In nine chapters, a lengthy introduction followed by eight empirical reports, this collection presents a range of studies of interaction in commercial settings, especially small shops. The nine authors are members or associates of a research group based at the Université Lumière, Lyon 2, France. The introduction by the editors explains the reasons for the research project, the methods used—observations and recordings—and its major sources of inspiration, including most prominently the work of Erving Goffman, as well as various strands of interactional linguistics and linguistic pragmatics. It also offers an overview of the general characteristics of in-shop interactions and some sources of variation such as spatial lay-out and general culture, based on previous research and other works by the research group. In the first substantive chapters, Véronique Traverso offers a video-based discussion of the participation frameworks involved in small shop interactions, especially the multi-modal methods used in their establishment. Laurent Filliettaz analyzes the interactions between sellers/advisors and clients in a large shopping hall, focusing on the co-construction of requests. Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni looks at elements of politeness in small-shop dealings. Next, Marianne Doury and Véronique Traverso discuss what they call nontransactional parts of encounters in a small paper shop, such as relational talk and safe topics like the weather.

The last four chapters all deal with variations and comparisons. Isabelle Dumas contrasts sales encounters like those in a paper shop and service encounters as those in a bank or a post office. Marie-Cécile Lorenzo-Basson followed encyclopaedia sellers who hide their purpose by posing as survey interviewers in order to enter a home, and only gradually, in a carefully designed way, show the concrete object that they are trying to sell. Neijete Hmed compares interactions in butcher shops, one French-speaking in France, another Arab-speaking in Tunisia, and a mixed French/Arab-speaking one in an immigrant quarter in Lyon, France. Finally, Rosina Márques Reiter and Miranda Stewart contrast commercial interactions in shops selling various types of kitchen machinery located in Edinburgh, UK and Montevideo, Uruguay, on the theme of involvement versus respectful distancing. The collection as a whole offers a rich source of observations of and ideas about general structures and specific particularities in small shop talking.