Can I help you? : a systemic-functional exploration of service encounter interaction

Abstract

This exploratory study of the semiotic organization of service encounter interaction and its realization traces back the Malinowskian/Firthian contextual theory and follows its development into register theory. It captures the most recent developments of register theory which consider texts as organizations on three separate semiotic communication planes: genre, register and language. Specifically it focusses on how on the plane of genre the global patternings of texts, i.e. SCHEMATIC STRUCTURES, are represented and how they are realized by the planes of register and language which are seen to underlie genre. It studies and develops the notion of genre and its realization by using service encounter data