ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes variation in the use of pronominal and nominal forms in two corpora of service encounter interactions in Costa Rica (one institutional and one commercial). Taking into account gender, participants’ roles, the goal of the transaction, and the context, the present study examines two types of interactions, institutional (call center) and commercial (grocery stores), in order to determine what effect these factors have on (im)politeness strategies. This discourse genre has been studied extensively with respect to its typologies, structure, and pragmatic characteristics (see, e.g., Félix-Brasdefer, 2015, and Hernández-López & Fernández-Amaya, 2015). The results of the present study show that institutional and commercial interactions vary in the use of pronominal forms of address and vocatives. While the telephone interactions at the call center showed a preference for transactional talk, in the grocery store interactions there was evidence of talk designed to reinforce the interpersonal relationship between the customer and vendor. Important gender differences were found in the use of address forms in both types of interactions.
