The “overdue kid”: A face-to-face library service encounter as ritual interaction☆

Abstract Using the theoretical frameworks of Erving Goffman and Michael Lipsky, an example of school library staff and student interactions is examined, using functional discourse analysis to reveal how practice is produced as a clerical control routine which upholds institutional authority over users, rather than legitimate service work. The study, which consists of a single interaction between a middle school library clerk and a young adolescent with overdue books, is an example of what Goffman calls a “remedial interchange” in which the clerk, with the use of the library's computer, identifies the student's “offense” of keeping books overdue, despite repeated notices. Upon admission of the student's virtual transgression, the clerk provides an “offering” to hold his desired books until he returns the others, thus redressing the balance of the interaction while still retaining asymmetrical institutional control over the student.

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