism do you want (.) to do it? (10) U: [1] Hello? I’m an Erasmus student and: and I’m studying in Madrid and I would like to:: some information about eh (.) what (.) eh can (.) what can I do in: Seville, eh can you help me please? A: [2] eh: ok well, let me see, (.) eh:: first of all eh:: you can […] (11) A: [1] ehh (.) Good morning, <<how can I help you>>?, U: [2] hello, mm I’m 27 years old and I want to go to Seville can you tell me something??? A: [3] Ok ehh is your first time in Seville?, U: [4] Yes A: [5] Ok are you going with your friends?, U: [6] Yes A: [7] How many people? U: [8] eh: twenty: twenty friends and me. (12) A: [1] Hello, good morning, U: [2] eh… I would like to know… eh… what places are interesting in the city A: [3] of course… eh… I would eh… give you… a little explanation ok? Eh: what are you seeking for? [To] U: [4] [monuments, museums] ? In (9), the request for information is made in a conventionally indirect way with an illocutionary force indicating device (IFID). It is prefaced by a want-statement redressed by negative politeness, which acts as a whole as a positive-politeness strategy amounting to the reasons for the request. In (10) and (11), the requests appear in both users’ first turns after identifications, introduced by want-statements. While in (10) this statement is mitigated with negative politeness, in (11) it goes bald-on-the-record. As for the requests, they are made in a conventionally indirect way and in (10) with an IFID, too. This indicates users’ perception of the system where interaction takes place