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38Optional elements, on the other hand, belong to that variable portion that iscommonly associated with a given genre but which does not have to be present in everytext that typically accompanies that specific social activity. The occurrence of optionalelements is not a necessary condition, and is predicted by a contextual element that isnon-defining for that genre. A third kind of textual element is called Iterative andencompasses those recursive elements that appear more than once in a communicativeevent, without following any strict order.The resulting genre for the CC of service encounters is the ‘genre of buying andselling perishable food in face to face interaction', with the GSP in Figure 2.3, whereoptional elements are Greetings (‘saying hello’) and Finis (‘saying good-bye’)._______________________________________________________________________Sale Request > Sale Compliance > Sale > Purchase > Purchase Closure_______________________________________________________________________Figure 2-3 Generic Structure Potential of Service Encounters (Hasan, 1985:64)For Hasan, the rhetorical situation in which a genre is used (context) and thestructured discourse that goes along with the social activity in that situation (text) areessentially connected. A CC is crucial in providing clues to the understanding of textmeaning and function so that specific features in context correspond to elements in textconfiguring a GSP: the total range of optional and most basic obligatory textual elementsof a genre and the order in which they appear, applying to any text that is appropriate fora given context.