The Opening Moves In Chinese Mundane Telephone Conversations

The present research is an in-depth investigation into the opening moves of Chinese mundane telephone conversations under the theoretical and methodological framework of Conversation Analysis. It aims to disclose the general patterns of the opening moves and the potential influence of the social and cultural factors on these moves. There are all together 825 participants that have contributed 570 instances of recorded naturally-occurring telephone conversations. Participants of different ages, sexes, social classes and social distances are involved in this research and the data are recorded in nine different cities in China, in order that more representative general patterns of opening moves can be revealed. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses are conducted, and they collaboratively help to illustrate the opening moves in Chinese mundane telephone conversations with both examples and statistics.This research reveals that the general patterns of the opening moves in Chinese mundane telephone conversations share much with the canonical model proposed by Schegloff (1968, 1979, 1986), yet cultural variations have also been discovered. The major findings and contributions of this research are as follows: 1) The opening moves in Chinese mundane telephone conversations are the summons and answer sequence, the identification and recognition sequence, the extension sequence, the greeting sequence and the phatic talk sequence. 2) Divergences from the canonical modal and from the findings of studies in other cultures have also been identified. In this research, the callers are found to speak first in some cases, which challenges the claim made by Schegloff (1968, 1979, 1986) that since the summons are done by the caller, the answerer ought to speak first. Cultural variations also manifest in the phatic talk sequence which involves some topics that are Chinese peculiars. The effect of social distance is found to be influential in the opening moves of Chinese telephone conversations. 3) In the present research, fresh findings have been made as well, which can enrich the existent literature. This research is the first to disclose the existence of second summons in Chinese mundane telephone conversations. Besides, a detailed analysis of answerer identification and recognition is provided, which fills in the gap left by the existent literature. The present research has brought out the general patterns of the opening moves of Chinese mundane telephone conversations, which may contribute to the existent literature by providing a systematic study based on Chinese data and hopefully it will stimulate further studies on this topic.