Are They Requests? An Exploration of Declaratives of Trouble in Service Encounters

ABSTRACT Despite extensive literature on what may be involved in making a request, there is dispute among scholars as to which linguistic formats constitute the social action of making a request proper. In this study, we examine the much-disputed declarative request format and in particular what we call “declaratives of trouble.” We present evidence that in the context of a service encounter such as the shoe repair shop, this format is unproblematically and systematically treated by both customer and service provider as performing requests. The study thus enriches our understanding of action formation and ascription by examining in detail that and how utterances that in some contexts might not serve as requests in other contexts constitute a primary resource for building requests. Data are in American English.