iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION i
ACKOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES vi
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1.Rationale 1
2.Aims and Significance of the study 2
3.Scopes of the study 3
4.Methods of the study 3
5.Design of the study 4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5
1.1Theoretical Background 5
1.1.1Communication and telephone communication 5
1.1.2Conversation and telephone conversation 7
1.1.3Characteristics of a telephone conversation discourse 9
1.1.4The characteristic of a telephone conversation interaction 10
1.2Prior research on telephone conversations. 10
1.2.1Telephone openings 11
1.2.2Telephone closings 13
1.3Summary 14
CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 16
2.1Data collecting procedure 16
2.1.1Instruments 16


vi
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 1. Frequency of the callees speak first 26
Figure 2. Frequency of greeting the callers/ callees 27
Figure 3. Frequency of asking what the caller/ callee doing 27
Figure 4. Frequency of the callees initiate final closing 29
Figure 5. Frequency of expressing joy about engaging in the conversation 29
Figure 6. Frequency of giving reasons to end the phone 30
Table 1. Occurrences of opening sequences 18
Table 2. Occurrences of closing sequence 22
Table 3. Sample of interaction with four phases analysis 23
Table 4. Frequency of acts in the openings 25
Table 5. Frequency of acts in the closings 28
Table 6. Common opening patterns I
Table 7. Common closing patterns II
means of communication. It has been at every office, every home because of its
convenience. People use telephone for many purposes, for example, for business, chatting,
asking health, etc. People may talk with others wherever they are and whenever they want.
Using telephone is safe, fast and in some way, it is cheap.
We cannot deny the superiority of using telephone. Therefore, it is necessary to have
a successful telephone conversation. In order to achieve that, beside the main information
needed to convey through telephone, opening and starting are also important sections. The
opening may motivate both speakers while the ending may help the caller and the called
feels “satisfactory".
Conversation routines such as greeting and leave-taking may often be perceived as
mechanical, but they are certainly not meaningless. Although scholarly attention on
discourse and communication research has shifted to institutional settings, this is not
suggested that we can leave aside studies of casual conversations, which constitutes a
major part of our daily experience. A conversation is face-to-face communication but a
telephone conversation is non face-to-face communication. However, both of them are
face-threatening act.
Conversational analysis of telephone conversations has received much attention of
linguists as Hopper (1989), Godard (1977), Schegloff (1972, 1979, 1986), Schegloff and
Sacks (1973). Some cross-cultural studies on telephone conversations have been carried
out as Godard (1977), Hopper & Kolaeit Doany (1989). All telephone conversations, once
they start, must end, the way in which departure and termination achieve varies within and
across cultures. While telephone conversations in many languages and cultures have been
studied, the Vietnamese language is conspicuously absent in the literature.
Therefore, the author would like to choose the topic “An Investigation into
Telephone Conversation Openings and Closings between Friends and Relatives in
2
American English and Vietnamese” with the attempt to find out the similarities and
The study should be of potential interest to those who care for telephone conversation
analysis. This is also a base for the American or Vietnamese to get a better communication
on the phone when using American English or Vietnamese. It can also be applied this in
teaching telephone communication.
3. Scopes of the study
In the study, the author would like to concentrate only on the opening and closing of
telephone conversation, not on the whole one.
Furthermore, the author tries to find out the similarities and differences of telephone
conversations in two languages: American English and Vietnamese. The similarities and
differences are found in verbal words, not in intonation or non-verbal words (such as
yelling).
The telephone conversations used for the research are the casual ones. That is, the
telephone conversations are between friends and relatives.
In addition, the author‟s interest in this area is inspired by studies in cross-cultural
communication. That is, cultural aspects between the two peoples, not only on linguistic
aspects would be mentioned. Some important cross-cultural similarities and differences in
telephone use between American English and Vietnamese are noticed.
4. Methods of the study
In this study, the theoretical background relies on the research of some foreign
researchers concerned with the subject. Especially, the structure of my analysis will be
heavily relied on frameworks pioneered by Schegloff (1968, 1972, 1986), Schegloff and
Sacks (1973) and further elaborated by Hopper (1989). The current work focuses on data
collected from recodered telephone conversations of native speakers of Vietnam and
America and the survey questionnaires. A combination of qualitative and quantitative
method is used to analyze the data. According to Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991), both
qualitative and quantitative paradigms are not competing, but complementary, and the
choice between the two is unnecessary. They also assert that much can be gained from a
combination of the two. Within this study, qualitative method helps the author give an

questionnaires are added in the end of the paper
5
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter consists of two sub-parts. The first sub-part discusses some theoretical
background of the study in which focuses on some concepts about communication, cross-
cultural communication, communication between friends and relatives and conversation,
conversation analysis, telephone conversation. The second sub-part is concerned with
previous research on telephone openings and closings.
1.1 Theoretical Background
1.1.1 Communication and telephone communication
1.1.1.1 Definition of communication
No one can live without communication. As Wikipedia website, communication is
defined as “sending, giving, or exchanging information and ideas,” Thus; communication
is the acceptance of the senders‟ message by the receiver. If the receiver understands the
meaning of a message which asks for action but fails to act, the goal of communication is
not achieved.
According to Richard et al (1992) communication is „the exchange of ideas,
information, etc between two or more persons. The sender/ speaker transmits message to
the receiver/ listener”. However, communication is not merely an exchange of information.
This information is understood by the receiver in more or less the way it is intended by the
sender. An important function of communication is to keep a particular society going.
There are three forms of communication: graphic, verbal and non-verbal
communication.
Graphic communication is the act of using written words to exchange ideas, thought,
information, etc.
Non-verbal communication is the act of saying what is on your mind without

certainly involved, the language behavior plays out within a set of social relation and
cultural expectation,
7
1.1.1.3 Communication between friends and relatives over the phone.
Generally saying, communication between friends and relatives is the one with very
close relationship. The participants know clearly about each other. The communication
may occur in the non-institutional setting.
Conversation routines such as greeting and leave-taking may often be perceived as
mechanical but they are certainly meaningless, as Laver (1981) rightly observes: “These
verbal behaviors can be understood as important strategies for the negotiation and social
relationship between participants in conversation.” Although scholarly attention on
discourse and communication research has shifted to institutional settings, this is not to
suggest that we can leave aside studies of casual conversation, which constitutes a major
part of our daily experience.
As being mentioned above, a conversation may be formal or informal.
Communication between friends and relative over the phone occurs in non-institutional
settings with a very close relationship. Therefore, this kind of communication is informal.
1.1.2 Conversation and telephone conversation
1.1.2.1 Conversation
Conversation is obviously with spoken rather than written language. It is necessary to
clarify the term “conversation”. There have been numbers of ideas about conversation.
Francesca Pridham (2001) sees “conversation as any interactive spoken exchange
between two or more people and can be:
- Face-to-face exchanges – these can be private conversations, such as talk at home
between the family, or more public and ritualized conversations such as classroom talk
or Question Time in the House of parliament;
- Non-face-to-face exchanges, such as telephone conversations;

ever-changing phenomenon. There have been numbers of definition and some even appear
to contrast to each other. Personally speaking, I prefer the idea of Finegan et Al. (1994),
which defines “A conversation can be viewed as a series of speech acts – greeting,
enquiries, congratulation, comments, invitations, request,… To accomplish the work of
these speech acts, some organization is essential: we take turn to speak, answer questions,
mark the beginning and end of conversation, and make corrections when they are needed”.
This definition seems to be the most satisfactory in order to assist me in carrying out
further study of starting and closing telephone conversations.
9
1.1.2.2 Conversation analysis
Conversation analysis (CA) originated from sociology in 1960s. The paper on the
organization of turn-taking for conversation written by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson in
1972 was the beginning of the CA approach era. Sacks and Schegloff mostly analyzed the
data from the calls to a suicide prevention centre, group therapy sessions and calls to a
disaster centre. Their analysis of these calls focused on generic features of the talk such as
turn-taking. Jefferson‟s contribution to CA was the development of the system of
transcription for CA. This transcription convention is one of the main features
distinguishing CA from other linguistic approaches of data analysis. It provides a
description of what is being said, how it is being said and what the recipient is doing while
it is being said.
1.1.2.3 Telephone conversation
A telephone conversation is the conversation over the phone denoting
communicative and contents. It relates only two parties. In other word, Telephone
conversation is a verbal communication. That is, two people use spoken words to
communicate over the phone. Like the conversation, a telephone conversation normally
proceeds in three stages:
a) Opening (sociability)

- Interactive discussion, more dynamic communication
- Less formal interaction, producing intimacy/closeness/warmth/ emotion
- Creating sense of urgency
- Greater interactivity, improving internal communication
- Better social relations, improves interactive competence
- Real time interaction of relationships
- Promoting active involvement, learner autonomy
- No restrictions regarding location.
1.2 Prior research on telephone conversations.
There has been numerous researchers pay much intention on telephone
conversations. Telephone conversations have been explored under many aspects and across
culture. Since the limitation of this study, only telephone openings and closings are
reviewed.
11
1.2.1 Telephone openings
Schegloff is the pioneer to be interested in telephone conversation opening with his
dissertation on it in the late 1960‟s. From that, a number of researchers have advanced the
study of telephone interactions, both inter-culture (Hopper 1989; Schegloff 1979;
Schegloff & Sacks 1973) and cross cultures (Godard 1977; Sifianou 1989). Many of the
researchers above concentrate on aspects of the opening and closing of telephone
conversation, such as turn-talking, initiation of sequences, etc.
The organization of telephone openings in French is explored by Godard (1977). She
suggests that there are some differences between summon-answer sequences in French
versus American telephone opening. Godard offers an objection to Schegloff‟s work. She
argues that his “summons-response” sequence cannot be universally applied, and maintains
that it is important to consider cultural aspects into consideration.
Sifianou (1989) finds that in Greek telephone openings, there is a greater variety of

four core opening sequences: summons-response sequence (the phone ring and hello);
identification-recognition sequence (Tim?/ yes); a greeting adjacency pair (hi/hi); a “how
you are” adjacency pair (how are you?/ I‟m alright, how are you?) (Schegloff, 1972)
For example
(ring)
1.Nancy: Hello? (Summon-aswer)
2.Hyla: Hi. Nancy? Me, Hyla (Identification/recognition)
3.Nancy: Oh,Hi (Greeting)
4.Hyla: How are you? (Exchange of how you are)
5.Nancy: Fine, how‟re you?
1) Summons-answer: Schegloff (1986) finds that in ordinary call, telephone‟s ring
constitutes a summoning act, and any answer to that act demonstrates “the availability of
an attentive ear and a mouth ready to speak” Schegloff (1986). The adjacency pair
(summons-answer) prescribes that the answerer speaks first by providing his or her voice
sample. The summons-answer sequence in line 1 opens a channel and confirms the
availability of both the speaker and the hearer.
2) Identification or recognition: A caller in ordinary conversation may respond with just
“Hello” or may continue by addressing the answerer, or by providing self-identification of
by initiating the topic of the conversation. The form of address or self-identification
depends on the relationship between the two parties (Schegloff 1968). Thus, identification
or recognition sequence is the place where the relationship between the speakers is
established. The identification/ recognition sequence in line 2 establishes the identities or
relationship of the two interlocutors.
13
3) Greetings: After the identification, greetings may be exchanged. This may be done in
many ways. For example, a caller may use address terms to an answerer or use greeting
terms. Greeting tokens may be combined with address terms or just a simple “hello” or
following categories: (1) Pre-closing, (2) Shutting down, (3) Recapitulation, (4) Terminal
exchange
Four core closing sequences
1) Pre-closing: A way of initiating a closing such as “Okay”, “All right”, “So”, “Well”,
etc. Not all sequences “Okay” and “Well” are pre-closings. They are pre-closing only if
they occur after a topic boundary. (Schegloff and Sacks 1973)
2) Shutting down: an utterances serving to finish up a previously mentioned topic, such as
“That‟s all” „Well, The baby is crying”, “It‟s late now”, “I have something else to
do”…etc.
3) Recapitulation: involves a brief summarizing of the topic discussed and/ or
arrangements made. Recapitulation also includes such elements as sending best wishes
to other family members and other shutting down details for the sack of simplicity. Such
recapitulation is often an optional element in a personal conversation.
4) Terminal exchange: are the actual “goodbyes” or some equivalent appropriate to the
specific context of the conversation such as „Bye‟, „Cheer‟, „OK‟, „See you‟,
„Goodbye‟, „You‟re welcome‟
For the example quoted from an informal telephone conversation by two American
interlocutors, which was transcribed (Tapescript 7 - Appendix #1) as the following:
Pre-closing A: Alright
T: Oh, yes
Shutting down A: That‟s the reason for the call
Recapitulation T: Oh I know, we‟ll meet tonight
A: Ahha. It‟d better to stop the phone now
T: Yes. You‟re alright
A: Ok. See you later
T: Yes. Take it easy.
Terminal exchange A: Bye
T: Bye

based analysis is not to generate theories of what is possible in the language. Its only
concern is the usage patterns of the empirical data and what that reveals to us about
language behavior (Elena, 2001).
In this study, two corpora include 15 American English texts and 15 Vietnamese
texts (see appendix #1 & appendix #2) transcribed from fifteen dyads of recorded
telephone conversations of native speakers. Using the corpus study is appropriate and
sufficient for this research because the aim of the author is to focus on the objective view
of language more than to discover its rules. One advantage of corpus study is that it can
investigate almost any language patterns.
The survey questionnaire for this study includes thirteen questions, in which there are
seven questions relating to telephone opening and six questions relating to telephone
closing. One questionnaire is written in Vietnamese to survey Vietnamese native speakers
and one is written in English to survey American native speakers but the content and
outline of the two questionnaires are the same. The questionnaire is designed in multiple
choices (MCQs) (Gillham, 2000) to show the frequency of people act in the telephone
openings and closings. The content of the question bases on Schegloff‟s ideas about
telephone openings and closings (Schegloff,1968, 1972, 1986). MCQs is an appropriate
instrument for gathering information in this study as the researcher can survey a large
17
number of respondents in a short time and the information from questionnaire can be
confidential for the respondent.
2.1.2 Participants
The survey questionnaires are delivered to 46 Vietnamese and 46 American people
in which there are 24 Vietnamese women and 20 American women. 30 Vietnamese and 35
American informants live in the city, the rest live in the countryside. The informants range
in age between 22 and 60 years old. The Questionnaires are mostly sent to the informants
via email as by this way the researcher can survey on a great number of informants from a

current theories. After all, major similarities and differences between one‟s own cultures
are highlighted.
Openings
Schegloff proposed four available adjacency pair sequences in telephone
conversational openings: summons/ answer; identification/ recognition; greeting sequence,
and the “how you are” sequence. I have previously mentioned to the definition of the four
categories. “hello/ hi” in the summons/ answer sequence does not serve as a greeting, but
rather answer to the summons of the ringing of the telephone. Therefore, once recognition
is achieved, in many cases the participants will do an additional “hello/ hi” which functions
this time as an actual greeting to a known interlocutor.
Table 1. Occurrences of opening sequences
Categories
Number of occurrences in
Vietnamese
Number of occurrences in
American English
1. Summons/ responses (Eg:
The bell rings/ Hello)
86.7%
93.3 %
2. Identification/
recognization (Eg: Tim? Yes.
Oh, Michael)
100%
100%
3. A greeting adjacency pair
(hi/hi)
20%
53.3%
4. A “how you are” adjacency

4 D: Dung đây mà, không nhận ra giọng à? (Dung, don‟t you recognize me by my voice?)
5 H: À, Dung à, lâu ngày quá. Khỏe không? (Ah, Dung, long time no see. How are you?)
6 D: Khỏe. Thế Hạnh và gia đình thì sao? (Fine. How about you and your family?)
7 H: Cảm ơn nha, mình và cả nhà khỏe cả. (Thanks, my family and I are well)
( tapescript 21- appendix#2)
……………………………………
8 “ring ring ring”(The bell of the telephone)
20
9 T: Alo! (Hello)
10 A: Anh Tường hả? (Tường, isn‟t it?)
11 T: Ờ (Yes)
12 A: Khỏe hông? (How are you?)
13 T: Ờ, anh khỏe, em đang làm gì đấy? (Well, I‟m fine. What are you doing?)
14 A: Em đang trong Sài Gòn đây. (I‟m in Sai Gon)
15 T: Ở trong Sài Gòn à? Vào Sài Gòn sớm thế? (In Sai Gon? Why do you go to SG so
early?)
16 A: Em vào được 2 tuần rồi (I have gone here for 2 weeks)
(Tapescript 16 - appendix #2)
Lines 0, 1, 8, 9, show the summons/ response sequence: “Ring, ring, ring” and
“Hello”. Lines 2, 3, 4, 10, 11 show the process of the identification/ recognition sequence,
which in this case actually takes two talking turns for each participant. The answer to
summons in lines 2 ad 9 - “Hello” may offer voice samples for recognition by the other
party.
Normally, every phone conversation initiates by the answer to the summons of the
phone bell. It is as a “signal” to show that there is someone picking up the receiver. The
following step is to identify who is involving in the conversation. This step is a must in any
telephone conversations if there is the answer to summons of the bell of the phone.

recognition ( who‟s that? Is this Dung? It‟s me, Thai …); and the inquiry (how are you?
What are you doing? …).
Closings
Closing the telephone conversation is realized by the cooperation from both
interlocutors. Based on the above Schegloff and Sacks‟ (1973), this study tries to explore if
there is a formula of telephone closings in Vietnamese language. An analysis of the corpus
of the transcription of telephone conversation records in Vietnamese is made based on the
following sections that Schegloff and Sack (1973) proposed: (1) Pre-closing is a way of
giving signal to initiate a closing by using such terms are “Okay”, “All right”, “So”,
“Well”, etc.; (2) Shutting down is the use of expressions to start the ending part of the
telephone conversations such as giving reasons for closing the topic and ending the phone
calls; (3) Recapitulation involves a brief summarizing of the topic discussed and/ or
arrangements made. Recapitulation also includes such elements as sending best wishes to
other family members and other shutting down details for the sack of simplicity. Such
recapitulation is often an optional element in a personal conversation and (4) Terminal