1

Minor thesis

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15
HANOI - 2010
2 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
***
NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY
CONVERSATION FROM A CONVERSATION ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE”
Page
Retention and use of the paper i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
Table of contents iv
List of tables vi
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Objectives and research questions of the study 2
3. Scope of the study 3
4. Organization of the study 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5
1.1. Conversation Analysis 5
1.1.1. Definition of Conversation 5

1.1.2. Conversation Analysis versus Discourse Analysis 5
1.2. Telephone conversation 7

1.2.1. Openings 8

1.2.2. Topic talk 9

1.2.3. Closings 10

1.3. Speech acts 12
1.3.1. Illocutionary act 13
1.3.2. Direct and indirect speech act 14
Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY 15


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PART A: INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, the following aspects are covered:
- Rationale – reasons for choosing the research topic
- Aims and significance of the study
- Scope of the study, and
- Organization of the study
1. Rationale
Nowadays, telephone is considered an effective tool to connect people around the world. In
the business world, telephone also serves a significant function for trading, sales, marketing
and keeping traces of customers for it has prominent and outstanding features such as instant,
convenient and cheap. However, to communicate successfully through telephone is not a
simple task for participants when the caller cannot see the called and their non-verbal gestures.
Apart from linguistic competence, telephone etiquette is also important in business.
It seems that much has been said and done about telephone conversation within pragmatics
and conversation analysis field and such names as Levinson, Marknee, Sacks, Schegloff
Jefferson, have become familiar in the researcher circle. Although the structure of telephone
conversation has been studied and used to explain and organize a wide variety of
circumstances, it is limitedly and inconclusively used to explain cases of telephone
conversations in hotel while hotel is one business field that mainly lives on telephone system
and almost all matters in this kind of business are dealt with via telephone. With high interest
in this area, I decided to do a research in order to have a more insightful view of this
interactional behavior.
Apart from personal interest, I have received ideas and suggestions from my colleagues and
friends about their confusion in not yielding a satisfactory reservation conversation. I am
working in an international relations department and the work requires a lot of hotel
reservation via telephone. However, many hotel receptionists who speak English as a foreign
language face some problems and need to improve for a better image of the hotel as well as

(3) How do the receptionists preferably close a telephone reservation conversation?
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This study should be of potential interest to those who work in or have passion for
Conversation Analysis, to customers who want to make a telephone reservation for room and
hotel receptionists who desire to achieve more satisfactory reservation, and generally to those
who want to have successful and smooth conversations through telephone. In short, from a
CA perspective, the turn level of analysis clarifies how speakers routinely implement the
collaborative and orderly achievement of reservation conversation.
3. Scope of the study
This study is proposed to work with reservation conversations via telephone between speakers
with equal power, one is guest (the caller) and one is hotel receptionist (the called) who
speaks English as a foreign language, in formal setting. The research targets at the written
scripts, not the audio or sound of conversations. Features that will be under study are opening,
topic talk and closing of conversation. Finally, due to the limitations of technology, non-
verbal gestures and expressions are excluded.
4. Organization of the study
This M.A thesis discusses the detection of some structure features of conversations between
guests and receptionists, namely opening, topic talk and closing. The paper is divided into 3
main chapters as follows:
Introduction, introducing the research topic, its rationale and research questions, scope of the
research and the organization of the paper.
Chapter 1: Literature review, discussing the theoretical background in thesis, of which the
research matters will be discussed
Chapter 2: Methodology, describing the nuclear methodology to investigate the research
matters
Chapter 3: Findings and Discussions, showing the results of the study, providing answers to
the research questions, and
Conclusion, summarizing the overall study and proposition implications as well as
suggestions for other related studies or work.

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Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis. To understand my decision to focus on the
discipline of Conversation Analysis, I will shortly point out the main differences and parallels
of these methodologies.
Of course, both disciplines examine conversation. But the methods used for this, the thereby
resulting findings and the main understanding of conversation differ immensely. A common
aim of Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis is to be able to give “an account of how
coherence and sequential organization is produced and understood” (Levinson 1983: 286).
According Nguyen Hoa (2000), Discourse Analysis uses primitive and basic concepts of
linguistics for this. It attempts to extend the rules applying to sentences over the boundaries of
sentences. The main method of the discipline is the isolation of sets of units of discourse,
followed by a formulation of rules according to these units and finally the division of units
into well-formed and ill-formed sequences. The conversations are then analysed according to
the rules which have been formulated before. This makes the methods of Discourse Analysis
an “immediate categorization of restricted data” (Levinson 1983: 287), which means that not
the motivation for the form of the data is searched for, but that some parts of data are isolated
from their context which could explain their occurrence and give insight into the real
intentions and meanings of utterances. This missing insight is also attributable to the field of
Discourse Analysis that is used for the analysis of conversation: the speech act theory.
(Levinson 1983: 286)
Speech act theory is in the field of the analysis of conversation mainly concerned with the
view that “the level of coherence and order in conversation is to be found [ ] at the level of
speech acts” (Levinson 1983: 288). For this, a syntax which shall explain what kinds of
utterances fit together and which utterances require each other is added to normal speech act
theory. One of the main difficulties of this view is that - as we will see - utterances are able to
fulfill more than one speech act at a time. (Levinson 1983: 290)
Conversation Analysis, in contrast, is a more “empirical approach which avoids premature
theory construction” (Levinson 1983: 286). Naturally occurring conversations build the set of
data in which recurring patterns of utterances are searched for. In contrast to discourse

1.2.2 Openings

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Coulthard (1985: 89) states that conversations are opened with greetings. Exceptions to this
are telephone conversations although the first turn often is a hello. That this turn is no greeting
becomes obvious when contrasting a normal conversation to a telephone conversation.
In face-to-face conversation it is normal, that the person who wants to speak to another person
speaks first. One of the unusual features of a telephone conversation is that the called speaks
first. Schegloff (1968: 1076) claims that this is because, although the called is the first to
speak, he does not actually have the first turn. By calling the person one wants to talk to, the
caller makes the first move into the conversation. This first move consists in causing the
telephone of the called to ring. The question arises of what nature this ringing is.
The ringing of a telephone is a summons. The use of a summons is to get the attention of a
person. In face-to-face conversation it can have the forms of an address - like for example
Mummy? -, courtesy phrases or physical devices like a tap on the shoulder. In telephone
conversation this summons is realized by a neutral ringing of the telephone. (Levinson 1983:
310)
The summons shall open the channel for the conversation. Opening the channel needs the
participation of both parties. For this, the summons is the first part of the adjacency pair
summons-answer. By answering to the summons, the called signalizes that he is listening and
the channel is open. This also explains why the first turn of the called often is a yeah. It
corresponds to a normal answer to a summons in face-to-face conversation. (Levinson 1983:
310)
Thus, the ringing of the telephone and the first turn of the called are part of a summons-
answer structure which shall open the channel for talk and secure the participation of both
parties.

Another main concern of the openings of telephone conversations is identification-recognition.
The telephone does not provide visual ground for identification and recognition as exists in

313)
In order to know when a topic fits and when not, the term a topic has to be examined. One
could say that two persons are talking about the same topic if they are talking about the same
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set of references or linked concepts. But this characterization is not sufficient and indeed no
sufficient characterization exists. Topic is rather defined by practice and topical coherence.
According to Levinson (1983: 315) “topical coherence is something constructed across turns
by the collaboration of participants”. Practice shows, that if no topical coherence exists, new
topics are introduced in a dispreferred way.
When using a summary, the participant who wants to close the topic usually produces a
proverbial or aphoristic summary or produces a comment the other party can just agree to.
The speaker can also pass the turn on to the other speaker by producing a minimal utterance
like okay, so or others, which indicate that he has nothing to add or does not wish to add more.
1.2.4. Closings

A conversation can not be regarded as being closed just by speaking no more or in the case of
telephone conversation by hanging up. The turn-taking system has to be overruled to close a
conversation so that the non-verbalization of a speaker is not considered a silence. This has to
be achieved simultaneous by both speakers so that no party expects the other party to speak
anymore. The adjacency pair of terminal exchange secures the lift of the expectations towards
the other party to speak after the completion of a turn. Terminal exchange is realized by the
exchange of dismissals like bye, see you or others. The first uttered dismissal “announces
imminent closure and the second part secures it” (Levinson 1983: 324).
Typical components of closings are a closing implicative topic, passing turns and terminal
exchange. The closing implicative topic is voluntarily and not necessary for a complete
closing. Although the closing implicative topic occurs before the agreement on closing -
before pre-closing - it can be considered as belonging to the closing section as it leads directly
to closing. It can for example include the making of arrangements. If the closing implicative
topic is closed down, passing turns give each participant the chance to add more to the

Searle (1969, 1975) are that in or by saying something a speaker also does something.
According to Searle (1969), language is part of a theory of action, and speech acts are those
verbal acts such as requesting, welcoming and promising that one performs in speaking. On
this view, minimal units of human communication are not linguistic expressions, but rather
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the performances of certain kinds of acts, such as making statements, asking questions, giving
directions, apologizing, thanking, asserting, giving comments and so on. These acts are called
illocutionary acts (Searle, 1969). The theory of speech acts, promoted by Austin (1962) also
asserts that there are a number of utterances that do not report or “constate” anything and are
not therefore “true or false”, but rather that the uttering of the sentence is, or is part of, an
action. For example, in such sentences “I name my puppy Rex” and “I bet you twenty dollar
she will come back”, the speaker actually names the small dog or makes the bet, but he is not
making any kind of statement that can be regarded as true or false. The sentences that he is
concerned with here are, grammatically, all statements but they are not constative, they are
performative. Austin also talks about an act of assertion, descriptive fallacy, constative
utterance and performative verb.
The notions of illocutionary acts, illocutionary force, and direct, and indirect speech acts are
the heart of speech act theory.
1.3.1. Illocutionary act
Searle (1969) claims that the term “illocutionary act” refers to an utterance with a
communicative force. For example, when one says “Could you send me the details?” or
“Please forget me”, this is an act of requesting. Similarly, if one says “I promise to go to bed
soon”, then this is an act of promising. Therefore, a speaker performs illocutionary acts by
expressing his intentions to get someone to do something, to promise something, to confirm
something, etc. in such a way that the listener can recognize the speaker‟s intention. Moreover,
Austin (1962) points out that, in uttering a sentence, a speaker also performs a perlocutionary
act which can be described in terms of the effect which the illocutionary act, on the particular
occasion of use, has on the hearer.
Related to the notions of illocutionary act is the concept of illocutionary point. The concept of

illocutionary act explicitly. For instance, instead of asking someone about the time, a speaker
may ask if he has the ability to do it such as “Can you tell me the time?” In this case the direct
act is asking whether the hearer has the ability to tell the time, but the indirect act is that of
requesting the hearer to tell the speaker the time. Thus, the act of asking about the hearer‟s
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ability is performed explicitly while the act of requesting the hearer to tell him the time is
performed implicitly.

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CHAPTER 2
METHODOLOGY
This chapter is to illustrate the methodology of the study and the sections which follow,
include:
- Research questions repeated
- Data collection instruments
- Participants
- Data analysis framework.
2.1. Research questions
As mentioned in the first chapter of the paper, this study targets at exploring how the
reservation receptionists (refer to as the called) deal with the coming calls from potential
guests who want to reserve hotel rooms through telephone. Specifically, the following
questions are addressed in the study:
(1) How do the receptionists often open a reservation conversation through telephone?
(2) What are significant speech acts in collecting guest‟s information used by
receptionists?
(3) How do the receptionists preferably close a telephone reservation conversation?
2.2. Data collection methods
With the research questions mentioned above, the primary source of data were mainly

their staffs due to the secret of business. Therefore, she had to pick up sums of dialogues from
several hotels, both domestic and overseas ones namely Hanoi Daewoo hotel, Sofitel Plaza
Hanoi, Vien Dong hotel (in Nha Trang city) and some others in America and Australia.
The number of dialogues is not great as expected before and the researcher is well aware that
if she had more dialogues, she would have more samples to enhance the reliability of the
findings. However, in that case the qualitative data will be unmanageable. It will take much
more time for seeking and even buying the sources while she only examines three aspects in a
minor thesis with the limitation of time and financial status as well. Therefore, she believes
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that the number of conversations collected as discussed above is considerably enough for the
purpose of her study.
Moreover, about 40 customers coming from different nations were asked to fill in a survey
questionnaire to collect their attitudes towards some behaviours of receptionists. Their names
and addresses will not be revealed until the author got their approval.
Last but not least, for ethical consideration as well as the deal commitment between the
researcher and data providers, participants‟ identity would be protected and selectively
displayed in papers with the providers‟ permission.

2.4. Data analysis framework
With the research concerns reflected in the above-mentioned questions, to sort out the
researched content happening in conversation, one of the common ways is to have the
conversations recorded for analysis and synthesis. Generally speaking, conversation analysis
unpacks the structure of conversation by analyzing either single cases or collections of talk-in-
interaction. Markee proposes that:
With singly cases, the objective is to provide an in-depth analysis of a particular
phenomenon that facilitates a deep understating of how the phenomenon under study
works. Analysis based on collection of similar data enable the analyst to use whether
the practices to which participants are thought to orient tare robust enough to account
for a broad range of data gathered in different conversational contexts.

survey questionnaire analysis and statistic tools as follows:
- To find out the answers to the research questions, the content of studied areas,
were detected and analyzed. The number of elements such as openings, topic talk
and closings were codified, analysed and examined through speech acts embedded
in.
- To sort out the customers‟ attitude towards some behaviours of receptionists, a
survey questionnaire was distributed to a number of real customers and collected
for analysis and synthesis.
In the following chapter, some major findings are recognized and appropriate discussions are
provided regarding opening, topic talk and closing in turn.
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CHAPTER 3
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter is the most practical part of the study which includes:
- the analysis of outstanding findings; and
- the discussion of the findings and answers to the research questions.

3.1. Findings
First and foremost is the overall exploration of data. After being collected, data were coded
and computed for analysis. Totally, the number of conversation is 80 and 40 is the quantity of
the questionnaires distributed. After analyzing chosen conversations in separate parts namely
opening, topic talk and closing, the author found out common features of each part. Then, she
synthesized such findings into the most typical structure of a successful reservation
conversation basing on what receptionists have done and should do to best meet customers‟
requirements and expectations.

3.1.1. Openings
As mentioned in the previous parts, the caller often makes the first move into the conversation

the morning of October 10.
Over
(2) A: Hello, Melia Hanoi Hotel. Reservation Division. How can I help you?
B: Hello, I want to reserve a single room for tomorrow.
To:
(3) A: Thanks for calling Quality Inn. Morine speaking.
B: Hello. I'm interested in booking a room for the September long weekend.
Or:
(4) A: Metropolis Hotel, Good morning, can I help you?
B: Good morning, this is Mrs White. I‟d like to book a single room.
Or:
(5) A: Sofitel Plaza Hanoi, Lan Huong speaking. How can I help you?
B: Yes. I'd like to make a reservation.
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As discussion in the literature background, by answering to the summons, the called
signalized his illocutionary force that he was listening, he was ready to welcome the customer
and the channel was open. Then, the summons-answer was followed by identification and
recognition. It was further discovered in studied conversations that the overt self-
identification was the most preferred turn. Along with greeting signals, the most popular
introduction includes the specific name of hotel and availability to offer help. Details of this
over self-identification are displayed in the following table (more than one detail can be
included in an expression of opening):
Information
Percentage
Hotel name
12,5%
Division name
82,5%
The called‟s name