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Communicative Behavior and Conflict between African-American Customers and Korean Immigrant Retailers in Los Angeles

BROWN UNIVERSITY

Face-to-face interaction between Korean immigrant retailers and African-American customers in Los Angeles often leaves members of each group feeling as if the other has behaved in insultingly inappropriate ways. Twenty-five service encounters involving both African-American and immigrant Korean customers were video-recorded in a liquor store and transcribed for analysis. These encounters reveal divergent communicative patterns between immigrant Koreans and African-Americans. The contrasting forms of participation that occur in these encounters are used by both storekeepers and customers to explain negative attributions that they make about each other. I argue that the differing forms of participation documented in service encounters - and the ways in which they are interpreted - are simultaneously a result of (1) cultural and linguistic differences between storekeepers and customers in service encounter behavior and expectations; and (2) social inequality in America, which shapes both the local context in which these encounters occur and the social assumptions that storekeepers and customers bring to the stores.

Key Words: African-American • interethnic communication • Korean • language and identity • service encounters

Discourse & Society, Vol. 11, No. 1, 86-108 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/0957926500011001004


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