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Part of
The Construction of Discourse as Verbal Interaction
Edited by María de los Ángeles Gómez González and J. Lachlan Mackenzie
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 296] 2018
► pp. 171–197

“Okay … so … nice to meet you? {smiles}”

Openings in ELF Skype conversations

| Saarland University, Germany | Trier University of Applied Sciences, Germany
| Saarland University, Germany | Trier University of Applied Sciences, Germany

The chapter examines discourse strategies used in conversation openings in CASE, the Corpus of Academic Spoken English (2018), containing English as a Lingua Franca conversations via Skype. Although there are similarities to telephone conversation openings, openings in CASE show differences in content and structure, accommodating the particular setup of Skype conversations and the computer-mediated discourse environment. The different sequences in Skype conversation openings are organized and negotiated cooperatively by participants. They are signalled by significant overuse of the following transition markers (TMs) between sequences: discourse markers, pauses and hesitation markers, laughter, repetitions, and lengthening. The quantitative analysis confirms that TMs occur significantly more often in transition zones between opening sequences than in both non-transition zones and openings as a whole.

Keywords: conversation openings, Skype, conversation organization, conversation sequence transitions, transition markers, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research context
    • 2.1New usage patterns in online media: Oral computer-mediated discourse and Skype
    • 2.2Conversational openings: Comparing Skype and telephone conversations
  • 3.Data: CASE – A corpus of ELF Skype conversations
  • 4.Methodology and research hypotheses
  • 5.Qualitative analysis of Skype opening sequences: A comparison with telephone conversations
    • 5.1Contact initiation
    • 5.2Greetings (optional nice-to-meet-you)
    • 5.3Reassurance of understanding
    • 5.4How-are-you
    • 5.5Identification
    • 5.6Technical issues
    • 5.7Double openings
  • 6.Analysis of transition zones in Skype conversation openings
    • 6.1Defining transition zones
    • 6.2Qualitative analysis of transition zones in Skype openings
      • 6.2.1Discourse markers
      • 6.2.2Hesitation markers and pauses
      • 6.2.3Laughter
      • 6.2.4Repetitions and lengthening
      • 6.2.5Interactive establishment of transition zones
    • 6.3Quantitative analysis of transition zones in Skype openings
      • 6.3.1Methodology
      • 6.3.2Results of the quantitative analysis
  • 7.Discussion and conclusion: Opening Skype conversations
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 20 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.296.07bru
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Brunner, Marie-Louise & Stefan Diemer
2021. Multimodal meaning making: The annotation of nonverbal elements in multimodal corpus transcription. Research in Corpus Linguistics 9:1 ► pp. 63 ff. DOI logo
Fernández Polo, Francisco Javier
2021. Backchannels in video-mediated ELF conversations: a case study. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 10:1 ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo

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