English telephone reservation conversation from a conversation analysis perspective

Speech acts used by hotel receptionists in collecting guest‟s information for reservation .... Ways used by hotel receptionists in closing telephone reservation conversation 35 PART C: C

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

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NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY

ENGLISH TELEPHONE RESERVATION

CONVERSATION FROM A CONVERSATION

ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE (ĐẶT PHÒNG QUA ĐIỆN THOẠI BẰNG TIẾNG ANH

TỪ GÓC ĐỘ PHÂN TÍCH HỘI THOẠI)

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

-*** -

NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY

ENGLISH TELEPHONE RESERVATION

CONVERSATION FROM A CONVERSATION

ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE (ĐẶT PHÒNG QUA ĐIỆN THOẠI BẰNG TIẾNG ANH

TỪ GÓC ĐỘ PHÂN TÍCH HỘI THOẠI)

TABLE OF CONTENT OF “ENGLISH TELEPHONE RESERVATION

CONVERSATION FROM A CONVERSATION ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE”

Page

Retention and use of the paper i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

List of tables vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Objectives and research questions of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 3

4 Organization of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Conversation Analysis 5

1.1.1 Definition of Conversation 5

1.1.2 Conversation Analysis versus Discourse Analysis 5

1.2 Telephone conversation 7

1.2.1 Openings 8

1.2.2 Topic talk 9

1.2.3 Closings 10

1.3 Speech acts 12

1.3.1 Illocutionary act 13

1.3.2 Direct and indirect speech act 14

Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY 15

2.1 Research questions 15

2.2 Data collection methods 15

2.3 Participants 16

2.4 Data analysis framework 17

Chapter 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 20

3.1 Findings 20

3.1.1 Openings 20

3.1.2 Topic-talk 23

3.1.3 Closings 28

3.2 Discussions 30

3.2.1 Typical procedure of opening a telephone reservation conversation by receptionists 30

3.2.2 Speech acts used by hotel receptionists in collecting guest‟s information for reservation 32

3.2.3 Ways used by hotel receptionists in closing telephone reservation conversation 35 PART C: CONCLUSION 37

1 Conclusion 37

2 Suggestions for further study 38

REFERENCES 39

APPENDIX 40

PART A: INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, the following aspects are covered:

- Rationale – reasons for choosing the research topic

- Aims and significance of the study

- Scope of the study, and

- Organization of the study

1 Rationale

Nowadays, telephone is considered an effective tool to connect people around the world In the business world, telephone also serves a significant function for trading, sales, marketing and keeping traces of customers for it has prominent and outstanding features such as instant, convenient and cheap However, to communicate successfully through telephone is not a simple task for participants when the caller cannot see the called and their non-verbal gestures Apart from linguistic competence, telephone etiquette is also important in business

It seems that much has been said and done about telephone conversation within pragmatics and conversation analysis field and such names as Levinson, Marknee, Sacks, Schegloff Jefferson, have become familiar in the researcher circle Although the structure of telephone conversation has been studied and used to explain and organize a wide variety of circumstances, it is limitedly and inconclusively used to explain cases of telephone conversations in hotel while hotel is one business field that mainly lives on telephone system and almost all matters in this kind of business are dealt with via telephone With high interest

in this area, I decided to do a research in order to have a more insightful view of this interactional behavior

Apart from personal interest, I have received ideas and suggestions from my colleagues and friends about their confusion in not yielding a satisfactory reservation conversation I am working in an international relations department and the work requires a lot of hotel reservation via telephone However, many hotel receptionists who speak English as a foreign language face some problems and need to improve for a better image of the hotel as well as providing a higher service quality

In order to reduce the bad feelings of customers and help non-native receptionists of English (refer to as non-native receptionists) achieve better communication results, the ways of handling telephone reservation conversations should be observed and studied Given this need, the questions then become: what are the procedures that receptionists often adopt to make a telephone reservation conversation? What are some reasonable implications that would help promote the development of consciousness of telephone skills, and lead to the improvement

of interactional or communicative competence for successful reservation conversations? To work out the answers to the questions above, I decided to do an analysis of telephone reservation conversation in the light of conversation analysis

2 Objectives and research questions of the study

Learners of a foreign language may find it troublesome to perform a professional conversation naturally and properly in other tongues For a smooth reservation, the knowledge of both linguistic rules and the service itself is required The objectives of this study are to:

(1) explore the reservation procedures expressed in formal reservation conversation through telephone between a customer and a receptionist to characterize the speech acts performed in the opening, topic talk and closings,

(2) discover good ways employed and detect common mistakes reflected in conversations, thereafter to

(3) help non-native customers and receptionists get a better understanding of reservation conversation and improve their communicative competence

To serve the above-mentioned objectives, the research questions come out as how non-native customers and receptionists behave in their reservation conversations with regard to such skills utilized in opening, topic talk and closing parts Specifically, the following questions will be dealt with:

(1) How do the receptionists often open a reservation conversation through telephone? (2) What are significant speech acts in collecting guest‟s information used by receptionists?

(3) How do the receptionists preferably close a telephone reservation conversation?

This study should be of potential interest to those who work in or have passion for Conversation Analysis, to customers who want to make a telephone reservation for room and hotel receptionists who desire to achieve more satisfactory reservation, and generally to those who want to have successful and smooth conversations through telephone In short, from a

CA perspective, the turn level of analysis clarifies how speakers routinely implement the collaborative and orderly achievement of reservation conversation

3 Scope of the study

This study is proposed to work with reservation conversations via telephone between speakers with equal power, one is guest (the caller) and one is hotel receptionist (the called) who speaks English as a foreign language, in formal setting The research targets at the written scripts, not the audio or sound of conversations Features that will be under study are opening, topic talk and closing of conversation Finally, due to the limitations of technology, non-verbal gestures and expressions are excluded

4 Organization of the study

This M.A thesis discusses the detection of some structure features of conversations between guests and receptionists, namely opening, topic talk and closing The paper is divided into 3 main chapters as follows:

Introduction, introducing the research topic, its rationale and research questions, scope of the

research and the organization of the paper

Chapter 1: Literature review, discussing the theoretical background in thesis, of which the

research matters will be discussed

Chapter 2: Methodology, describing the nuclear methodology to investigate the research

matters

Chapter 3: Findings and Discussions, showing the results of the study, providing answers to

the research questions, and

Conclusion, summarizing the overall study and proposition implications as well as

suggestions for other related studies or work

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses the theoretical background of the study which explores the following concepts:

- Conversation analysis

- Basic concepts of Conversation, and

- Basic concepts of telephone reservation conversation

1.1 Conversation Analysis

1.1.1 Definition of Conversation

When discussing conversation from a linguistic perspective, one has to know how this term is defined in this context In everyday language use, conversation often is understood as some kind of “civilized art of talk” or “cultured interchange” (Schegloff 1968: 1075) This is not the understanding Conversation Analysis has of conversation, although this definition - like Conversation Analysis - excludes one kind of talk This excluded kind is the one of organized talk as is to be found in classrooms, churches and many other institutions (Levinson 1983: 284)

Conversation Analysis defines conversation in a different way First of all it is stated to be a

“familiar predominant kind of talk in which two or more participants freely alternate in speaking” (Levinson 1983:282) and the “central or most basic kind of language use” (Levinson 1983:283) This means, that in a conversation several persons speak in the way we

do it ourselves everyday, without a special set of rules according to which the participants are

to act, like in a courtroom The conversation meant here can be a conversation between old friends, a short talk between strangers, a call to a business-partner and so on We converse in this way almost everyday and more than we do in any other way

1.1.2 Conversation Analysis versus Discourse Analysis

Two different main methodologies exist for analysing and examining conversation – conversation in general, or telephone conversation in special – from a linguistic perspective:

Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis To understand my decision to focus on the discipline of Conversation Analysis, I will shortly point out the main differences and parallels

of these methodologies

Of course, both disciplines examine conversation But the methods used for this, the thereby resulting findings and the main understanding of conversation differ immensely A common aim of Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis is to be able to give “an account of how coherence and sequential organization is produced and understood” (Levinson 1983: 286)

According Nguyen Hoa (2000), Discourse Analysis uses primitive and basic concepts of linguistics for this It attempts to extend the rules applying to sentences over the boundaries of sentences The main method of the discipline is the isolation of sets of units of discourse, followed by a formulation of rules according to these units and finally the division of units into well-formed and ill-formed sequences The conversations are then analysed according to the rules which have been formulated before This makes the methods of Discourse Analysis

an “immediate categorization of restricted data” (Levinson 1983: 287), which means that not the motivation for the form of the data is searched for, but that some parts of data are isolated from their context which could explain their occurrence and give insight into the real intentions and meanings of utterances This missing insight is also attributable to the field of Discourse Analysis that is used for the analysis of conversation: the speech act theory (Levinson 1983: 286)

Speech act theory is in the field of the analysis of conversation mainly concerned with the view that “the level of coherence and order in conversation is to be found [ ] at the level of speech acts” (Levinson 1983: 288) For this, a syntax which shall explain what kinds of utterances fit together and which utterances require each other is added to normal speech act theory One of the main difficulties of this view is that - as we will see - utterances are able to fulfill more than one speech act at a time (Levinson 1983: 290)

Conversation Analysis, in contrast, is a more “empirical approach which avoids premature theory construction” (Levinson 1983: 286) Naturally occurring conversations build the set of data in which recurring patterns of utterances are searched for In contrast to discourse analysis no rules are formulated according to these patterns, but it is attempted to find out why

a special utterance was produced and not an alternative one From this, sequential organization of the conversation and the way in which utterances are designed to fulfill this organization are researched In Conversation Analysis, it is not important if an utterance is well-formed or not, but rather why the speaker chose such an utterance and what effect it has

on the listener

The difference between Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis should makes it obvious that here, conversation can only be observed from a Conversation Analysis perspective as the examination of the organization of conversation and not of conversation as

a kind of sentence, is the aim of this paper Also, Conversation Analysis certainly has contributed more to the understanding of conversation than Discourse Analysis has, as a conversation has to be seen rather as an interactional product - as claimed by Conversation Analysis – than as a structural product like a sentence - as claimed by Discourse Analysis

1.2 Telephone conversation

Talking on the telephone is a very special kind of conversation It allows the participants being “accessible to one another directly in real time without being „co-present‟” (Schegloff 2002:287) The participants are in no situation which itself allows this conversation like a party, but are in their own reality A telephone conversation has to be established to secure the co-presence and at its end, the co-presence has to be lifted again Because of this, a telephone conversation has the duration of the call

Telephone conversations are “social activities effectively constituted by talk itself” (Levinson1983:309) Such activities tend to have a structure, which includes at least opening section and closing section, but normally also topic-talk Such a structure is an overall organization as it organizes the conversation as one unit The mechanisms which control this overall organization on the telephone, the parts of such a conversation and the problems resulting will be examined in the following

1.2.2 Openings

Coulthard (1985: 89) states that conversations are opened with greetings Exceptions to this are telephone conversations although the first turn often is a hello That this turn is no greeting becomes obvious when contrasting a normal conversation to a telephone conversation

In face-to-face conversation it is normal, that the person who wants to speak to another person speaks first One of the unusual features of a telephone conversation is that the called speaks first Schegloff (1968: 1076) claims that this is because, although the called is the first to speak, he does not actually have the first turn By calling the person one wants to talk to, the caller makes the first move into the conversation This first move consists in causing the telephone of the called to ring The question arises of what nature this ringing is

The ringing of a telephone is a summons The use of a summons is to get the attention of a person In face-to-face conversation it can have the forms of an address - like for example

Mummy? -, courtesy phrases or physical devices like a tap on the shoulder In telephone

conversation this summons is realized by a neutral ringing of the telephone (Levinson 1983: 310)

The summons shall open the channel for the conversation Opening the channel needs the participation of both parties For this, the summons is the first part of the adjacency pair summons-answer By answering to the summons, the called signalizes that he is listening and the channel is open This also explains why the first turn of the called often is a yeah It corresponds to a normal answer to a summons in face-to-face conversation (Levinson 1983: 310)

Thus, the ringing of the telephone and the first turn of the called are part of a answer structure which shall open the channel for talk and secure the participation of both parties

summons-Another main concern of the openings of telephone conversations is identification-recognition The telephone does not provide visual ground for identification and recognition as exists in face-to-face conversation But recognition of the participants is immediately relevant in every conversation Thus, the recognition has to be done by other means Techniques to achieve recognition are non-overt self-identification and overt self-identification Caller and called

both have to identify themselves and have to be recognised so that the conversation can begin The place for the participants to identify themselves is the first turn of both of them (Levinson 1985: 311)

Non-overt self-identification is mostly used among people who know each other well, like family-members or friends and in domestic context As ground for recognition one offers a short voice-quality sample The called has the option to perform non-overt self-identification

by answering the telephone with a simple answer to the summons without any further identification, without knowing who is calling The caller usually knows who he is calling and

in which relation he stands to the called, he can therefore decide whether to use non-overt self-identification or not, before the called answers The overt self-identification is mostly done among passing acquaintances or in business context, when a recognition by terms of a voice-quality sample is not probable Again, both participants have the option to use this kind

of identification The called can give a station identification or his name on answering the telephone as well as the caller can do so in the turn following this answer

1.2.3 Topic talk

According to Levinson, the reason of the call usually fills the slot of the first topic The performer of the summons also has to produce the reason of the summons This reason of the summons is the first turn after the conversation‟s opening and the first turn of topic-talk This

is shown, by the utterance I just thought I could call you or similar statements in this place, if

no specific reason for the call exists (Coulthard 1985: 80)

In conversations, there is a preference for topic fitting or topical coherence The first topic does not have to fit to any prior topics as there are no prior topics Topical coherence means, that mentionables are held back until they can occur in the flow of the conversation But some mentionables never occur naturally As the reason of the call is especially important, it is mentioned at the beginning of the topic-talk so that it does not have to fit (Levinson 1983: 313)

In order to know when a topic fits and when not, the term a topic has to be examined One

could say that two persons are talking about the same topic if they are talking about the same

set of references or linked concepts But this characterization is not sufficient and indeed no sufficient characterization exists Topic is rather defined by practice and topical coherence According to Levinson (1983: 315) “topical coherence is something constructed across turns

by the collaboration of participants” Practice shows, that if no topical coherence exists, new topics are introduced in a dispreferred way

When using a summary, the participant who wants to close the topic usually produces a proverbial or aphoristic summary or produces a comment the other party can just agree to The speaker can also pass the turn on to the other speaker by producing a minimal utterance

like okay, so or others, which indicate that he has nothing to add or does not wish to add more

1.2.4 Closings

A conversation can not be regarded as being closed just by speaking no more or in the case of telephone conversation by hanging up The turn-taking system has to be overruled to close a conversation so that the non-verbalization of a speaker is not considered a silence This has to

be achieved simultaneous by both speakers so that no party expects the other party to speak anymore The adjacency pair of terminal exchange secures the lift of the expectations towards the other party to speak after the completion of a turn Terminal exchange is realized by the

exchange of dismissals like bye, see you or others The first uttered dismissal “announces

imminent closure and the second part secures it” (Levinson 1983: 324)

Typical components of closings are a closing implicative topic, passing turns and terminal exchange The closing implicative topic is voluntarily and not necessary for a complete closing Although the closing implicative topic occurs before the agreement on closing - before pre-closing - it can be considered as belonging to the closing section as it leads directly

to closing It can for example include the making of arrangements If the closing implicative topic is closed down, passing turns give each participant the chance to add more to the conversation If the possibility of adding is not taken up, pre-closing is agreed on and an environment for terminal exchange can be established by rounding up the conversation by the

exchange of dismissals like bye, see you then or others

Reopening of topic-talk can occur at any point of the conversation As stated before, the performer of a passing turn can on the performance of a second passing turn choose to introduce a new topic But as closing was already agreed on by the pair of passing turns, this introduction of new conversational material has to be considered a reopening A closing section is “not a place for new things to come up” (Sacks & Schegloff 1973: 319) When new material does come up, it is marked Reopening can have several reasons Among those reasons are prior holding back of the real reason of the call, after-thoughts or material which comes up in the closing section itself

After reopening, the conversation might go on for a long time Nonachievement of closing can cause frustration with a participant when he tries to close the conversation several times but the other party does not co-operate but continues the conversation

In such a case special techniques exist to end a conversation They are not restricted to the use after declined closings, but can also be used to end conversations because one participant runs out of time or for other reasons Such techniques are called restricted techniques, because their form depends on the performer The called‟s technique as well as caller‟s techniques both refer to the interests of the other party, although it actually is the party using this technique who wishes to close the conversation A possibility for a called to end a

conversation by such a special technique is for example That’s all for a reservation The

called implies with this, that he does not wish to continue the conversation without seeming rude

To sum up, it was observed that closings of conversation are complicated, because both participants have to arrive simultaneous at a point where the conversation is considered closed It can result from running out of mentionables or the attempt of a participant to close it

1.3 Speech act

The elemental insights presented by the work of philosophers such as Austin (1962) and Searle (1969, 1975) are that in or by saying something a speaker also does something According to Searle (1969), language is part of a theory of action, and speech acts are those verbal acts such as requesting, welcoming and promising that one performs in speaking On this view, minimal units of human communication are not linguistic expressions, but rather

the performances of certain kinds of acts, such as making statements, asking questions, giving directions, apologizing, thanking, asserting, giving comments and so on These acts are called illocutionary acts (Searle, 1969) The theory of speech acts, promoted by Austin (1962) also asserts that there are a number of utterances that do not report or “constate” anything and are not therefore “true or false”, but rather that the uttering of the sentence is, or is part of, an action For example, in such sentences “I name my puppy Rex” and “I bet you twenty dollar she will come back”, the speaker actually names the small dog or makes the bet, but he is not making any kind of statement that can be regarded as true or false The sentences that he is concerned with here are, grammatically, all statements but they are not constative, they are performative Austin also talks about an act of assertion, descriptive fallacy, constative utterance and performative verb

The notions of illocutionary acts, illocutionary force, and direct, and indirect speech acts are the heart of speech act theory

Related to the notions of illocutionary act is the concept of illocutionary point The concept of the illocutionary point refers to the point or purpose of illocution (Searle, 1990a) Searle identifies five illocutionary points namely assertive, commissive, directive, declarative and expressive The, the request “Please forget me” given as an example above has a directive illocutionary point

In speech act theory a distinction is made between the illocutionary point and illocutionary force of an act “While the illocutionary point of request is the same as that of commands: both are attempts to get hearers to do something, their illocutionary forces are different” (Searle, 1990a) In his term “force” is same to strength For example, in comparing “I suggest

we go to the movies” with “I insist that we go to the movies” Searle argues that they have the same illocutionary point, i.e an attempt to get the interlocutor to go to the movies, but the same illocutionary point is presented with different strength or force The force of an utterance is related to the status or position of the Speaker and Hearer

Searle (1979) argues that each type of illocutionary act requires certain conditions for the successful and felicitous performance of that act and these he calls felicity conditions Searle identifies four different kinds of felicity conditions These conditions relate, on the one hand,

to the beliefs and attitudes of the speaker and the hearer, and, on the other hand, to their mutual understanding of the use of linguistic devices for communication The conditions which underline a sincere request are specified as follows (Searle, 1979):

(1) Preparatory conditions (Hearer is able to perform Action)

(2) Sincerity conditions (Speaker wants Hearer to do Action)

(3) Propositional content conditions (Speaker predicates a future Action)

(4) Essential conditions (counts as an attempt by the Speaker to get Hearer to do Action)

1.3.2 Direct and indirect speech acts

In speech act theory, direct speech acts and indirect speech acts are distinguished from each other Indirectness is defined as “those cases in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by way of performing another” (Searle, 1975) Thus, in direct speech acts the speaker says what he means, while in indirect speech acts the speaker means more than he says, i.e speakers perform one illocution act implicitly by way of performing another illocutionary act explicitly For instance, instead of asking someone about the time, a speaker may ask if he has the ability to do it such as “Can you tell me the time?” In this case the direct act is asking whether the hearer has the ability to tell the time, but the indirect act is that of requesting the hearer to tell the speaker the time Thus, the act of asking about the hearer‟s

ability is performed explicitly while the act of requesting the hearer to tell him the time is performed implicitly

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY

This chapter is to illustrate the methodology of the study and the sections which follow, include:

- Research questions repeated

- Data collection instruments

(1) How do the receptionists often open a reservation conversation through telephone? (2) What are significant speech acts in collecting guest‟s information used by receptionists?

(3) How do the receptionists preferably close a telephone reservation conversation?

2.2 Data collection methods

With the research questions mentioned above, the primary source of data were mainly collected with the help of equipments since the analysis of talk-in-interaction minimally requires the use of audio or video recordings of participant‟s talk to capture the tremendous complexity of conversational behaviours The data collected in this thesis include short conversations which serve the purpose of room reservation The majority of these dialogues is imported from CD and VCD illustrating the scene of responding and dealing with the reservation calling from customers in hotels

While audio recording is the main method of collecting data of this research, observations skills are also required These skills enable the researcher to perceive a broader range of

visual phenomena, to note complex additional facial expressions and gestures as well as the aural information conveyed by a speaker‟s hesitation phenomena, pitch, volume in emphasizing and so on

Moreover, a questionnaire was also distributed to collect opinions as well as feelings from the angle of guests This source of data helps the author to discover the behavior and expectation

of guests when involving in conversations of room reservation, from which more accurate advice and suggestions could be drawn out

2.3 Participants

The aim of this study is to explore speech acts performed in opening, information collecting and closing reservation calls from potential guests in formal business settings Therefore, causal talks between two speakers, one customer (the caller) and one hotel receptionist (the called), were recorded Normally, the managing board of every hotel requires that all the conversations made between their staff and customers must be recorded for assessment and further researches Those conversations were extracted from that source While the group of the called was selected among hotel receptionists who could use spoken English fluently and have clear understanding on hotel service and room reservation procedure, the group of the callers varied from gender, age, profession to location and nationality However, they met the same needs of room reservation and the must language to use was English

Copyright is an obstacle during the writer‟s hard process of collecting data None of hotels that the researcher contacted allowed her to copy the whole collections of conversations from their staffs due to the secret of business Therefore, she had to pick up sums of dialogues from several hotels, both domestic and overseas ones namely Hanoi Daewoo hotel, Sofitel Plaza Hanoi, Vien Dong hotel (in Nha Trang city) and some others in America and Australia

The number of dialogues is not great as expected before and the researcher is well aware that

if she had more dialogues, she would have more samples to enhance the reliability of the findings However, in that case the qualitative data will be unmanageable It will take much more time for seeking and even buying the sources while she only examines three aspects in a minor thesis with the limitation of time and financial status as well Therefore, she believes