ESTONIAN ACADEMY
PUBLISHERS
eesti teaduste
akadeemia kirjastus
The Yearbook of the Estonian Mother Tongue Society cover
The Yearbook of the Estonian Mother Tongue Society
Impact Factor (2022): 0.3
ARGITELEFONIVESTLUSE LÕPETAMISEL KASUTATAVAD KEELELISED VAHENDID; pp. 206–228
PDF | doi:10.3176/esa59.11

Author
Andriela Rääbis
Abstract

The linguistic means used in Estonian telephone conversation closings
The article studies closing sections in Estonian everyday telephone conversations. The research questions are as follows: What are the structural patterns of closing? What particular linguistic means are used in pre-closing and leave-taking sequences? Which factors can motivate the use of different social actions and linguistic forms?
The data for the study come from the Corpus of Spoken Estonian of the University of Tartu. A total of 209 everyday telephone calls were analysed.
The closing section consists of three parts:
          the pre-closing sequence,
–         affiliation sequences (e.g. greetings to the family, promises to talk again, expressions of pleasure of the encounter etc.),
–          the leave-taking sequence.
Pre-closings are linguistic expressions that indicate one’s intention to terminate a conversation. They can be implicit or explicit. Implicit pre-closings involve minimal variants (okay, alright), arrangements, sum-ups, well-wishes, regards to other family members and expressions of appreciation. The other categories of expressions make explicit one’s intention to end the call: “nothing else”-type utterances, mentioning external factors such as the reason for having to hang up the phone, references to the interlocutor’s interests (I’ll let you go) etc. Pre-closings are formed as either formulas (e.g. okay, thank you, see you soon, give my love to…) or longer sentences. Minimal tokens are preferred by children and teenagers (okay dominates), family members, and friends; they are typically used in information-seeking dialogues. Longer variants of pre-closings are characteristic of older participants, separately living family members and collateral relatives, and are generally used in ‘keeping-in-touch’ conversations.
Leave-takings are neutral or familiar formulas. Among younger people the dominant expression is ciao, which is hardly used at all by seniors, who appear to use more formal forms even with close friends and relatives.
Future studies could analyse which sequence types and linguistic means are used in affiliation sequences of closing sections.

References

Brown, Penelope, Stephen Levinson 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Button, Graham 1987. Moving out of closings. – Talk and Social Organization. Ed. Graham Button, John R. E. Lee. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 101–151.

Button, Graham 1991. Conversation-in-a-series. – Talk and Social Structure. Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. Ed. Deirdre Boden, Donald H. Zimmerman. Cambridge: Polity Press, 251–277.

Coronel-Molina, Serafin M. 1998. Openings and closings in telephone conversations between native Spanish speakers. – Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 14 (1), 49–68.

Drew, Paul, Kathy Chilton 2000. Calling just to keep in touch. Regular and habitualised telephone calls as an environment for small talk. – Small Talk. Ed. Joustine Coupland. London: Longman, 137–162.

Etehadieh, Elaheh 2011. Closings of Persian telephone conversation: A CA perspective. http://langfest.anu.edu.au/index.php/als/alaa-alanz/paper/view/3261 (22.04.2014).

Hennoste, Tiit 2000a. Suulise eesti keele uurimine: transkriptsioon, taust ja korpus. – Keel ja Kirjandus 2, 91–106.

Hennoste, Tiit 2000b. Sissejuhatus suulisesse eesti keelde IV. Suulise kõne erisõnavara 3. Partiklid. – Akadeemia 8, 1773–1806.

Hennoste, Tiit 2000c. Sissejuhatus suulisesse eesti keelde VI. Lausung suulises kõnes 1. – Akadeemia 10, 2223–2254.

Hennoste, Tiit 2001. Sissejuhatus suulisesse eesti keelde IX. Lausung suulises kõnes 4. – Akadeemia 1, 179–206.

Hennoste, Tiit, Andriela Rääbis 2004. Dialoogiaktid eesti infodialoogides: tüpoloogia ja analüüs. Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus.

Kamimoto, Emiko 2010. You can’t just hang up – Differences in Japanese family phone conversations. – Society for Gender Studies in Japanese annual convention 2010. http://www.gender.jp/journal/no11/12_kamimoto.html (22.04.2014).

Keevallik, Leelo 2000. Keelendid et ja nii et vestluses. – Keel ja Kirjandus 5, 344–358.

Keevallik, Leelo 2003. From Interaction to Grammar. Estonian Finite Verb Forms in Conversation. (= Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia Uralica Upsaliensia 34.) Uppsala.

Keevallik, Leelo 2005. Suhtluskeele uurimine partiklistunud verbivormide näitel. – Keel ja Kirjandus 7, 535–548; 8, 630–642.

Kurhila, Salla 1996. Puhelinkeskustelujen aloituksista ja lopetuksista. – Kakkoskieli 1. Toim. Salla Kurhila. Helsingin yliopiston suomen kielen laitos, 127–152.

Liddicoat, Anthony J. 2007. An Introduction to Conversation Analysis. New York: Continuum.

Meguschar, Fulvio 2004. Mõningaid tähelepanekuid sõnast tšau. – Keel ja Kirjandus 3, 213–215.

Pavlidou, Theodossia-Soula 1998. Greek and German telephone closings. Patterns of confirmation and agreement. – Pragmatics 8, 79–94.

Placencia, Maria Elena 1997. Opening up closings – the Ecuadorian way. – Text 17 (1), 53–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1997.17.1.53.

Rääbis, Andriela 2002. Ametlike telefonikõnede lõpetamine: kuidas helistaja lõpetamise algatab. – Emakeele Seltsi aastaraamat 47 (2001). Tallinn, 107–125.

Rääbis, Andriela 2009. Eesti telefonivestluste sissejuhatus: struktuur ja suhtlusfunktsioonid. (= Dissertationes linguisticae Universitatis Tartuensis 13.) Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus.

Schegloff, Emanuel A., Harvey Sacks 1973. Opening up closings. – Semiotica 8, 289–327. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/semi.1973.8.4.289.

Sun, Hao 2005. Collaborative strategies in Chinese telephone conversation closings: balancing procedural needs and interpersonal meaning making. – Pragmatics 15 (1), 109–128.

Takami, Tomoko 2002. A study on closing sections of Japanese telephone conversations. – Working Papers in Educational Linguistics 18 (1), 67–85.

Back to Issue