Prestige of Products and Code-Switching in Retail Encounters

Autor/inn/en	Ting, Su-Hie; Then, David Chen-On; Ong, Oliver Guan-Bee
Titel	Prestige of Products and Code-Switching in Retail Encounters
Quelle	In: International Journal of Multilingualism, 17 (2020) 2, S.215-231 (17 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1479-0718
DOI	10.1080/14790718.2018.1559321
Schlagwörter	Code Switching (Language); Consumer Science; Reputation; Foreign Countries; English; Mandarin Chinese; Communication Skills; Language Usage; China + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Ausland; English language; Englisch; Kommunikationsstil; Sprachgebrauch
Abstract	The study examined code-switching in retail encounters involving sales personnel of cars, credit cards, beauty products, and food products with a Chinese customer. Altogether 27 retail encounters were audio-taped and transcribed. Analysis of the 14,944-word corpus was conducted using Gumperz's [(1982). "Discourse strategies." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] model of conversational code-switching. The results showed that English and Hokkien were the main base languages for retail encounters involving a Chinese customer who could not speak Mandarin. English marked prestige of products, notably car and credit card, whereas beauty and food products were promoted in Hokkien or Malay. The main code-switching functions were referential functions and interjections (41.57% and 39.36% of 907 instances, respectively). The most common referential function was product description. Reiteration accounted for 9.92% of the code-switching instances but message qualification, personalisation versus objectivisation, address specification, and situational code-switching were minimally present. Product type did not influence frequency of code-switching for interjection but it affected referential functions and reiteration. Referential function was the least frequent in credit card retail encounters and reiteration was the most frequent in food retail encounters. The findings on the high frequency of reiterations and the minimal use of code-switching for personalisation showed that clarity is more important than solidarity in retail encounters. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01