DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2015.1539
title: Politeness and miscommunications in service encounters at tourist police centers in Thailand

description: This study investigates politeness behaviours and miscommunication of Thai tourist police officials in service encounters at the Tourist Report Centers (TRCs). The speech acts theory of Searle (1969) and the linguistic politeness theory of Brown and Levinson (1978) are applied to examine speech data collected at a linguistic level to investigate participants’ speech acts frequency distribution and linguistic politeness strategies. Scollon, Scollon, and Jones (2012) global politeness study via the discourse approach is employed to study participants’ politeness strategies at a discursive level and the politeness system in intercultural communication. Finally, the theory of triggers of misunderstanding of Bazzanella and Damiano (1999) is used to analyze sources of miscommunication between participants and tourists, and the strategies utilized to resolve miscommunication in the encounters were also explored. The research tools are audio-recording, field notes, observation, and semi-structured interview, and discourse analysis is the major research approach the researcher utilizes in the research. Major findings from the study are listed as follows. It was found that speech acts of directives were used the most frequently, followed by assertives, expressives, commissives, and declaratives. Participants also employed bald-on-record strategies the most commonly which showed a priority on urgency to provide quick, efficient service to tourists. Concerning the politeness strategies, there was a mix of involvement and independence politeness strategies in the intercultural service encounters. Nonetheless, participants preferred involvement strategies over independence strategies to create a participatory atmosphere. Performed involvement strategies are seek agreement, giving gifts, in-group identity markers, and offer. Independence strategies that participants practiced are conventionally indirect, hedge and questions, deference, impersonalization, and stating as general rule. Thai tourist police officials also practiced involvement over independence strategies at a discursive level. Involvement strategies include participants’ higher number of turns, long turn length, repetition, back-channeling, and overlapping whereas independence strategies found in the data entail interruption and Thai code-switching. The politeness system in the service encounters at the Tourist Report Centers is a hierarchical politeness system in which power difference and asymmetry between Thai participants and tourists is continually observed in observation and natural data at both the linguistic and discursive levels. Thai tourist police officials believed that they have higher power than tourists. There is also high social distance between the two parties. The finding follows in line with Scollon et al. (2012) that speakers with higher power would prefer using involvement strategies to speak down to address inferior addressees. In regard to miscommunication, triggers that stimulated miscommunications at the Tourist Report Centers are related to communicative, speakers, and interactions. Participants’ strategies to resolve miscommunications include re-asking questions, using discourse particles to express misunderstanding, using hand and body gestures, asking tourists to speak more slowly and clearly, using technology, writing and drawing. Lastly, Thai cultural values of kinship relationship, a hierarchical structure, and inside-outside social organization are found to be prevalent through the use of participants’ language in communication.