Business and Service Telephone Conversations: An Investigation of British English, German, and Italian Encounters

Abstract

Prior research of telephone service encounters have dealt with specific strategies used by speakers as well as their practical implications (Lee, 2011; Stokoe, 2013). Taking interactional data from three European languages, namely British English, German, and Italian, Varcasia’s 2013 book, Business and Service Telephone Conversations, sets out to apply “pure” Conversation Analysis (CA) findings (ten Have, 2007) to analyze the various strategies used by speakers when responding to pre-request for services and requests for information during telephone service encounters. The text contributes to the research on institutional interactions and cross linguistic comparison, and also presents practical implications with regard to formal business telephone services and the training of call center professionals.

Keywords

• Call centers
• Intercultural communication
• Conversation analysis
• English language
• Foreign speakers
• Study of language
• Language study
• Teaching language
• Education
• Linguistics
• Applied linguistics