Telephone Calls: Unity and diversity in conversational structure across languages and cultures

Abstract

Telephone conversation is one of the most common forms of communication in contemporary society. For the first time in human history, some people are spending as much time, if not more, talking on the telephone as they are on face-to-face conversations. The aims of this book are: to bring together in one volume research on telephone conversations in different languages, to compare and contrast people’s methods of handling telephone conversational tasks in different communities, and to explore the relationship between telephone conversational practice and cultural settings. The papers are based on first-hand, naturally-occurring data obtained from a variety of languages, including Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, and Persian. Theoretical and methodological issues pertaining to research on telephone conversations are discussed.