Lecture 7 Overall Structuring Practices Conversation Openings Closings

Lecture 7 Overall Structuring Practices Conversation Openings & Closings Dr. Ufuk Balaman ubalaman@gmail. com Based on Wong & Waring, 2010

• Turn-taking • Sequence organization • More than one sequence = overall structuring practices • Opening conversations • Closing conversations focus on telephone conversations and service encounters

OPENINGS

• Participants work through the opening to arrive at the anchor point, where a first topic can be raised (Schegloff, 1968). • The first topic may, but need not, be the reason for the call. • Anchor point refers to the place in the phone opening where the first topic or reason for the call is introduced. • First topic refers to what is initially talked about in a telephone conversation, which may but need not be the same as the reason for the call.

• Telephone openings are typically composed of four stages, i. e. , four kinds of sequences. 1. 2. 3. 4. summons-answer identification-recognition greeting how-are-you

• (a) How much do you talk on the phone in English? • (b) What are some opening lines that one might say in a telephone conversation in English? • (c) What questions or concerns do you have about talking on the phone in English? • (d) How are telephone openings done in your native language?

CLOSINGS

• Closings are a delicate matter both technically, in the sense that they must be so placed that no party is forced to exit while still having compelling things to say, and socially in the sense that both overhasty and over-slow terminations can carry unwelcome inferences about the social relation- ships between the participants. (Levinson, 1983, p. 316)

• Closings are more complex than openings because the number of turns involved is not as constrained as it is for openings. • Closings are opened up. • Make a list of five words and expressions that regularly occur in conversation closings in English. • Words: • Expressions:

Basic closings • Pre-closing sequence: is one or more adjacency pairs where participants initiate closure before the terminal exchange. • Terminal exchange is an adjacency pair where participants exchange goodbye and end a conversation.

Pre-closing signals • A major problem for L 2 learners! • Preclosing signal is a lexical item such as OK, OK then, alright then, well, so, anyway, yes, yah, or the like, which neither adds anything new to a current topic nor raises a new one.

• • • • well, then so anyway yes (yah, yep), OK then yes (yah, yep), alright then How about in Turkish?

Pre-closing Sequences

Arrangement sequence • a preclosing sequence in which participants make or restate plans to contact one another or get together.

Appreciation sequence • a preclosing sequence in which participants express or repeat thanks to one another.

Solicitude sequence • a preclosing sequence in which participants express concerns, wellwishes, regards to third parties, holiday greetings, or the like.

Reason-for-the-call sequence • a preclosing sequence in which the caller restating why s/he called.

Back-reference sequence • a preclosing sequence in which participants talk about something discussed earlier in the conversation.

In-conversation object sequence • a preclosing sequence in which participants use utterances such as mm hmm, um, yeah, or the like to display their availability for further talk without making any substantive contribution to that talk.

Topic-initial elicitor sequence • a preclosing sequence in which participants solicit a new but nonspecific topic for discussion.

Announced closing sequence • a preclosing sequence in which partici- pants overtly state that the conversation should close and/or give a reason for ending the conversation.

Moral or lesson sequence • a preclosing sequence in which participants use a moral or lesson to summarize the topic so far.

CONVERSATION WORKSHOP