Chapter published in:
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)
Published online: 20 September 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.296.07bru
References

References

Bolden, Galina
2006 “Little Words That Matter: Discourse Markers ‘So’ and ‘Oh’ and the Doing of Other-Attentiveness in Social Interaction.” Journal of Communication 56: 661–688.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2008 “Implementing Incipient Actions: The Discourse Marker ‘So’ in English Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 41: 974–998.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
BabyCASE
2017 Birkenfeld: Trier University of Applied Sciences. [http://​umwelt​-campus​.de​/case] (18 March 2018).
Brunner, Marie-Louise
2015 Negotiating Conversation Starts in the Corpus of Academic Spoken English. Unpublished MA thesis. Universität des Saarlandes.Google Scholar
Brunner, Marie-Louise, and Stefan Diemer
2016 “ ‘Mhm, … Okay So U:h, Maybe We Should Start with This Topic’ – Conversation Starts in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) Skype Talks.” Presentation to IWODA’16 – Fourth International Workshop on Discourse Analysis, Santiago de Compostela, September 2016.Google Scholar
Brunner, Marie-Louise, Stefan Diemer, and Selina Schmidt
2016 “ ‘It’s Always Different When You Look Something from the Inside’ – Linguistic Innovation in a Corpus of ELF Skype Conversations.” International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 2 (2): 323–350.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 CASE Transcription Conventions. Birkenfeld: Trier University of Applied Sciences. [ http:/​/umwelt​-campus​.de​/case​-conventions ] (15 March 2018).Google Scholar
Campione, Estelle, and Jean Véronis
2005 “Pauses and Hesitations in French Spontaneous Speech.” DiSS-2005 Aix-en-Provence: 43–46.Google Scholar
CASE
2018 The CASE Project. Birkenfeld: Trier University of Applied Sciences. [http://​www​.umwelt​-campus​.de​/case] (14 March 2018).Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L.
2007 The Importance of Not Being Earnest: The Feeling behind Laughter and Humor. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chan, Anthony, Mark Frydenberg, and Mark J. W. Lee
2007 “Facilitating Cross-Cultural Learning through Collaborative Skypecasting.” In SIGITE ‘07: Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Information Technology Education 2007, ed. by Bob Sweeney, David L. Feinstein, and Joseph J. Ekstrom, 59–66. Destin, Florida: ACM.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., and Thomas Wasow
1998 “Repeating Words in Spontaneous Speech.” Cognitive Psychology 37 (3): 201–242.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth
2001 “Constructing Reason-for-the-Call Turns in Everyday Telephone Conversation.” InLiSt: Interaction and Linguistic Structures 25. [http://​nbn​-resolving​.de​/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352​-opus​-6856] (21 March 2017)Google Scholar
Dourish, Paul, Annette Adler, Victoria Bellotti, and Austin Henderson
1996 “Your Place or Mine? Learning from Long-Term Use of Audio-Visual Communication.” Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing 5: 33–62.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Edmondson, Willis
1981 Spoken Discourse: A Model for Analysis. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Firth, Alan
2009 “The Lingua Franca Factor.” Intercultural Pragmatics 6 (2): 147–170.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fish, Robert S., Robert E. Kraut, Robert W. Root, and Ronald E. Rice
1993 “Video as a Technology for Informal Communication.” Communications of the ACM 36 (1): 48–61.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Geluykens, Ronald
1993 “Topic Introduction in English Conversation.” Transactions of the Philological Society 91 (2): 181–214.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Herring, Susan C.
2007 “A Faceted Classification Scheme for Computer-Mediated Discourse.” Language at Internet 4. Article 1. [http://​www​.languageatinternet​.org​/articles​/2007​/761] (21 March 2017)Google Scholar
Herring, Susan C., and Jannis Androutsopoulos
2015 “Computer-Mediated Discourse 2.0.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (2nd ed.), ed. by Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton, and Deborah Schiffrin, 127–151. Hoboken: Wiley.Google Scholar
House, Juliane
2013 “Developing Pragmatic Competence in English as a Lingua Franca: Using Discourse Markers to Express (Inter)Subjectivity and Connectivity.” Journal of Pragmatics 59: 57–67.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Huth, Thorsten, and Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm
2006 “How Can Insights from Conversation Analysis Be Directly Applied to Teaching L2 Pragmatics?” Language Teaching Research 10 (1): 53–79.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Isaacs, Ellen A., and John C. Tang
1994 “What Video Can and Cannot Do for Collaboration: A Case Study.” Multimedia Systems 2: 63–73.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Alison
2002 “ ‘So …?’: Pragmatic Implications of So-Prefaced Questions in Formal Police Interviews.” In Language in the Legal Process, ed. by Janet Cotterill, 91–110. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Koops, Christian, and Arne Lohmann
2016 “Discourse Marker Sequencing and Grammaticalization.” In Outside the Clause: Form and Function of Extra-Clausal Constituents [Studies in Language Companion Series 178], ed. by Gunther Kaltenböck, Evelien Keizer, and Arne Lohmann, 417–446. Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Licoppe, Christian, and Julien Morel
2012 “Video-in-Interaction: ‘Talking Heads’ and the Multimodal Organization of Mobile and Skype Video Calls.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (4): 399–429.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Meierkord, Christiane
2000 “Interpreting Successful Lingua Franca Interaction: An Analysis of Non-Native/Non-Native Small Talk Conversations in English.” Linguistik Online 5 (1). [ https:/​/bop​.unibe​.ch​/linguistik​-online​/article​/view​/1013​/1673 ] (21 March 2017)Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R.
2001 “Discourse Markers in Oral Narrative.” Journal of Pragmatics 33 (6): 849–878.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Peräkylä, Anssi
2005 “Analyzing Talk and Text.” In The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.), ed. by Norman K. Denzin, and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 869–886. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A.
1968 “Sequencing in Conversational Openings.” American Anthropologist 70: 1075–1095.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1986 “The Routine as Achievement.” Human Studies 9: 111–151.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2004 “Answering the Phone.” In Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, ed. by Gene H. Lerner, 63–129. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, Emanuel A., and Harvey Sacks
1973 “Opening Up Closings.” Semiotica 7 (4): 289–327.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Selina
2013 “A Framework for Laughter in Rapport Management in Skype Conversations of L2 Speakers of English.” Poster presentation, Saarland University Linguistics Poster Day 2013.Google Scholar
Spencer-Oatey, Helen
2002 “Managing Rapport in Talk: Using Rapport Sensitive Incidents to Explore the Motivational Concerns Underlying the Management of Relations.” Journal of Pragmatics 34 (5): 529–545.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tang, John C., and Ellen Isaacs
1993 “Why Do Users Like Video? Studies of Multimedia-Supported Collaboration.” Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing 1 (3): 163–196.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tsui, Amy B. M.
1991 “Sequencing Rules and Coherence in Discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 15 (2): 111–129.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ventola, Eija
1979 “The Structure of Casual Conversation in English.” Journal of Pragmatics 3: 267–298.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Whittaker, Steve, and Brid O’Conaill
1997 “The Role of Vision in Face-to-Face and Mediated Communication.” In Computers, Cognition, and Work: Video-Mediated Communication, ed. by Kathleen E. Finn, Abigail J. Sellen, and Sylvia B. Wilbur, 23–49. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Brunner, Marie-Louise & Stefan Diemer
2021. Multimodal meaning making: The annotation of nonverbal elements in multimodal corpus transcription. Research in Corpus Linguistics 10:1 ► pp. 63 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 july 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.