The Caller Leads the Conversation

Abstract

This chapter, as the preceding one, combines some of the features analysed before, such as the simple, the extended and the delayed responses together with new features. Here the emphasis is put on a specific conversational phenomenon that characterises the missing part of the data in the corpus to be analysed. As mentioned in Chapter 3, there are calls that receive a response to the request in a simple format, but then C, instead of aligning and moving towards the closing of the conversation as in the excerpts analysed there, prompts a continuation of the exchange. The result often is that C leads most of the conversation and s/he produces more talk.