This paper provides an in-depth analysis of a conversational exchange initiated by a customer's price question in real-life business-to-business (B2B) sales encounters. The analysis focusses on when the customer requests a price, what that implies as well as how the price discussion is conducted. Marketing literature usually considers product/service price to be an obstacle that the salesperson needs to overcome; we demonstrate that the price question is a positive signal for the salesperson. By requesting the price, the customer claims sufficient understanding of the offer, recognition of the service value and a readiness to move to the next phase in the meeting. The salesperson initiates an insert expansion to tailor the price to her/his customer and then informs the price in an expanded clausal response to build customer value. The conversation analytic study was based on a dataset of 13 video-recorded B2B sales meetings in Finland.
Methods in Linguistics is a collection of articles presenting a broad variety of methods and approaches in the field of linguistics. It offers structure to the spectrum of methodological possibilities and helps the reader to identify the field of application as well as the strengths and weaknesses of different methods. The book consists of an extensive introductory part and a variety of articles, each written by experts of the method in question. It discusses questions related to different kinds of data and data collection, as well as methods used for analysing data. Since the methods used in linguistics are often related to a specific linguistic current, the book offers examples from a wide range of linguistic approaches. The book is addressed to students, researchers and other readers interested in the methods used in linguistics. The general methodological and metatheoretical knowledge offered in the introduction guides the reader through the different methodological choices presented and helps the reader to select the best method to meet her needs. First, the research process is explained step-by-step from the selection of topic and data to questions related to research design, analysis and the reporting of the results. The second part of the introduction focuses on fundamental theoretical and methodological questions, such as the criteria for knowledge, the nature of scientific knowledge and the scientific method. The third part addresses more specifically the methodology of linguistics, discussing the multifaceted nature of natural language and linguistics as a discipline. The introduction also covers many current topics in science, such as research ethics, data protection and open science principles. The book can be used as self-study material by students and researchers alike, or as course material in higher education. Learning is supported by the careful definition of terms, extensive indexes and additional readings suggested for each topic.
Finnish differs from English and some other languages in that it has two 'yeah but' formats, joo mut ('yeah but') and nii mut ('yeah but'). Drawing on audio and videotaped talk-in-interaction between friends and relatives, and on conversation analysis as a method, I examine the extent to which these two formats share functions and to which extent they are used differently. This study argues that the basic difference between the two 'yeah but' formats in Finnish is that one disengages from the line of action that was projected by the prior speaker and one engages in it. The disengaging joo mut utterance implies that the participants' perspectives on the topic are divergent. The speaker of a joo mut utterance thus excludes at least some part of the opinion or the viewpoint of the prior speaker from the ongoing discussion and, in addition, often suggests a closure of the sequence. By contrast, the engaging nii mut utterance is used when the speakers share some overall action line. Furthermore, the speaker of a nii mut utterance implies that the opinion or the prior speaker's viewpoint is included in her/his own position and projects to expand the ongoing sequence.
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