Conversational Analysis Of Telephone Closings In Chinese

The thesis studies the closing section of the Chinese telephone conversations between familiars with the purpose of understanding the sequence organization and the structure of this interactional phenomenon and bettering future inter-cultural study. Methodologically speaking, this study, employing conversation analysis (CA), integrates the qualitative and quantitative methods to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the closing section of Chinese telephone conversation.The theoretical framework of the present study is based on Conversation Analysis (CA), firstly practiced by Sacks and Schegloff in 1960s. The closing of the telephone communication in the present study is defined as an orderly sequence to move towards the closing of the conversation.Conversationalists can come to a closure of the conversation with or without any techniques. The techniques are classified into two types: reinvocation of something talked earlier or something irrelevant to the content of the topic. The former includes: reinvocating the reason for call, reinvocating earlier made arrangements and reinvocating the pre-topic. The latter includes: asking for understanding from the other, expressing concerns for the other, making future arrangements and using linguistic markers. With these techniques, the termination of the conversation goes more smoothly and naturally.