Linguistic politeness which is related to how the users behave in a specific context depending on sociocultural variables as part of little c culture has been investigated in a lot of studies due to the intertwined relationship between culture and language. One context in which politeness can be examined in various ways is service encounters allowing for transactional interactions, showing the ways native speakers use the language in those settings. This study investigated how the language used by shopkeepers differs in terms of politeness in face-to-face interaction across varied types of shops in Turkey. In this sense, opening/closing sequences, the way the shopkeepers address the customers and positive politeness and negative politeness strategies have been examined to explore the politeness strategies used by the shopkeepers in service encounters. The participants of this study were Turkish shopkeepers in 10 shops varying in terms of what they provide and the economic strength/prestige they possess as high and low. Data were collected by recording the language used by the units of analysis and observation. After transcribing the data, it was analyzed through discourse analysis. The main findings of the study revealed that while there is no distinction in positive politeness strategies between the two types of shops, there are some differences in terms of opening and closing sequences in conversation, addressing customer and negative politeness strategies depending on the types of shops, showing that variation in politeness is evident in Turkish. Therefore, it can be argued that making learners of Turkish gain an awareness of these linguistic variations is important for them to communicate appropriately in these settings.
politeness strategies, service encounters, openings, closings, addressing terms