The York Research Database

Research on emotional labour in the workplace - including beauty salons - has relied on workers' reports of emotional labour; few researchers have examined workers' moment-by-moment workday experience to explicate the practices of emotional labour in action. Using conversation analysis (CA) of a single interaction between a client and a beauty therapist, we show how task-directed talk, and even aspects of the physical work itself may be designed to perform a dual function: to complete, satisfactorily, the procedure for which the client is paying, and to perform some of those actions that researchers have dubbed 'emotional labour'. In our data, the therapist gives precedence to performing the emotional labour over the immediate accomplishment of the institutionally defined goal (hair removal), thereby providing concrete, recorded evidence for the claim that emotional labour is a job requirementfor beauty therapy.