24.1.4 Conversational Structure

We have already seen how conversation is structured by adjacency pairs and contributions. Here we'll briefly discuss one aspect of the overall organization of a conversation: conversational openings. The openings of telephone conversations, for example, tend to have a 4-part structure (Clark, 1994; Schegloff, 1968, 1979):

Stage 1: Enter a conversation, with summons-response adjacency pair

Stage 3: Establish joint willingness to converse

Stage 2: Identification

Stage 4: The first topic is raised, usually by the caller.

These four stages appear in the opening of this short task-oriented conversation from Clark (1994).

| Stage | Speaker & Utterance |

| --- | --- |

| 1 | A1: (rings B's telephone) |

| 1,2 | B1: Benjamin Holloway |

| 2 | A1: this is Professor Dwight's secretary, from Polymania College |

| 2,3 | B1: ooh yes – |

| 4 | A1: uh:m . about the: lexicology *seminar $ ^{{*}} $ |

| 4 | B1: *yes $ ^{{*}} $ |

It is common for the person who answers the phone to speak first (since the caller's ring functions as the first part of the adjacency pair) but for the caller to bring up the first topic, as the caller did above concerning the "lexicology seminar". This fact that the caller usually brings up the first topic causes confusion when the answerer brings up the first topic instead; here's an example of this from the British directory enquiry service from Clark (1994):

Customer: (rings)

Operator: Directory Enquiries, for which town please?

Customer: Could you give me the phone number of um: Mrs. um: Smithson?

Operator: Yes, which town is this at please?

Customer: Huddleston.

Operator: Yes. And the name again?

Customer: Mrs. Smithson.

In the conversation above, the operator brings up the topic (for which town please?) in her first sentence, confusing the caller, who ignores this topic and brings up her own. This fact that callers expect to bring up the topic explains why conversational agents for call routing or directory information often use very open prompts like How may I help you? or How may I direct your call? rather than a directive prompt like For which town please?. Open prompts allow the caller to state their own topic, reducing recognition errors caused by customer confusion.

Conversation has many other kinds of structure, including the intricate nature of conversational closings and the wide use of presequences. We will discuss structure based on coherence in Sec. 24.7.