Telephone Conversations From A Conversation Analysis Perspective

Although we converse almost every day, we never have exactly the
same conversation twice. Nevertheless, certain parts of
conversations occur in forms which are very alike. They seem to be
constructed according to sets of rules. These rules were examined in
the 1970’s for the first time.
The mechanisms which govern our conversations are especially
observable in telephone conversations. But since the 1970’s, new
technologies have come up and society changed.
The aim of this paper is to examine the mechanisms of telephone
conversation and how the systems working in telephone conversations
have changed since the establishment of the mobile telephone.
For this, the focus on Conversation Analysis as research methodology
is explained, before coming to the basic features of every
conversation. Following this, telephone conversations are examined
according to their structure of opening, topic-talk and closing.
Finally, the changes of this structure for mobile telephone
conversations are pointed out.
The basis for the observations on mobile telephone conversation is a
survey carried out among 20 Canadian citizens and material provided
by the participants of the survey. Two different main methodologies exist for analysing and examining
conversation – conversation in general, or telephone conversation in
special – from a linguistic perspective: Conversation Analysis and
Discourse Analysis. To understand my decision to focus on the
discipline of Conversation Analysis, I will shortly point out the
main differences and parallels of these methodologies.
Of course, both disciplines examine conversation. But the methods
used for this, the thereby resulting findings and the main
understanding of conversation differ immensely. A common aim of Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis is to
be able to give “an account of how coherence and sequential
organization is produced and understood” (Levinson 1983: 286).
Discourse Analysis uses primitive and basic concepts of linguistics
for this. It attempts to extend the rules applying to sentences over
the boundaries of sentences. The main method of the discipline is
the isolation of sets of units of discourse, followed by a
formulation of rules according to these units and finally the
division of units into well-formed and ill-formed sequences. [...]