table pragmatics

[trochee]

I've just bought a new dining room table and matching chairs. I feel so gentrified. It was a bit of an ordeal, because the total was really astonishingly high.

anyway, I'm only writing about it because of the interesting locution that the gentleman who took my credit card had:

Hello, Macy's furniture, this is Rogelio! How may I provide you outstanding service today?

I can't tell what pragmatics rule this violates, but it seems to be startlingly off somehow.

Perhaps it's some kind of double-ironic Griceian toe-pick, intended to encode the phrase fuck you, I don't even know you, strictly by the mechanism of superfluity.

Comments

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

Well I suppose he is "epidemizing" the Macy's brand!

[fructivore.livejournal.com]

It's for similar reasons, I think, that Miss Manners reminds us that it's impolite to thank someone (as in a letter) for something they haven't done yet, or to say that it's a pleasure to meet someone for the first time, before you've actually had a reasonable chance to get to know them.

Has anyone ever done anything with etiquette and linguistics?

[la-chispa.livejournal.com]

I don't know what it violates, but it is scripted/corporate speech, which seems to think it's fine to violate whatever rule that is. Southwestern Bell in Austin was great. My conversations with its customer disservice people opened with:

SWB: What's the number you're calling about?
me: 512.555.3345. It's completely dead.
SWB: Are you calling from that number?
me: ARGH!!!!

and closed with:

SWB: Thank you for choosing Southwestern Bell.
me: It was hardly a choice.

[mythalethe.livejournal.com]

sounds like corporate doublespeak to me...