Accounts at convenience stores: Doing dispreference and small talk

Accounting is one of the basic methods through which participants in interaction can achieve a shared understanding of the social world. By giving accounts for their actions people display their awareness of the disaffiliating or unexpected nature of the action and their understanding of the reasons and motives which make the action more acceptable or ordinary. In this paper, I will discuss cases in which customers and sales clerks at Finnish convenience store encounters give accounts for their current action. Many of the accounts display that the speaker treats the action accounted for as dispreferred or unexpected in this particular context. However, the participants may also present accounts that concern the most ordinary, routine actions of the encounter and that are designed for launching small talk. I will focus on the design features of the accounts and account sequences: how the action accounted for is accomplished; how the account is formulated; what the placement of the account in the sequence is; and how the account is responded to. I will show that there are some distinctive sequential and turn design features in different types of cases, but I will also argue that the functions of all the accounts are overlapping.