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

It looks like Mirabelli's research question is something about the language that is used to communicate in diners, not only verbally but also written. he wanted to find out more about this language and specifically how it is used within the diner, both between the workers and between a worker and a customer. this is found in the literacy and contemporary theory section of the article.

the data that Mirabelli collected was "direct participation, observation, field notes, documents, interviews, tape recordings, and transcriptions"

He found that it is a lot more complicated than people think to be a waitress. it takes about 10 years to become an expert at it which is the same amount of time that it takes to become an expert at anything. He found that there is a different language that waitresses and people in restaurants use including the use of a menu, which is pretty much exclusive to restaurants.