I chose to record an oral performance I hear many times a day, the spiel of how things work at the Alamo. I was already vaguely aware of slight differences in my conversational style when I had to talk to customers, but wanted to also look at another performance in comparison. The technicalities worked out easily, as I set the tape recorder on the table behind the people I spoke with, about two feet away, and they were none the wiser.
For those who've never been, the Alamo Drafthouse is something between a hot spot and an old favorite here in Austin. It's a movie theater that serves moderately expensive food and alcohol, and as a server it's an interesting social community. Restaurants are well lit, you have to constantly check back with customers who are focused in conversation with each other. In contrast, you only really talk to customers before the movie, only making contact during if there's a flag up (a piece of paper with an order written on it), and they are focused on the movie. And it's dark. So servers have a lot of downtime behind the scenes, negotiating around the lobby and theaters, swerving around each other and ignorant customers with large trays of food and drinks, then dropping off checks, and then cleaning the theaters, functioning together in a specific time frame to get our collective job done just in time to seat the next showing. As anyone who's worked in the service industry knows, there's a fair amount of teasing, comradery, tension (both sexual and professional), bitching, and silliness. The movie "Waiting" is a fairly good representation, except no one really spits in your food.
So here's the spiel, in a nutshell: introduce yourself, ask if the patron has been to the Alamo before. If so, welcome back, if not, explain the ordering process and take their drink order. This can take anywhere between 5 seconds and two minutes, depending on how talky you are. I taped myself first, and approached three young women there to see "Because I Said So" (the horribleness of which warrants an entire other post). This sets up the entextualization process, the performance repeatable out of the specific context with these three people.. Nothing out of the ordinary, two of the women had been there before, one had not, so for the purposes of the assignment I went ahead and told her about the process. They seemed very nice, made eye contact, smiled and nodded, thanked me and called me by name, engaging in contextualization and making the performance decontextualizable to be recontextualized it again for the next customer. Shortly thereafter, a coworker let me tape his presentation to a middle-aged couple in the same movie.
Listening to the tape, I heard what I knew I would: an exaggerated (in the sense that I don't normally talk that way) Texan drawl. Thinking back, I remembered several instances of customers commenting on my accent, long after I failed to notice a typical Texan accent. I also have a tendency to talk fast, but realized by drawling my words, I was forcing myself to speak more slowly and enunciate more. My initial greeting of "hi ladies, how are ya'll doin?" starting in a high pitch, a (forced) cheerful tone. I've waitressed my fair amount in the last 12 years, and as anyone can tell you, it involves a large amount of bullshitting, much like any other job I'm sure. Since your money is earned in direct relation to your performance, you find yourself really stretching your patience thin at times to accommodate people you might not give the time of day in real life. I repeated the phrases I say many times a day as they nodded and smiled: once the lights go down, we communicate by flags....just stick it in the clip....won't bother you unless I see you need something....will do a last-call 45 minutes from the end...done. There was a slight pause, while I imagine the ladies had nodded or smiled, then I heard a "great." Another lady supported her, "Yeah, isn't that cool?" My tone continued to be very sweet, almost bouncy, as I asked what they'd like to drink. A bucket of Miller Lite with lots of limes. May I see your IDs please? Ok. Great. Anything else I can get for you ladies? Ok, my name's Jen if you need me. Lots of Ok's. Lots of questions and forced turn-taking. I imagine customers have to play the BS game somewhat too to insure no one does spit in their food, maybe in real life these women wouldn't be polite or nice at all, who knows. The context put up in this situation, and the context/structure of our language (especially my presentation of how to use me, essentially) is shaped by their responses and involvement, according to Baumen and Briggs. But they thanked me and I walked up the aisle, grabbing the recorder on the way.
My co-worker approached the older couple as I sneaked down the aisle after him with the recorder. His presentation was essentially the same as mine, although he did not ask how they were doing, just "Hey guys, have you been to the Alamo before?" They had, so the directions were not necessary, he just wrote down their drink order and asked if they needed anything else right now. His voice was softer and his tone more evenly-pitched, maybe because his voice was naturally lower than mine. His customers responded, the usual adjacency pairs, and it was business as usual.
There's nothing exciting or funny or interesting about these recorded performances, they are motions repeated dozens of times each day for us, and for the most part the responses are the same. It's an exchange of service--Iget you what you want to drink and eat and play along like I like doing it, and you leave me some money. I think restaurants are an interesting place to observe communication, between co-workers, managers, customers, etc. Many times if there is something out of the ordinary going on at work, the story of whatever interchange occurred (a drunk guy getting kicked out, a celebrity showing up for a movie, or whatever) is repeated down the line, often changing slightly during its migration, like the classic game of Telephone. Restaurants are rumor mills, and although you don't necessarily dig everyone you work with, many people date or are good friends with co-workers, which adds a whole 'nother strata of context to conversations. There is also a sort of social and professional hierarchy, dependent on when employees began working, how much they work, and how friendly/good at their job they are (because if you suck, you make more work for everyone else).
In terms of the context and contextualization, I guess the latter is more relevant in this interchange than the former--indeed, I'd go so far as to say that the context of this performance is essentially the same as anyone speaking to a customer in any service-type industry. There was context at work when I walked up to greet the table, my plans for what to do next, orders I still had coming, etc, and they were probably thinking about the movie and the food and reading the menu, but for the purposes of the conversation, it doesn't really matter because every performance at every table is essentially the same. But if "communicative contexts are not dictated by the social and physical environment but emerge in negotiations between participants in social interactions," (Bauman/Briggs, 68) this functional speech "can help researchers to determine how individual cues are linked in created larger formal and functional patterns" by being more attentive to contextualization cues. The audience, as quoted by C. Goodwin in Bauman/Briggs' article, is "shaped by discourse in keeping with the differential involvement of members in what is said: the audience also plays a key role in assessing the significance of the talk" (70). The smiling and nodding, the answer Customer X gives after the spiel (usually "great," "ok,"etc) is this idea at work.
According to Bauman/Briggs there are 6 elements to consider when decontexualizing/recontextualizing, and 4 factors that "bear centrally on the construction and assumption of authority" (77). And as this blog is already pushing the limits of readability, I'll hold off on discussing these ideas in case there's a paper assigned on the topic.....Remember the Alamo!
No comments:
Post a Comment