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The bargaining genre: A study of retail encounters in traditional Chinese local markets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2007

WINNIE W. F. ORR
WINNIE W. F. ORR
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics & TESOL, Box 19559, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019-0559, orwf@uta.edu
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Abstract

This article characterizes a spoken genre, bargaining, found in retail encounters in traditional markets in southern China. Analysis of substantive acts in 38 tape-recorded interactions shows that verbal and nonverbal actions within the event carry a small set of illocutionary forces germane to negotiating price and quantity. Analysis of ritual acts that mark boundaries of the event shows that participants behave primarily as outgroup persons seeking to transact business. Bargaining hence constitutes a primary genre (Bakhtin 1986), a textual form that shows domination of a transaction frame over a consultation and a valet frame, and a communicative purpose that is tightly circumscribed around the exchange of commodities and not relationship. A socially oriented form of genre analysis is apt for elucidating the speakers' strategic use of generic resources, as well as investigating development in retail marketing in the PRC, marked by growing popularity of new retail outlets and changing consumer attitudes.

Keywords

bargainingdiscourse of negotiationspoken genreservice encountertraditional Chinese markets
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 2007 , pp. 73 - 103
Copyright
2007 Cambridge University Press

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