English telephone reservation conversation from a conversation analysis perspective

Ways used by hotel receptionists in closing telephone reservation conversation 35 PART C: CONCLUSION...37 1... The objectives of this study are to: 1 explore the reservation procedures e

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

-*** -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

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

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Detailed information included in self-identification by the called Table 2 International Phonetic Alphabet Table 3 Specified needs of

customer

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 thebusiness world, telephone also serves a significant function for trading, sales, marketing andkeeping traces of customers for it has prominent and outstanding features such as instant,convenient and cheap However, to communicate successfully through telephone is not asimple 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 pragmaticsand conversation analysis field and such names as Levinson, Marknee, Sacks, SchegloffJefferson, have become familiar in the researcher circle Although the structure of telephoneconversation has been studied and used to explain and organize a wide variety ofcircumstances, it is limitedly and inconclusively used to explain cases of telephoneconversations in hotel while hotel is one business field that mainly lives on telephone systemand 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 thisinteractional behavior

Apart from personal interest, I have received ideas and suggestions from my colleagues andfriends about their confusion in not yielding a satisfactory reservation conversation I amworking in an international relations department and the work requires a lot of hotelreservation via telephone However, many hotel receptionists who speak English as a foreignlanguage face some problems and need to improve for a better image of the hotel as well asproviding 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 ofhandling 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 atelephone reservation conversation? What are some reasonable implications that would helppromote the development of consciousness of telephone skills, and lead to the improvement ofinteractional or communicative competence for successful reservation conversations? To workout the answers to the questions above, I decided to do an analysis of telephone reservationconversation 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 conversationnaturally and properly in other tongues For a smooth reservation, the knowledge of bothlinguistic rules and the service itself is required The objectives of this study are to:

(1) explore the reservation procedures expressed in formal reservation conversationthrough telephone between a customer and a receptionist to characterize the speechacts 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-nativecustomers and receptionists behave in their reservation conversations with regard to suchskills utilized in opening, topic talk and closing parts Specifically, the following questionswill 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 forConversation Analysis, to customers who want to make a telephone reservation for room andhotel receptionists who desire to achieve more satisfactory reservation, and generally to thosewho 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 thecollaborative and orderly achievement of reservation conversation

3 Scope of the study

This study is proposed to work with reservation conversations via telephone between speakerswith equal power, one is guest (the caller) and one is hotel receptionist (the called) whospeaks English as a foreign language, in formal setting The research targets at the writtenscripts, 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-verbalgestures and expressions are excluded

4 Organization of the study

This M.A thesis discusses the detection of some structure features of conversations betweenguests and receptionists, namely opening, topic talk and closing The paper is divided into 3main 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 isdefined in this context In everyday language use, conversation often is understood as somekind of “civilized art of talk” or “cultured interchange” (Schegloff 1968: 1075) This is not theunderstanding Conversation Analysis has of conversation, although this definition - likeConversation Analysis - excludes one kind of talk This excluded kind is the one of organizedtalk 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 inspeaking” (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 oldfriends, a short talk between strangers, a call to a business-partner and so on We converse inthis 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 thediscipline 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 therebyresulting findings and the main understanding of conversation differ immensely A commonaim of Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis is to be able to give “an account of howcoherence and sequential organization is produced and understood” (Levinson 1983: 286)

According Nguyen Hoa (2000), Discourse Analysis uses primitive and basic concepts oflinguistics for this It attempts to extend the rules applying to sentences over the boundaries ofsentences 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 unitsinto well-formed and ill-formed sequences The conversations are then analysed according tothe 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 notthe motivation for the form of the data is searched for, but that some parts of data are isolatedfrom their context which could explain their occurrence and give insight into the realintentions and meanings of utterances This missing insight is also attributable to the field ofDiscourse 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 theview that “the level of coherence and order in conversation is to be found [ ] at the level ofspeech acts” (Levinson 1983: 288) For this, a syntax which shall explain what kinds ofutterances fit together and which utterances require each other is added to normal speech acttheory One of the main difficulties of this view is that - as we will see - utterances are able tofulfill more than one speech act at a time (Levinson 1983: 290)

Conversation Analysis, in contrast, is a more “empirical approach which avoids prematuretheory construction” (Levinson 1983: 286) Naturally occurring conversations build the set ofdata in which recurring patterns of utterances are searched for In contrast to discourseanalysis 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, sequentialorganization of the conversation and the way in which utterances are designed to fulfill thisorganization are researched In Conversation Analysis, it is not important if an utterance iswell-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 itobvious that here, conversation can only be observed from a Conversation Analysisperspective 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 hascontributed more to the understanding of conversation than Discourse Analysis has, as aconversation has to be seen rather as an interactional product - as claimed by ConversationAnalysis – 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 participantsbeing “accessible to one another directly in real time without being „co-present‟” (Schegloff2002:287) The participants are in no situation which itself allows this conversation like aparty, but are in their own reality A telephone conversation has to be established to secure theco-presence and at its end, the co-presence has to be lifted again Because of this, a telephoneconversation 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 openingsection and closing section, but normally also topic-talk Such a structure is an overallorganization as it organizes the conversation as one unit The mechanisms which control thisoverall organization on the telephone, the parts of such a conversation and the problemsresulting will be examined in the following

1.2.2 Openings

Coulthard (1985: 89) states that conversations are opened with greetings Exceptions to thisare telephone conversations although the first turn often is a hello That this turn is no greetingbecomes 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 personspeaks first One of the unusual features of a telephone conversation is that the called speaksfirst Schegloff (1968: 1076) claims that this is because, although the called is the first tospeak, he does not actually have the first turn By calling the person one wants to talk to, thecaller makes the first move into the conversation This first move consists in causing thetelephone 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 aperson 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 theparticipation of both parties For this, the summons is the first part of the adjacency pairsummons-answer By answering to the summons, the called signalizes that he is listening andthe channel is open This also explains why the first turn of the called often is a yeah Itcorresponds 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 bothparties

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 inface-to-face conversation But recognition of the participants is immediately relevant in everyconversation Thus, the recognition has to be done by other means Techniques to achieverecognition 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, likefamily-members or friends and in domestic context As ground for recognition one offers ashort 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 furtheridentification, 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-overtself-identification or not, before the called answers The overt self-identification is mostlydone among passing acquaintances or in business context, when a recognition by terms of avoice-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 thetelephone 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 Theperformer of the summons also has to produce the reason of the summons This reason of thesummons 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 topicdoes 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 somementionables never occur naturally As the reason of the call is especially important, it ismentioned 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 nosufficient 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, newtopics 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 oftelephone conversation by hanging up The turn-taking system has to be overruled to close aconversation 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 speakanymore The adjacency pair of terminal exchange secures the lift of the expectations towardsthe 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 terminalexchange The closing implicative topic is voluntarily and not necessary for a completeclosing 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 implicativetopic is closed down, passing turns give each participant the chance to add more to theconversation If the possibility of adding is not taken up, pre-closing is agreed on and anenvironment 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, theperformer of a passing turn can on the performance of a second passing turn choose tointroduce a new topic But as closing was already agreed on by the pair of passing turns, thisintroduction of new conversational material has to be considered a reopening A closingsection is “not a place for new things to come up” (Sacks & Schegloff 1973: 319) When newmaterial does come up, it is marked Reopening can have several reasons Among thosereasons are prior holding back of the real reason of the call, after-thoughts or material whichcomes up in the closing section itself.

After reopening, the conversation might go on for a long time Nonachievement of closing cancause frustration with a participant when he tries to close the conversation several times butthe 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 useafter declined closings, but can also be used to end conversations because one participant runsout of time or for other reasons Such techniques are called restricted techniques, because theirform depends on the performer The called‟s technique as well as caller‟s techniques bothrefer to the interests of the other party, although it actually is the party using this techniquewho 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 bothparticipants 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) andSearle (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 thoseverbal acts such as requesting, welcoming and promising that one performs in speaking Onthis 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, givingdirections, apologizing, thanking, asserting, giving comments and so on These acts are calledillocutionary acts (Searle, 1969) The theory of speech acts, promoted by Austin (1962) alsoasserts that there are a number of utterances that do not report or “constate” anything and arenot therefore “true or false”, but rather that the uttering of the sentence is, or is part of, anaction For example, in such sentences “I name my puppy Rex” and “I bet you twenty dollarshe will come back”, the speaker actually names the small dog or makes the bet, but he is notmaking any kind of statement that can be regarded as true or false The sentences that he isconcerned with here are, grammatically, all statements but they are not constative, they areperformative Austin also talks about an act of assertion, descriptive fallacy, constativeutterance and performative verb.

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

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

In speech act theory a distinction is made between the illocutionary point and illocutionaryforce 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 thesame illocutionary point, i.e an attempt to get the interlocutor to go to the movies, but thesame 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 thesuccessful and felicitous performance of that act and these he calls felicity conditions Searleidentifies 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 theirmutual understanding of the use of linguistic devices for communication The conditionswhich 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 eachother Indirectness is defined as “those cases in which one illocutionary act is performedindirectly by way of performing another” (Searle, 1975) Thus, in direct speech acts thespeaker says what he means, while in indirect speech acts the speaker means more than hesays, i.e speakers perform one illocution act implicitly by way of performing anotherillocutionary act explicitly For instance, instead of asking someone about the time, a speakermay ask if he has the ability to do it such as “Can you tell me the time?” In this case the directact is asking whether the hearer has the ability to tell the time, but the indirect act is that ofrequesting 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 mainlycollected with the help of equipments since the analysis of talk-in-interaction minimallyrequires the use of audio or video recordings of participant‟s talk to capture the tremendouscomplexity of conversational behaviours The data collected in this thesis include shortconversations which serve the purpose of room reservation The majority of these dialogues isimported from CD and VCD illustrating the scene of responding and dealing with thereservation calling from customers in hotels

While audio recording is the main method of collecting data of this research, observationsskills 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 theaural information conveyed by a speaker‟s hesitation phenomena, pitch, volume inemphasizing and so on.

Moreover, a questionnaire was also distributed to collect opinions as well as feelings from theangle 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 accurateadvice and suggestions could be drawn out

2.3 Participants

The aim of this study is to explore speech acts performed in opening, information collectingand closing reservation calls from potential guests in formal business settings Therefore,causal talks between two speakers, one customer (the caller) and one hotel receptionist (thecalled), were recorded Normally, the managing board of every hotel requires that all theconversations made between their staff and customers must be recorded for assessment andfurther researches Those conversations were extracted from that source While the group ofthe called was selected among hotel receptionists who could use spoken English fluently andhave clear understanding on hotel service and room reservation procedure, the group of thecallers varied from gender, age, profession to location and nationality However, they met thesame 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 hotelsthat the researcher contacted allowed her to copy the whole collections of conversations fromtheir staffs due to the secret of business Therefore, she had to pick up sums of dialogues fromseveral hotels, both domestic and overseas ones namely Hanoi Daewoo hotel, Sofitel PlazaHanoi, 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 thefindings However, in that case the qualitative data will be unmanageable It will take muchmore time for seeking and even buying the sources while she only examines three aspects in aminor thesis with the limitation of time and financial status as well Therefore, she believes

that the number of conversations collected as discussed above is considerably enough for thepurpose of her study.

Moreover, about 40 customers coming from different nations were asked to fill in a surveyquestionnaire to collect their attitudes towards some behaviours of receptionists Their namesand addresses will not be revealed until the author got their approval

Last but not least, for ethical consideration as well as the deal commitment between theresearcher and data providers, participants‟ identity would be protected and selectivelydisplayed in papers with the providers‟ permission

2.4 Data analysis framework

With the research concerns reflected in the above-mentioned questions, to sort out theresearched content happening in conversation, one of the common ways is to have theconversations recorded for analysis and synthesis Generally speaking, conversation analysisunpacks the structure of conversation by analyzing either single cases or collections of talk-in-interaction Markee proposes that:

With singly cases, the objective is to provide an in-depth analysis of a particular phenomenon that facilitates a deep understating of how the phenomenon under study works Analysis based on collection of similar data enable the analyst to use whether the practices to which participants are thought to orient tare robust enough to account for a broad range of data gathered in different conversational contexts (Markee, 2000:60)

By the nature of conversation analysis, this research was conducted as a qualitative study,using audio equipment along with observation skills to collect data Discussion with someparticipants during or after the work of transcription was also done to re-confirm someambiguous contents According to Wisher (2001:138), qualitative research is carried out when

we wish to understand meanings, describe and understand experiences, ideas, beliefs andvalues – intangibles such as these Whereas, Reichardt and Cook describe qualitative research

as “concerned with understanding human behaviour from the actor‟s own frame or reference,naturalistic and uncontrolled observation, discovery-oriented, descriptive, process-oriented,real and rich data” (Nunan, 1992:4) However, to confirm the research findings, calculation of