Ting, S. H. (2010). Malaysian identity reflected in language use of transactions. UNIMAS Research Update, 5(2), p. 22

Sociolinguistic ISSN: 1750-8649 (print)Studies ISSN: 1750-8657 (online)

Affiliation Yih-Long Lau: Universiti Teknologi Mara, Sarawak, Malaysia email: [email protected] Su-Hie Ting: University Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia email: [email protected] SOLS VOL 7.3 2013 199–223 © 2014, EQUINOX PUBLISHING

doi : 10.1558/sols.v7i3.199

Article

Chinese vendors’ code-switching in service encounters in Sarawak, Malaysia

Yih-Long Lau and Su-Hie Ting

Abstract The study examined the language of service encounters in a bakery operated by Chinese vendors in a Foochow-dominant town in Malaysia. Naturally occurring data of one hundred service encounters were digitally recorded (83 with Chinese customers and 17 with non-Chinese customers). In intraethnic interactions, Foochow is the default language choice but Mandarin is emerging as a viable option. In interethnic interactions, the Chinese vendors accommodated by speaking either Bahasa Malaysia or Bazaar Malay. A majority of the service encounters took place in one language as code-switching was identified in only 19 encounters. In interethnic interactions, the vendors switched to thank customers in English but in intraethnic interactions, the functions vary with the staging of service encounters. The main functions are emphasis on attributes of goods in Sale Enquiry, attributes and quantity of goods to buy in Sale Request, and attributes, quantity and price of goods to sell in Sale Compliance. Code-switching in the Purchase Closure stage brings in expression of thanks which is not an integral feature of service encounters in Eastern settings. Using stages of service encounters to explain code-switching functions provides a less context-dependent framework which shows how code-switching brings about efficiency in service encounters. KEYWORDS: LANGUAGE CHOICE, CODE-SWITCHING, SERVICE ENCOUNTERS, RETAIL

ENCOUNTERS

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

200 SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDIES

1 Introduction Language planning aims to put in place selected languages for the people of a nation to use as shared languages for communication and for communication of government policies to the people. The success of the language planning can be assessed through sociolinguistic studies of the transaction domain, as language use in this domain is not directly controlled by language policies such as in government and education domains. The transaction domain is characterised by service encounters between buyers and vendors, defined as follows:

An instance of face-to-face interaction between a server who is ‘officially posted’ in some service area and a customer who is present in that service area, that interaction being oriented to the satisfaction of the customer’s presumed desire for some service and the server’s obligation to provide that service. A typical service encounter is one in which a customer buys something at a store. (Merritt, 1976:321)

Service encounters encompass transactions of both goods and services. The term ‘retail encounter’ is also used by other researchers studying the pragmatic exchange between customer and vendor (e.g., Callahan, 2007; Hartman, Meyer and Scribner, 2009; Liu, 2009; Orr, 2007). This study examines the language of service encounters in a bakery operated by vendors of Chinese descent in Sarawak, Malaysia. The specific objectives of the study are to compare the language used in intra- and interethnic interactions, and to determine the patterns and functions of code-switching at different stages of the service encounter. Language choice is important in service encounters in ethnically diverse societies because language is one of the barriers to efficient transactions in business settings (Hall and Hall, 1987). Studying the language of service encoun-ters offers empirically driven explanations that would inform status planning of languages because ‘service encounters account for a significant amount of every-day communicative exchanges’ for most people (Togher, Hands and Code, 1997). Research has indicated that it is either the official language or a regional variety of the official language which serves as the lingua franca in the transaction domain in Malaysia. For example, Bazaar Malay is used in the sub-domain of markets and hawker centres in Malaysia (Platt and Weber, 1980). In the Malaysian state of Sarawak, Bazaar Malay is usually used for interethnic communication by older vendors who do not have formal education in Bahasa Malaysia (Ting, 2010; Ting and Chong, 2008; Ting and Lau, 2010). In Sabah, another Malaysian state, the Sabah Malay Dialect is used from the marketplace to restaurants and shopping complexes (Wong 2000; see also Mahadhir, Ting and

CHINESE VENDORS’ CODE-SWITCHING 201

Tumin, 2008). Based on her study in another part of Malaysia, Petaling Jaya, Burhanudeen (2006) pointed out that sometimes it is not a matter of the vendor’s lower educational level, but the potential of Bazaar Malay to close the social distance compared to Bahasa Malaysia. Because of language planning which has led to the implementation of Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of education, Malaysians learn the language and, hence, are able to use it in service encounters. In this sense, Bahasa Malaysia has become a preferred shared means of interethnic communication in the transaction domain. However, English signifies prestige in service encounters in Malaysia and also Singapore because it is usually used with customers of higher social status and in sub-domains frequented by them. For example, Altehenger-Smith (1987) stated that Bazaar Malay1 prevails in interethnic interactions in the market whereas English is more commonly used in restaurants in Singapore. In furniture shops and boutiques in Singapore, the shop assistants made their language choice based on the perceived social status of the customers. They spoke English with custom-ers with high social status but used Mandarin, Teochew, Hokkien and Cantonese with customers from the lower class (Tan, 1993). English prevails as the main language in the sub-domain of shops with international links such as airline ticketing agencies (Platt and Weber, 1980) and hotels (Ting, Mahadhir and Ting, 2010). Evidently in these sub-domains, ‘language choice can be a basis for status symbol especially in multilingual and multiracial societies’ (Dumanig, 2010:32). The studies reviewed thus far have focused on the language used in service encounters. The literature on code-switching in service encounters is growing because people in ethnically diverse societies code-switch for a variety of reasons. Code-switching is defined as ‘the juxtaposition within the same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two different grammatical systems or subsystems’ (Gumperz, 1982:59). Code-switching averts communication breakdown when either the customer or vendor is not proficient in the language initially chosen for the interaction. For example, Callahan (2007) analysed 715 service encounters in New York City and San Francisco Bay Area, and identified instances of code-switching in 62 encounters. The code-switched utterances were for prices, numbers, set phrases (e.g., would you like a bag?), repetition and elaboration, requests for clarification, and metalinguistic commentary (e.g., You speak Spanish?). Code-switching is also useful for technical terms. Based on their analysis of 150 service encounters in a photograph developing shop in Sibu, Malaysia, Ting and Lau (2010) concluded that word-level code-switching to English was usually for technical lexical items (e.g., passport-size, memory card, desktop). Customers and vendors usually do not use Chinese or Malay


translations of terms associated with technology. Code-switching to English also happens when there are no equivalent expressions in the other language. An example is ‘Nice talking to you’ which the Korean customers in Chicago sometimes use as a parting comment to Korean vendors because the closest expression in Korean (sugo haseo) has slightly a different meaning (Bailey, 2001). In addition to practical reasons, vendors sometimes code-switch to English to allude to quality. In a study focusing on the language of Malay textile sellers in Kota Bahru in the northern part of Malaysia, Jalaluddin (2007) found that English words were included in service encounters conducted in the regional variety of Bahasa Malaysia to show that the supermarket goods (barang ‘supermarket’) were of better quality. Besides these functions of code-switching, studies have also focused on the pattern of code-switching. Pan (2000) audio recorded 60 naturally occurring service encounters in department stores, bookstores, specialty shops, convenient stores, food-stands and restaurants in Hong Kong and GuangZhou, China. Her analysis uncovered 15 interactions which she categorised as complete code-switching where a switch occurred after the first one or two sentences. There were 20 occurrences of mixed code-switching where the customer and vendor switched back and forth between the languages. Only nine service encounters involved parallel code-switching where the customer and vendor maintained their language choice. No code-switching occurred in 16 encounters. Pan (2000) concluded that the vendors accommodated to the language choice of the customers. Schau, Dellande and Gilly (2007:71) noted that code-switching was ‘almost always initiated by the customer’ but the employees sometimes made the first move in dialect code-switching. Based on interviews with the customers and employees, Schau, Dellande and Gilly (2007) observed that language code-switching produced the most positive comments and gestures compared to dialect and brand code-switching. In one instance, understanding was attained when the Starbucks employee switched to Spanish. Studies have shown that the language choice of service encounters indicates the success of language planning, as the official language and its varieties are the preferred means of communication in a domain where language choice is not regulated by language policies (e.g., Burhanudeen, 2006; Mahadhir, Ting and Tumin, 2008; Platt and Weber, 1980; Ting and Chong, 2008; Ting, 2010; Ting and Lau, 2010; Wong, 2000). Research has also indicated that code-switching to English signifies high social status, prestige and modernity (e.g., Altehenger-Smith, 1987; Platt and Weber, 1980; Tan, 1993; Ting, Mahadhir and Ting, 2010). These findings are anchored to the broader societal context of the interaction, that is, knowledge of the status and roles of languages as well as the wider socio-cultural, economic and political milieu are needed in order to understand the


meanings and functions of code-switching in these contexts. Thus, although many studies on code-switching have been conducted in various retail and societal settings, it is difficult to compare the functions of code-switching across contexts due to the variability of societal settings. This paper proposes a more context-independent framework which uses stages of service encounters to explain functions of code-switching where meanings of code-switching are derived from the markedness of the language switch rather than the status and roles of languages in the wider socio-cultural, economic and political context of language use. 2 Theoretical framework of the study In this study, Halliday and Hasan’s (1985) framework is used for the analysis of the stages of service encounters. Their outline of the minimal exchange between the grocer and customer in a local grocery shop in Australia, termed the Generic Structure Potential of the service encounter genre, has been referenced in recent studies on buying and selling transactions (e.g., Clarke and Nilsson, 2008; Togher, Hands and Code, 1997; Togher, McDonald, Code and Grant, 2004; Torras and Gafaranga, 2002). In Halliday and Hasan’s (1985) framework, a service encounter is complete when it has Sale Request (SR), Sale Compliance (SC), Sale (S), Purchase (P) and Purchase Closure (PC). These stages are termed as obligatory elements in an economic transaction in which the agents of transaction are customer and vendor who are socially distant. The mode of the economic transaction is spoken with visual contact. A transaction in Halliday and Hasan’s framework starts with a Sale Request in which the customer requests the goods to buy, ‘Can I have ten oranges and a kilo of bananas please?’ (1985: 59). The vendor responds by granting or rejecting the request, and both positive and negative responses are termed as Sale Compliance. According to Halliday and Hasan, ‘the true granting of the SR [Sale Request] is actually in the doing’ where the vendor ‘completes getting the goods for the customers’ but the vendor may ask the customer, ‘Yes, anything else?’ (1985: 60). By so doing, the vendor invites the customers to make more purchases. The customer needs to respond to the vendor for the stage to be complete. Once the vendor has complied with the customer’s Sale Request, the transaction moves towards the Sale. This is when the vendor informs the customer of the exchange value of the goods. The customer responds by paying the amount stated, and this obligatory stage is termed as Purchase. Once the change or goods are handed over, the vendor thanks the customer (Purchase Closure), thereby completing the encounter. The obligatory stages occur in this order: SRSCSPPC.


Besides these five obligatory stages, a service encounter is also characterised by optional elements. Halliday and Hassan (1985) identified Greeting, Sale Initiation, Sale Enquiry and Finis as optional elements. For Halliday and Hassan (1985), a service encounter begins with a Sale Initiation when vendors show their readiness to serve customers (e.g., ‘Who’s next?), and the customer’s response is the second part of the adjacency pair of Sale Initiation. After the Sale Initiation, the customer and vendor may engage in interaction on the availability, and/or the attributes, and/or the cost of the goods that the customer wishes to buy. This constitutes the Sale Enquiry stage which is iterative or recursive. For Halliday and Hasan, Greet-ing and Finis open and end an interpersonal relation whereas Sale Initiation and Purchase Closure open and end a service encounter respectively. The realisation of the obligatory and optional elements of the service encounter may differ but the functions can be inferred from the customer–vendor interaction. See Appendix 1 for details on Halliday and Hasan’s schematic structure of service encounters. 3 Sociolinguistic background of Sarawak, Malaysia In Malaysia, Bahasa Malaysia is the national and official language and the Malaysian government plans for this language to be a shared means of commu-nication among the ethnically diverse people by making it the medium of education. At the same time, because of Malaysia’s colonial history, English is retained as an important language in Malaysia. English is the de facto official language in the private sector, encompassing the banking industry (Ali, 2000), manufacturing (Attan, 1998) and finance sectors (Nair-Venugopal, 2000), and it is also a language of instruction in higher education (Ting and Yeo, 2010). In Malaysia, the national language is associated with the ‘Malaysian’ identity although some quarters may attribute the ‘Malay’ identity to speakers of Bahasa Malaysia (Ting, 2001a). This is because the national language is the standardised variety of the majority Malay group in Malaysia – the Johor variety of Malay (Omar, 1979). On the other hand, English speakers are seen as ‘educated’, ‘West-ernised’ and ‘modern’ because in the years after the independence of Malaysia from British rule, only the elite had the opportunity to further their studies in English-speaking countries, particularly, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Later, the ‘English-educated’ group expanded to include those who had English as the medium of instruction in school, before the medium was completely changed to Bahasa Malaysia. The study on service encounters in a traditional bakery was carried out in Sibu, located in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Sarawak is located on the Borneo Island with Indonesian Kalimantan in the East and Brunei Darussalam and Sabah (another Malaysian state) in the North. Sarawak has a population of 2.47 million


which comprises Iban (28.87 percent), Chinese (23.38 percent), Malay (22.99 percent), Bidayuh (8.1 percent) and other indigenous groups (14.6 percent) (Department of Statistics Malaysia, Sarawak, 2012). The indigenous groups have their own languages which are mutually unintelligible. The Chinese are made up of many sub-groups such as Foochow, Hakka, Cantonese and Teochew, with their own vernacular languages which are not mutually intelligible. However, they share a common standard language – Mandarin. The Malays in Sarawak speak Sarawak Malay, a regional Malay variety, and they usually learn the standard Malay language, Bahasa Malaysia, through formal education. The historical changes in language policy in Sarawak resulted in people from different age groups having different levels of proficiency in these two languages. When Sarawak joined the Federation of Malaysia in 1963, the political leaders accepted Bahasa Malaysia as the national language but delayed declaration of English as the official language of Sarawak until the year 1985. The phasing out of English as the medium of education took place in stages. In 1977, Bahasa Malaysia was introduced as the medium of instruction in Primary One and the process was completed in 1987 at Form Five level (equivalent to ‘0’ level) (Ting, 2010). The change in instructional language resulted in three groups of people with varying levels of proficiency in English and Bahasa Malaysia in Sarawak:

Proficient in English and low proficiency in Bahasa Malaysia as the latter had not been introduced in Sarawak schools – those born before 1963 (aged 51 and above in 2013);

More proficient in English than Bahasa Malaysia from learning the latter in school – those born between 1963 and 1969 (aged between 44 and 50);

More proficient in Bahasa Malaysia than English as a result of Bahasa Malaysia being the medium of education – those born from 1970 onwards (aged 43 and below).

Generally an educated person in Sarawak can speak at least Bahasa Malaysia and English and the language of their ethnic group, although many also acquire other languages from their daily contacts with other ethnic groups. 4 Method 4.1 Research site The study was conducted in a traditional bakery situated in the town of Sibu, Sarawak. This shop sold traditionally baked Foochow egg cakes and cup cakes. The cakes sold were cheap (4 cakes for RM1) and they were usually identified by price. There were two ovens in the shop and each of them baked 66 cakes in 20 minutes. Customers could buy the cakes when they came into the shop and wait


for the cakes if they were sold out or place an order and come back to pick up the cakes later. Alternatively, they could also leave the shop without buying or ordering anything. The shop was operated by a Chinese couple in their fifties, their son and their daughter in-law (in their early twenties) who had completed their secondary school education. They were assisted by an Iban employee and a Chinese employee, both in their forties. The Chinese family who operated the shop and the Chinese employee were from the Foochow sub-group. The Chinese couple and the Iban employees were not participants in this study because they were responsible for preparing the ingredients and baking the cakes and were not involved in the selling of the cakes. Therefore, only three vendors were involved in this study: the son, the daughter in-law, and a Chinese employee. The son, daughter in-law and Foochow employee could speak fluent Foochow, Mandarin and Bahasa Melayu and some Iban, Hokkien, Cantonese and English. The bakery was located at a busy place and was frequented by different types of customers. Most of them were Foochow but there were also a number of Hokkien as well as Malay and Iban customers. These groups of customers visited the shop at different hours of the day. During the morning and tea time on weekdays, the shop was frequented by men having their tea break at the coffee shop as well as by people who worked in the nearby offices. During the weekend, most of the customers were housewives who bought the cakes when they were on their way home, after buying vegetables at the central market. 4.2 Data collection and analysis The data collection for this study took place in December 2009, from 6–9 December 2009 and on 12, 13 and 19 December 2009. The naturally occurring buying and selling interactions were digitally recorded. In order to inform the customer of the recording, a ‘Recording in Progress’ sign was put up at the front of the shop where buying and selling was taking place. The first researcher conducted non-participant observation during the recording. Observation notes were taken to record relevant non-verbal expression of the interactants which included head nodding, head shaking, pointing at the cakes, handing over money, handing over cakes and receiving cakes. The gender, approximate age and ethnic background of the interactants were noted. In total, 114 recordings were audio-taped but 14 could not be fully transcribed due to the loud background noise from the Video Compact Disc (VCD) shop next door which was playing Christmas songs during that the data collection period. Hence, the analysis for the study was based on one hundred service encounters amounting to 95 minutes, with encounters ranging from 12 seconds to 10 minutes.


The word length of the transcript was 4600 words, with a range of 6 words to 156 words per encounter. Such short buying-and-selling encounters are expected because exchanges which are pragmatically motivated tend to be very short (Eggins and Slade, 1997). Furthermore, a limited range of cakes was offered for sale at the bakery resulting in quick decisions by the customers. The recordings of the service encounters were transcribed using Eggins and Slade’s (1997) transcription key. For example, parentheses ( ) were used to denote untranscribable talk and words within parentheses were the transcriber’s guess but square brackets were used to indicate non-verbal information noted during the observation. Ellipsis (…) was used to indicate a short hesitation within a turn of less than three seconds. Since Eggins and Slade’s (1997) transcription key does not have notations for the use of other languages, interactions in Chinese languages were romanized (e.g., ‘Long go do lang noi’ [Foochow]) and the direct translation to English was placed in brackets ({Egg cakes, take two ringgit}) on a subsequent line. Jefferson’s (1985) transcription notations were not used because we did not intend for the data to be analysed using conversation analysis for talk-in-interaction to show how customer and vendor roles are talked into being. As the service encounters occurred verbally, the communication showed discourse features of spoken language. The transcripts contained a lot of ellipsis when referring to the cakes on display because of the spoken mode of interaction. During the transcription process, the researcher referred to the information from the observation guide and included the contextual information in the transcript in square brackets, for example, [The vendor gives the cakes to the customer]. This is to facilitate interpretation of the discourse features of the encounter. The language which was used in the encounters was written on the transcripts and if code-switching was found, an asterisk (*) was marked on the transcripts. The tran-scripts were not edited for grammaticality and interactions were kept verbatim to retain the authenticity of the data. Each time the vendor or customer switched to a different language from the language initially used, it was counted as one instance of code-switching. Switching involving single words was also counted as one instance of code-switching, following Gumperz’s (1982) definition of code-switching. Using these guidelines, both authors read the transcripts and identified instances of code-switching – this process was straightforward and inter-code reliability was 100%. For the analysis of code-switching functions, Gumperz’s (1982) semantic model of conversational code-switching was used. This model categorises code-switching into situational and metaphorical functions. Situational code-switching accommodates a change in setting, topic or participants (Blom and Gumperz, 1986). Metaphorical code-switching functions are quotation, addressee


specification, interjections, reiteration, message qualification and personalization (Gumperz, 1982). See Appendix 2 for definitions and examples of code-switching functions. The analysis of code-switching took account of the direction of switch and whether it was the vendor or customer who made the switch. To make the code-switching functions meaningful in the context of service encounters, the instances of code-switching were analysed in the context of stages of service encounters (Halliday and Hasan, 1985) (Appendix 1). The analysis of code-switching functions was conducted by the two authors of this paper and the inter-coder reliability for staging of service encounter was 90.6% agreement (29 out of 33 instances). One instance of disagreement involved Sale, understood as the vendor informing the customer of the exchange value of goods. This appeared in an unusual form in Encounter 35 because the seller announced that she had RM4.50 worth of cakes for, short of one cake for the RM5 which the customer had requested. It looked like a Sale Enquiry but it was a Sale because the customer responded by affirming that the quantity was acceptable and subsequently paid for the purchase. Another three instances of disagreement involving Sale Enquiry and Sale Compliance were resolved by referring to Halliday and Hasan’s (1985) framework and the context of the utterance in question. For example, in turn 9 of Encounter 12, the customer said, ‘Got fruit one [in Foochow]’, Got fruit one [in Mandarin]’. In turn 10 the vendor said, ‘Got fruit one? Take…take one ringgit? [in Mandarin]’. The vendor’s utterance in turn 10 looked like a Sale Enquiry because it touched on the attributes of the cupcakes but it is actually Sale Compliance because the vendor wanted to confirm the order to give the customer the right quantity of fruit cupcakes. The subsequent action of the vendor putting the cupcakes into a plastic bag also showed that turn 10 was a Sale Compliance, that is, the vendor agreed to the sale. Another point guiding the analysis was that a Sale Request by the customer is usually followed with a Sale Compliance by the vendor but both the vendor and customer could make Sale Enquiries at various points of the service encounter. 5 Results and discussion 5.1 Language of intra- and interethnic service encounters Analysis of one hundred service encounters showed that the clientele of the bakery selling traditional Foochow pastries was largely Chinese, as 83% of the interactions were with Chinese customers (Table 1). No deliberate attempts were made to include or exclude service encounters during the duration of the data collection, apart from inaudible interactions which could not be transcribed.


Table 1. Language used in service encounters by Chinese vendors

with Chinese and non-Chinese customers.

Chinese customers Non-Chinese customers Language Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage

Foochow 47 56.6 0 0 Mandarin 34 41.0 0 0 Hokkien 2 2.4 0 0 Bahasa Malaysia 0 0 7 41.2 Bazaar Malay 0 0 9 52.9 Non-verbal communication

0 0 1 5.9

83 100.0 17 100.0 *Chinese languages include both the standard Chinese language (Mandarin) and the ethnic languages of Chinese sub-groups (Foochow and Hokkien). For the 83 interactions with Chinese customers, 56.6% of the interactions were conducted in Foochow (47 encounters) and 41.0% (or 34 encounters) took place in Mandarin. For the 47 Foochow service encounters, 36 were initiated by the customers and 11 were initiated by the vendors. For the 34 Mandarin service encounters, 22 were customer-initiated and 12 were vendor-initiated. Considering that the customers made the opening in most service encounters, it is the customer rather than the vendor who determined the language choice of service encounters. Foochow is the main language of service encounters between Chinese vendors and Chinese customers because the Sibu population is dominated by Chinese from the Foochow sub-group. When the vendors met regular customers who were Foochow or when the customers initiated the use of Foochow, the vendors spoke Foochow. Similarly, when customers initiated the use of Mandarin, the interac-tion continued in Mandarin. As for the vendors, they spoke Mandarin when they were not sure which Chinese sub-group the customers belonged to because most Chinese in Sarawak can speak or at least understand Mandarin. This is because Mandarin is taught as a subject in most public schools and there are even private schools which use Mandarin as the medium of instruction. Even without formal education in Mandarin, the Chinese people in Sarawak have enough exposure to the language for them to understand or speak Mandarin in daily communication. Furthermore, there is a shift towards the standard Chinese language in the Chinese community (Ting and Mahadhir, 2009). For the 17 service encounters with non-Chinese customers, one encounter was non-verbal. Out of the 16 verbal encounters, the vendors spoke either Bahasa Malaysia (41.2% or 7 encounters) or Bazaar Malay (52.9% or 9 encounters). The choice of these Malay varieties, rather than a Chinese language, indicates that the language choice was made based on ethnic identity. The younger vendors who had Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction in school spoke Bahasa


Malaysia but the older vendors who did not have formal education in Bahasa Malaysia could speak only Bazaar Malay, the colloquial variety of Bahasa Malaysia. For the Chinese, age is indicative of proficiency in Bahasa Malaysia because of the gradual introduction of Bahasa Malaysia in Sarawak, first as a subject in school and later as the medium of instruction. The results showed a dichotomy: Chinese languages with Chinese customers and Malay varieties with non-Chinese customers. The language choices were made based on the physical appearance of the customers. The Chinese look includes features such as small slanted eyes and fair skin, as opposed to non-Chinese who usually have bigger eyes and darker skin tones. Non-Chinese include Malay and indigenous peoples of Sarawak (e.g., Iban, Bidayuh) but it is not easy to distinguish between them based on physical appearance. A characteristic which may help in the identification of Malay women is the head scarf (tudung). Malay are necessarily Muslims based on the Federal Constitution of Malaysia, which states that ‘Malay means a person who professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language, conforms to the Malay custom…’ (Legal Research Board, 1997:198). However, not all Malay Muslim women wear the head scarf and women from other ethnic groups who are Muslim may wear the head scarf as well. In the final analysis, it is not important for the Chinese vendors to tell apart the Malay and indigenous peoples of Sarawak because they can only speak Malay varieties and they are unable to speak the indigenous languages of Sarawak. However, it is important for the Chinese vendors to use physical appearance to make a good guess at the customer’s ethnicity to avoid a faux pas in their language choice because the Chinese are reluctant to speak Bahasa Malaysia with other Chinese due to its identity as a language of the Malays (see Platt and Weber, 1980; Ting and Nelson, 2010). 5.2 Code-switching in service encounters The analysis identified 19 out of one hundred service encounters with code-switching occurrences. Altogether 33 instances of code-switching were identified. In this section, an illustrative transcript is included to show the form and functions of code-switching. S refers to the vendor (S1, S2, S3) whereas C refers to the customers (C1-C100). Code-switched words are in bold in the excerpts, and square brackets contain contextual information. The English translation is provided in parentheses and the turn number is shown on the left. In Encounter 65, the vendor (S3) initiated the service encounter in Foochow by asking how much the customer wanted and the customer (C65) switched to Mandarin to request two ringgit worth of cakes (‘Na liang kuai’). The vendor responded in Mandarin to grant the customer’s sale request. The rest of the interaction took place in Mandarin and the vendor thanked the customer (‘xie xie’), bringing the encounter to a close.


Excerpt 1

[C65 appears at the stall and

pointed to the cupcakes.]

Staging of service

encounter

1 S3: [Foochow] Di niu wai leh?

{How much do you want?}

Sale Enquiry

2 C65 : [Mandarin] Na liang kuai. {Take two ringgit.}

Sale Request

3 S3: [Mandarin] Liang kuai ah? {Two ringgit?} Sale Compliance

4 C65: Ah.

{Yes.}

5 [S3 nods.]

6 [S3 takes the cake and gives them

to C65.]

7 [C65 takes the cakes and pays the

money.]

Purchase

8 S3: [Mandarin] Xie xie. {Thank you}

Purchase Closure

9 [S3 receives the money.]

10 [C65 leaves the stall.]

Six patterns of code-switching were identified from the data. First, Encounter 65 is an example of ‘complete code-switching’ (Pan, 2000) where the language of service encounter changed from Foochow to Mandarin from the second turn onwards. It was the customer who initiated the switch to Mandarin because the customer could not speak Foochow. In this study, four out of 19 service encounters fell into this category. Second, there was one encounter conducted in ‘parallel codes’ (Pan, 2000) where the customer and vendor used two different languages for the entire duration of the encounter without converging to a common language. Parallel code-switching is not common in the Malaysian setting because most Chinese people can understand and speak Mandarin and at least one language of the Chinese sub-group, unlike the situation in Hong Kong at the time of Pan’s study because Putonghua had only just been introduced after Hong Kong returned to China sovereignty in 1997. Third, there was an encounter with ‘mixed code-switching’ (Pan, 2000) where the vendor alternated between Mandarin and Hokkien in an attempt to speak the language used by the customer with her friend, but the customer maintained the use of Mandarin throughout the encounter – rejecting the vendor’s attempts to establish solidarity. Mixed code-switching is the exception rather than the rule because of the tendency to converge to a shared language.


In addition to the three patterns of code-switching identified by Pan (2000), we found that code-switching could occur at the closure of the service encounter or mid-way in the interaction. The fourth pattern took the form of ‘insertional code-switching’ (Hamers and Blanc, 2000) where the customer and vendor used one or two Hokkien words to describe the cakes in a Mandarin interaction, not for lack of equivalent Mandarin words. (For example, kosong meaning the original without added flavouring and cam cam meaning a mixture.) The fifth pattern of code-switching is closure code-switching, where a language switch takes place in the last three verbal turns before the handing over of goods and money. Closure code-switching is, in fact, the most common in this study, describing the patterns of nine out of 19 service encounters. Six were code-switching by the vendor to thank the customer and four involved numbers (either price or quantity) for clarity. The sixth, and final, pattern of code-switching occurred mid-way through the exchange. In these two interactions, the vendor had lost track of the serving turn with so many customers in the crowded shop. The interaction looked like a fresh encounter beginning with the vendor’s Sale Initiation, followed by the customer’s Sale Request in a different language from what was initially used. To sum up, the most common pattern of code-switching in this study is complete code-switching with other patterns occurring infrequently: parallel code-switch-ing, mixed code-switching, closure code-switching, insertional code-switching, and mid-way code-switching. The subsequent analysis, which uses stages of service encounters to explain code-switching, will provide more definitive patterns on the functions of code-switching in service encounters.

Table 2. Frequency and functions of code-switching in service encounters.

Functions of code-switching

Examples of code-switching

Customer

Vendor Total

To show readiness to serve (Sale Initiation)

‘Who’s next?’ 1 1 2

To emphasise attributes of goods for sale (Sale Enquiry)

‘This one, the peanut one.’

2 6 8

To reiterate or emphasise attributes and quantity of goods to buy (Sale Request)

‘Take two ringgit, the peanut type.’

8 0 8

To reiterate attributes, quantity and price of goods to sell (Sale Compliance)

‘The one with fruits, take one ringgit?’

0 7 7

To name price (Sale) ‘Ten ringgit and fifty cents.’

1 1 2

To thank (Purchase Closure)

‘Thank you.’ 0 6 6

Total 12 21 33


Table 2 shows that the vendor code-switched more frequently than the customer. Most of the code-switching occurred during these four stages of the service encounter: Sale Enquiry, Sale Request, Sale Compliance and Purchase Closure. Out of 33 instances of code-switching identified from 19 service encounters, only three instances occurred outside of these four stages. Two instances constituted an adjacency pair during the Sale Initiation of Encounter 7 in which the vendor interrupted her exchange with a customer in Foochow to ask a crowd of customers in Mandarin who was next to be served. The customer responded in Mandarin to state that it was her turn. This example of code-switching has the function of addressee specification but it was opposite to Gumperz’s (1982) definition (directing the message to one of several addressees) because the vendor switched language to direct the message away from one customer to many addressees. Switching to Mandarin achieved this purpose because it is more widely understood than Foochow in the Chinese community. There was another instance of code-switching in the Sale stage of Encounter 75 when the vendor stated the value of the goods in Foochow and Mandarin (literally translated as 10 ringgit and a half) because the numbers ‘ten’ and ‘four’ sound similar in Foochow. The code-switching was for reiteration of the message, one of the functions of code-switching in Gumperz’s (1982) semantic model of conversational code-switching. Since code-switching tended to occur in the Sale Enquiry, Sale Request, Sale Compliance and Purchase Closure stages, the nature and functions of code-switching in these stages of the service encounter will be given more attention. During the Sale Enquiry stage, the customers and vendor sometimes switched to another language to talk about the attributes of goods contemplated for purchase. In six out of nine Sale Enquiries, the code-switching involved attributes of goods. Excerpt 2 shows that in Encounter 12, the vendor (S3) switched from Mandarin to Hokkien when she described the ingredients of the cupcakes that the customer (C12) was pointing to. The customer took up the lead and asked for the price of the fruit cupcakes in Hokkien. The rest of the interaction proceeded non-verbally. In two other Sale Enquiries (Encounters 7 and 47), the vendor switched to ask ‘take how much?’ to prompt a Sale Request from the waiting customers. Another Sale Enquiry was on the availability of goods contemplated for purchase (Encounter 19). The switch was directly to another language, meaning that it was not a reiteration in the same or modified form using another language as defined by Gumperz (1982). Thus, in the Sale Enquiry stage, code-switching has an important reiterative function to emphasize the attributes of the cakes the customer intended to buy because different types of cakes were displayed on the counter for customers to point to but there was no labeling to show the type of cakes (e.g., peanut, fruit, original).


Excerpt 2 Staging of service

encounter

8 [S3 points to the cup cake.]

9 C12 : [Mandarin to Hokkien] Ah. You

sui guo de. Wu tou eh la. {Ah. The one with fruits. The

one with fruits.}

Sale Request

10 S3: [Hokkien] Wu tou eh ha? Gia..Gia ji koh ha? {The one with fruits?

Take…Take one ringgit?} Sale Compliance

11 C12: Ah.

{Yes.}

12 [S3 takes the cakes and gives them to B12.]

13 [C12 takes the cakes and pays for the cakes.]

Once the Sale Enquiry is over, the customers usually proceed to make a Sale Request. In this study, seven customers code-switched to make their Sale Requests (C26 twice) giving a total of eight instances of code-switching to make Sale Requests. Three dealt with attributes of goods and five dealt with quantity. Examples are as follows:

‘We lang noi’ [Foochow] translated as {I want two ringgit} (Encounter 4).

‘Kosong na san kuai? Ke yi’ [Mandarin] translated as {Alright, I’ll take three ringgits worth of the original} (Encounter 26).

In Encounter 4, the customer did not have to spell out the characteristics of the cupcakes that she wanted to buy because she was standing close to a tray of freshly baked cupcakes that the vendor had placed in front of her. In this retail setting, the customers often relied on contextual cues and spatial markers (e.g., ‘this one’) to make their Sale Request. Another point to note is that the quantity is expressed in terms of the value of money because this is how the cakes are priced (e.g. four cakes for RM1). The analysis showed that code-switching in Sale Requests functions as reiteration or emphasis on attributes and quantity of goods to buy. The vendor responds to customer’s Sale Request by granting or not granting the request, and the response is termed Sale Compliance (Halliday and Hasan, 1985). The vendors code-switched to make sure that they had accurately taken note of the attributes, quantity and price of goods the customers wanted to buy. Sometimes, the vendor first stated the price in Foochow and reiterated it in Hokkien, ‘Nu san doi ho? Sa ko ho?’ translated as ‘You want three ringgit, right?


Three ringgit, right?’ (Encounter 47). At other times, the vendor used back-channelling to express Sale Compliance to the customer’s Sale Request (see turns 9-10 in Excerpt 2). In Encounter 12, the customer (C12) made her Sale Request in Mandarin and reiterated it in Hokkien. Upon hearing the repeated Sale Request in Hokkien, the vendor also switched from Mandarin to Hokkien to affirm that she had heard the details correctly. Analysis of the seven instances of code-switching in the Sale Compliance stage showed that the seller tended to seek confirmation of quantity (expressed in the form of price in this study) rather than the attributes of goods (though one was a request for the customer to wait while the vendor packed the cakes). It is clear that in the Sale Compliance stage of service encounters, code-switching is important for reiterating the attributes, quantity or price of goods to ensure clarity. Finally, the vendors in this study code-switched to thank customers in the Purchase Closure stage. Table 2 shows that six instances of ‘thank you’ were expressed in another language. The Chinese vendors switched from Foochow or Hokkien to Mandarin in three service encounters (Encounters 14, 28 and 91), from Mandarin to English in Encounter 16 – these service encounters involved Chinese customers. With non-Chinese customers, they switched from Bazaar Malay to English (Encounters 5 and 89). In fact, these were the only two interethnic service encounters in the whole data set with expression of thanks. As for the 83 service encounters involving Chinese customers, there were only 22 encounters with gratitude expression (15 in Mandarin, 4 in Foochow, 2 in Hokkien and 1 in English). In total, out of one hundred encounters, only 24 had thanking expressions and 18 of the expressions were in either Mandarin or English, showing that the Chinese vendors were more comfortable thanking the customers in these two standard languages. In fact, gratitude expression is not an integral feature of service encounters in Eastern settings (e.g., Bailey, 2001; Kong, 1998; Ting, Lau, Soong and Chong, 2012), unlike the United States where people frequently and explicitly acknowledge gratitude in daily interactions (Apte, 1974). In Halliday and Hasan’s (1985) schematic structure of service encounters, thanking in the Purchase Closure stage completes the service encounter. In the context of this schematic structure, a customer–vendor encounter without a thanking expression is incomplete. The results of this study indicate that code-switching has enabled vendors to include this politeness feature in some complete service encounters but most of the encounters closed with Purchase when the money was paid and the goods handed over. On the basis of the results, this study showed that code-switching in fast-paced customer–vendor interactions in the Foochow bakery is for communicative efficiency. The code-switching involved mainly attributes, quantity and price of


goods, and expression of thanks, depending on the stage of the service encounter. In this bakery, the goods are priced according to quantity per ringgit, making numbers very prominent in the code-switching. The code-switching ensures that the encounter proceeds efficiently without wrong orders or wrong exchange value. Contrary to other studies which found code-switching for prestige (Jalaluddin, 2007), unavailability of equivalent expressions (Bailey, 2001) or signaling depar-ture from business transaction to small talk (Torras, 1998), the code-switching identified in this study is for instrumental reasons of negotiating a transaction efficiently. The higher frequency of code-switching by the vendor also shows accommodation on the part of the vendor to ensure clarity and efficiency. The code-switching is for facilitating the business transaction rather than for changing the footing in the social relationship (Pan, 2000). While the results on the functions of code-switching in the context of retail encounters are rather clear on four stages (Sale Enquiry, Sale Request, Sale Compliance and Purchase Closure), the results are only suggestive for Sale Initiation and Sale because there was only one example each in the data set. Furthermore, the service encounter involved a limited range of goods and the encounters were fast-paced. The results on the code-switching functions need to be verified with buying and selling interactions involving goods such as comput-ers, or services such as travel packages, for which there are more features to analyse.

Although the focus of this paper has been on code-switching, it should be noted that only 19% of service encounters analysed involved code-switching. A majority of encounters proceeded in the language initially chosen for the customer–vendor interaction. It is in the language of interethnic service encoun-ters that the impact of language planning can best be seen because the Chinese vendors opted for either Bahasa Malaysia or Bazaar Malay. The vendor is unlikely to initiate use of Chinese languages with Malay customers, unless the customers were mistaken for Chinese. Intentional choice of Chinese languages in interethnic interactions can be seen as an assertion of the Chinese identity which is not acceptable in Malaysia, given that the government has been propagating Bahasa Malaysia as the common language for interethnic communication. Altehenger-Smith’s (1987) contention is that Malays do the least accommodation in the transaction domain. This is not only because of the vendor’s linguistic conver-gence as a face strategy to gain customer’s approval (Callahan, 2007; Pan, 2000) but because of the stronger political power of the Malay community in Malaysia. By using stages of service encounters to explain code-switching functions, we present a less context-dependent framework for analysing the nature and func-tions of code-switching in service encounters using a juxtaposition of Halliday and Hasan’s (1985) schematic structure of service encounters and Gumperz’s (1982) semantic model of conversational code-switching. From Gumperz’s (1982)


semantic model of conversational code-switching, only addressee specification and reiteration were found to be relevant in instrumental exchanges between customers and vendors. However, by anchoring the functions of code-switching to the functions of different stages of the service encounter, the framework allows the markedness of the language switch to have its own meaning in the context of the service encounter. The specific language used may not matter but it is the markedness of the language switch which achieves certain functions and which moves the service encounter towards a satisfactory purchase by the customer and a successful sale by the vendor. When code-switching can be seen as a phenomenon which is separate from the societal context of the language use, the framework has the potential to explain code-switching in service encounters across societal contexts. This is because the variability of socio-economic and political milieu makes comparison of code-switching across disparate settings difficult. Using stages of service encounters to explain functions of code-switching provides a more definitive framework which allows comparison of results on code-switching across different retail settings. 6 Conclusion This study aims to describe the language choice of service encounters in a bakery operated by Chinese vendors of Chinese descent in a Foochow-dominant town, Sibu, in Malaysia. To that end, both language use and code-switching were exam-ined. Interaction between Chinese vendors and Chinese customers is character-ised by the use of Foochow and, to a lesser extent, Mandarin. Interaction with non-Chinese customers is characterised by use of Bahasa Malaysia by vendors who have formal education in the language, and Bazaar Malay by vendors who learn to speak the pidginised form of Malay informally. Set against the backdrop of the dichotomy of language choice in service encounter is the occurrence of code-switching for efficient transactions. The main functions of code-switching in retail counters are to emphasise attributes of goods in Sale Enquiry, attributes and quantity of goods to buy in Sale Request, and attributes, quantity and price of goods to sell in Sale Compliance. The findings also show that vendors tend to switch to Mandarin and English to thank customers in the Purchase Closure stage. This study has used the staging of service encounters to explain code-switching functions and provided a less context-dependent framework to compare results on code-switching in customer–vendor interactions across different settings. However, the explanatory power of the framework needs to be verified in further studies on service encounters in other settings.


Notes

1 Platt (1975) defined Bazaar Malay as the pidginised form of Malay with heavily reduced syntax and lexicon. Omar (1982) noted the basic grammar of Bazaar Malay as having a different word order from Standard Malay: The word order of Standard Malay is Subject–Verb–Object (e.g., Saya makan nasi, I eat rice) whereas the word order of Bazaar Malay is Subject-Object-Verb (e.g., Saya nasi makan, I rice eat). Although it is the low variety, Bazaar Malay has basic grammar with a lot of mixing and borrowing from other languages. Ting and Chong (2008) proffered lu (you) and lolok (first) as examples of Bazaar Malay found in their study on fruit stall interactions in Kuching, Sarawak.

Appendix 1. Guidelines for analysis of stages of service encounters (Halliday and Hasan, 1985:59–69).

Stage Function Examples Greeting (G) To show recognition of personal

relation.

‘Good morning’

Sale Initiation (SI)

To initiate service encounter. (SI is complete when customer has responded)

‘Who’s next?’ ‘I think I am.’

Sale Request (SR)

To request goods. (Usually involves demand, reference to goods and quantity of goods) (If SR occurs twice, SC must also occur twice)

‘I’ll have ten oranges and a kilo of banana please.’

Sale Compliance (SC)

To grant or reject sale request. (A true granting of SC is getting goods for customer but the verbal response is to invite more purchases) (SC is complete when customer has responded to the invitation)

‘Yes, anything else?’ ‘Yeah, thank you.’ ‘Will that be all?’ ‘Yeah, thank you.’

Sale Enquiry (SE)

To determine some attribute of goods contemplated for purchase. (Can be raised by customer or vendor) (Can occur anywhere, so long as it does not precede G or SI and so long as it does not follow P or PC or F)

‘I wanted some strawberries but these don’t look very ripe. Will they be OK for this evening?’ ‘You’ll like them cos they’re good.’

Sale (S)

To inform exchange value of goods.

‘That’ll be two dollars and sixty nine please.’


Purchase (P) To offer the exchange value in return for ordered goods.

‘I can give you nine cents.’ (handing over the money)

Purchase Closure (PC)

To acknowledge receipt of payment. (Signals end of purchase act. Might additionally cover the business of handing over change)

‘Eighty, three dollars and two is five. Thank you.’

Finis (F) To indicate continuity in interpersonal relation by displaying good will or expressing desire to new contact.

‘Have a nice day. See ya.’

Appendix 2. Functions of code-switching in Gumperz’s (1982:75–81) semantic model of conversational code-switching

Function Description Example Quotation

To quote a message directly or in reported speech

She doesn't speak English, so, dice que la reganan: ‘Si se les va olvidar el idioma a las criatura’ (she says that they would scold her: ‘the children are surely going to forget their language’)

Addressee specification

To direct the message to one of several addressees

A: Sometimes you get excited and then you speak in Hindi, then again you go on to English. B: No nonsense, it depends on your command of English. A: [shortly after turning to a third participant, who has just returned from answering the doorbell] Kən hai bai (who is it)?

Interjections

To mark an interjection or sentence filler

A: Well, I'm glad I met you. B: Andale pues (O.K. swell). And do come again. Mm?

Reiteration To repeat a message from one code to another code either literally or in somewhat modified form

Keep straight. Sidha jao [louder] (keep straight)

Message qualification

To qualify constructions such as sentence and verb complements or predicates following a copula

The oldest one, la grande la de once anos (the big one who is eleven years old).


Personalisation vs. objectivisation

To distinguish between talk about action and talk as action, the degree of speaker involvement in, or distance from, a message, whether a statement reflects personal opinion or knowledge, whether it refers to specific instances or has the authority of generally known fact

A: Vigələ ma yə sa americə (Wigele got them from America) B: Kanada pridə (it comes from Canada). A: kanada mus I səgn nit (I would not say Canada).

Situational code-switching

To accommodate a change in setting, topic or participants

About the authors

Yih-Long Lau teaches English at the Academy of Language Studies, Universiti Teknologi Mara, Campus Samarahan, Sarawak. She graduated from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak with a Masters degree in Applied Linguistics in 2012. She obtained her Bachelor Degree of Education with Honours (Teaching English as a Second Language) from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak in 2009. Her main research interests are business language and interactional sociolinguistics. She is particularly interested in how appropriate language choices are made in retail encounters in multilingual settings and the social meanings of these language choices. Su-Hie Ting teaches English at the Centre for Language Studies, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. She graduated from the University of Queensland with a Ph.D in Applied Linguistics in 2001. Her main research interests are language use and attitudes, academic writing and strategic competence. Her articles have been published in Multilingua, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Current Issues in Language Planning, Journal of Academic Language and Learning, and International Journal of Applied Linguistics (ITL).

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Documents

Ting, S. H. (2010). Malaysian identity reflected in language use of transactions. UNIMAS Research Update, 5(2), p. 22