Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food and Service Workers

 In "Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food and Service Workers" I believe Mirabelli's research question asks what a menu is for a restaurant, and how it fits in as a part of the discourse community.  I believe this because Mirabelli states, "..what is a menu and what does it mean to have a literate understanding of one?”(544).  Mirabelli was able to easily collect and analyze the dinner discourse community because he used to be a part of a restaurant discourse community and was experienced and fluent in language of the restaurant business.  Because of this, he could instantly spot out ways Harvey could have done things different, or things that Harvey was doing wrong.  For example, the situation Harvey was in with the mother of the child who wanted a side of carrots, Harvey's inexperience made the situation a lot harder than Mirabelli thought it should have been.  Harvey could have avoided the whole thing by just saying "oh yeah for sure you can get carrots" then went to the freezer and got some carrots himself, not asking the already busy cooks to pick out carrots of the mixed veggie bags.  Mirabelli finds out that the menu is a primary connection between the paying customer and working employee and if this crucial interaction between the waiter and customer has any bumps the whole interaction can go south in no time.  Waiters are supposed to be the translators of the restaurant lexis and answer any questions a non member of the community wishes to know, and if the translator can't perform their job correctly the customer can choose to not be a member of that restaurant community anymore.