Table Of ContentSpanish and English in
U.S. Service Encounters
Spanish and English in
U.S. Service Encounters
Laura Callahan
SPANISH AND ENGLISH IN U.S. SERVICE ENCOUNTERS
Copyright © Laura Callahan, 2009.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-61071-2
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-37650-6 ISBN 978-0-230-61910-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230619104
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First edition: March 2009
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For Joseph Charles Miller
Contents
List of Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
1 Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Language Use 1
2 Workers Report on Their Language Use 11
3 Observing Workers’ Language Use 31
4 Codeswitching in Service Encounters 45
5 A Comparison of Service Encounters in Person and
Over the Telephone 59
6 Conclusions and Implications 69
Appendix A Demographic Characteristics of the
Interviewees (Chapter 2) 79
Appendix B Photographs Shown to the
Interviewees (Chapter 2) 81
Appendix C Fieldworkers in the Face-to-Face
and Telephone Encounters; Service Workers in
Selected Face-to-Face Encounters 91
Appendix D Selected Face-to-Face and
Telephone Encounters 93
Notes 269
References 275
Index of Names 285
Index of Subjects 287
List of Tables
3.1 Variables 32
3.2 Research team 35
3.3 Informant sample 37
3.4 Language of response: Total sample and per
each fieldworker 39
3.5 L anguage of response: Informants by sex,
age, and neighborhood 43
3.6 Language of response: Fieldworkers by sex,
age, and ethnicity 44
3.7 B ivariate analysis of informants’ use of English
correlated with informants’ age and
fieldworkers’ characteristics 44
5.1 Workers’ language use in face-to-face service encounters 62
5.2 Workers’ language use in telephone service encounters 63
Acknowledgments
I gratefully acknowledge financial support for this project from the
Research Institute for the Study of Language in Urban Society (RISLUS),
which is housed in the M.A./Ph.D. Program in Linguistics at the Graduate
Center, City University of New York (CUNY), and from three Professional
Staff Congress-CUNY Research Awards: Grants 66677–00 35, 67028–00
36, and 69010–00 38. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to
the nine student fieldworkers for their data collection: Marco Aponte,
Hilary Larson, Edgard Mercado, María Ximena Mieles, Adam Nilsen,
Rocío Raña Risso, Ashley Slater, Erika Troseth, and Erja Vettenranta.
Also, my recognition to the twenty interview participants (in chapter 2)
for their candor in sharing with me their experiences and insights on
language use.
Finally, for their unstinting advice, encouragement, help, and inspira-
tion during various stages in my academic career thus far, I owe a debt of
gratitude to Professors Milton Azevedo, University of California,
Berkeley; Juan Carlos Mercado, The City College, CUNY; José del Valle,
Graduate Center, CUNY; and Ricardo Otheguy, Graduate Center,
CUNY.
Any shortcomings in this volume are mine alone.
Introduction
During extended periods of time living alone, several days may pass during
which my sole interaction with other people takes place during service
encounters. Hence, these encounters take on extra significance for me, as
I imagine they do for others who live in similar circumstances. However,
my interest in language choice in service encounters grew out of an expe-
rience I had one evening in 1998 on which I was not alone, but in the
company of three former classmates celebrating a friend’s graduation
from a Spanish masters program. The four of us were speaking entirely
in Spanish at our table in a Spanish restaurant (i.e., a restaurant special-
izing in menu items from Spain) in Northern California, in a large city in
which a third of the population is Hispanic. We were served by the
restaurant owner. Each of us addressed him in Spanish, and continued
speaking Spanish among ourselves as he took our orders. He answered
each of my three companions—two Mexicans and a Guatemalan—in
Spanish, and me in English, even as I continued to address him in Spanish
over the course of the evening.
Most service encounters involve communication between strangers.
Communication, or at times, miscommunication between strangers who
come from different groups fosters the formation of stereotypes. Service
encounters, commercial transactions in which the participants are often
interacting with each other for the first time, are therefore an area of
particular relevance for investigation. Many aspects of language use in
such encounters can be, and indeed have been, submitted to analysis.
Based on my experience as a speaker of Spanish as a second language,
living in two large urban areas in which Spanish can be heard in public
as much as or even more than English, the act of choosing between two
languages is what attracted my attention most. The questions that
informed my research are as follows: (1) What factors dictate language
choice in the workplace as opposed to outside of work? (2) What factors
influence workers’ language choice for use with individual customers?
(3) Why might workers use both Spanish and English with a customer?
This book offers the results of three investigations into the use of
Spanish and English between Latino workers and Latino and non-Latino
xiv Introduction
customers. Chapter 1, Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Language Use,
presents previous research on language choice in service encounters and
the theoretical background for this volume. In chapter 2, Workers Report
on Their Language Use, workers discuss their use of English and Spanish
in the workplace and other settings. In chapter 3, Observing Workers’
Language Use, factors affecting language choice, such as the sex, age,
and ethnicity of the customer, the sex, age, and location of the worker,
and the proficiency of both the customer and worker are examined in
light of data collected by the author and a team of fieldworkers posing as
customers. Chapter 4, Codeswitching in Service Encounters, spotlights
workers’ use of English and Spanish in tandem. In chapter 5, A
Comparison of Service Encounters in Person and Over the Telephone,
we see what workers do when addressed in Spanish by nonnative speak-
ers whom they cannot see. In chapter 6, Conclusions and Implications,
the results are examined in the context of the research questions set forth
earlier. Issues discussed include the status of English as a neutral or
default language, Spanish as an ingroup language, how being a customer
temporarily changes outgroup members’ status, and the phenomenon of
passing. Implications of the current work and directions for future
research are presented.
