Véronique Traverso

Aspects of polite behaviour in French and Syrian service encounters: A data-based comparative study

Abstract This paper presents a data-based comparative study of polite behaviour in French and Arabic (Syrian) service encounters. It focuses on the use of conversational routines and rituals, which are not only an important component of interactions in any service encounter, but also a prominent characteristic of Arabic interaction. The first part of the paper is devoted to a presentation of these two notions. The methodological problems raised by contrastive data analysis are then discussed, especially that of choosing comparable situations for conducting fieldwork, and of establishing a linguistic grid of reference for the contrastive analysis. The results of the study presented in part four lead to a discussion of what appear to be specific features of polite behaviour in the French and Syrian corpora. The corpora are composed of interactions audio-recorded in small shops.

Interlocutive 'crowding' and 'splitting' in polylogues: the case of a researchers' meeting

Abstract The study of polylogues raises numerous problems. This paper deals with one of the most challenging among them, which can be called the ‘observer–describer paradox’, and which makes it necessary to adopt the ‘multi-access description’ (global, macro-local, micro-local) presented in the first part of the paper. In the second part, a semi-formal meeting of a group of researchers is described using this approach. The characteristics of this type of meeting justify that the analysis focuses, in a second phase, on the ‘macro-local level’. On this level, the hypothesis is made that the analysis of the organization of the participants’ topical lines is an accurate method for throwing light on the way in which a polylogue is configured. This analysis leads to the description of two polylogue-linked phenomena: ‘crowding’ and ‘splitting’.

Tool-assisted analysis of interactional corpora: voilà in the CLAPI database

The aim of this paper is to show how databases and computer tools can be used for archiving and browsing corpora of social interactions. The development of specific search engines allows for both qualitative analysis of naturally occurring interactions and for quantitative explorations of larger corpora. The paper is based on the CLAPI Workbench , an interfaced ensemble of analytic tools which operates on a consistent body of corpora to facilitate their description and theoretical reconstruction. The analytical part of the paper focuses on the uses of a discourse particle in French interaction: “voila”.

“ktîr Tajjibe ce plat! fî garlic?”: Compliments and assessments in French and Lebanese dinner talk

Abstract In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of compliments and other evaluative comments in French and Lebanese Arabic. The analysis is based on naturally-occurring interactions, video-recorded during dinner invitations among friends and relatives. The analysis focuses on two specific types of compliments related to being offered and savoring food. The description takes into account not only the linguistic forms of assessments and compliments (on the syntactic and lexical levels), but also vocal productions like “hm”, as well as gestures, mimics, gaze and other multimodal resources. In the first part of the paper, we discuss the main aspects of previous studies on compliments that will be used as reference points for our own study. We then present the corpora we used and our methodology. The last part of the paper is devoted to the interactional multimodal analysis of specific types of compliments related to being offered food in the two corpora.