Elsevier

Journal of Pragmatics

Volume 151, October 2019, Pages 45-61
Journal of Pragmatics

On dynamics of telephone conversation closedown in Farsi

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.07.020Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Investigating telephone conversation closedown as an under-researched area.

  • Investigating telephone conversation closedown in Farsi, an area not investigated already.

  • Testing the validity of universality claims made based on American English.

  • Revealing language- or culture-specificity of some closedown mechanisms in Farsi.

Abstract

This study sought to unearth the dynamics of telephone closedown ritual in Farsi in terms of pre-closing and terminal exchanges in non-institutional settings and to compare them with similar sequences in American English. The participants were native Farsi speakers living in Iran. The analysis of the data from 39 mundane mobile phone calls, informed by Conversation Analysis, suggests that as in English, in the closing-implicative environment where the core business of the call is accomplished, occasioning the move toward closing, some pre-closing signals such as bâshe (ok), kheili khob (alright), and kho(b) bâshe (ok then), foreshadow initiation of closing, providing the possibility for parties to interactionally bring calls to closure, shade them or even topicalize something new. However, unlike American English in which tokens such as ok and alright could be used in closing- and non-closing-implicative environments alike, the frequently-used token of bâshe bâshe (ok ok) can be potentially closing-relevant and the interrogative form kâri nadâri? (Anything else?) and endearment terms, tied to closedown ritual, regularly warrant shutting calls down, severely limiting the possibility of shading the current topic-in-progress and effectively precluding the possibility of topicalizing something new, which makes a strong case for their language- or culture-specificity.

Introduction

There is both intracultural and intercultural variation associated with the ways in which conversationalists achieve parting in telephone conversations which must end for one reason or another (Takami, 2002). However, terminating a call is not simply a matter of one party indicating a desire to bring the call to an end; rather it requires their close cooperation, using culture-bound rituals (Schegloff and Sacks, 1973), which can, in turn, be revelatory of how delicacy of terminating conversations is handled in different languages and cultures. Unlike telephone openings which have been the subject of numerous (comparative) studies (e.g., Button, 1987, Coulmas, 1981, Coupland et al., 1992, Davidson, 1978, Gumperz, 1982, Hopper, 1992, Laver, 1981, Levinson, 1983, Pavlidou, 1994, Schegloff and Sacks, 1973, Schegloff, 1979, Schegloff, 1986, Taleghani-Nikazm, 2002), telephone closings have not been as extensively researched. This has been partly due to the complicatedness of telephone closing, especially the fuzziness of the place where closedown initiation starts (Coronel-Molina, 1998, Pavlidou, 1997, Pavlidou, 2002, Wong, 2007). In the present study, the machinery of telephone conversation, as revealed in the closing of non-institutional Farsi1 mobile telephone calls predominantly taking place between familiars, close friends and family members, is examined to explicate which devices they deploy to initiate pre-closing and actual closing of telephone conversations, to explicate the loci of closedown and to determine whether they conform to oftentimes criterial features worked out for American English.

Section snippets

Review of literature

Research into telephone closings was set in motion by Schegloff and Sacks' (1973) seminal work. Since then, conversational closing has been a major line of research in ethnomethodological and conversation analytical studies (Broth and Mondada, 2013). According to Schegloff and Sacks (1973), the sequence organization of speaker ‘talk-in-a-turn’ applying to closing telephone conversations is different from that of other closing loci such as topic closure even if the technical formulation of

Method

The materials used in the study were audiorecordings and the transcripts of 39 naturally-occurring non-institutional mobile telephone conversations between dyads speaking Farsi as their mother tongue, taking 70 min in total. The participants came from central and southern Iran and ranged in age from approximately 19 to 40. The only exceptions were two calls. The first was made by a boy to his mother and father aged 52 and 61, respectively, and the second was a call involving a taxi driver aged

Results & discussion

In the following section, an account is provided of the analysis of the data and the relevant discussion, with some reference to research findings in American English by Schegloff and Sacks (1973) and Button (1987). The scrutiny of the present data set, grounded in the systematic observation of naturally occurring data, indicates that in some cases, the practices deployed by Farsi speakers to bring a telephone call to closure are not different from the ones already worked out by Schegloff and

Conclusions

Farsi telephone calls exhibit significant differences from the closing archetype worked out by Schegloff and Sacks (1973) and Button (1987). The differences could be attributed to the way in which people in different cultures break contact with each other (Clark and French, 1981, Firth, 1972, Goffman, 1976) or the type of the call and the relationship between parties (Pavlidou, 1997). Moreover, the findings suggest that the archetype closing consisting of four turns in American English (Button,

Acknowledgements

I am specially grateful to Professor Marja-Leena Sorjonen and Professor Hanna Lehti-Eklund, head of the Dept. of Finnish, Finno-Ugrian & Scandinavian Studies for hosting me at the University of Helsinki. I am indebted to Professor Sorjonen for her insightful comments on my works into CA. I also acknowledge the constructive comments made by two anonymous reviewers. I am also thankful to Yasouj University for providing me with the opportunity of the sabbatical leave which freed up my time to

Ali Kazemi, associate professor of Applied Linguistics, received his Ph. D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of New South Wales, Australia and is currently associate professor at Yasouj University, (Iran) and visiting scholar at the University of Helsinki (Finland). His research interests include conversation analysis and interactional linguistics.

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    Ali Kazemi, associate professor of Applied Linguistics, received his Ph. D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of New South Wales, Australia and is currently associate professor at Yasouj University, (Iran) and visiting scholar at the University of Helsinki (Finland). His research interests include conversation analysis and interactional linguistics.

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