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

Abstract

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.