Submitted by
for the degree of Master of Philosophy
at The University of Hong Kong
in July 1997
| This thesis examines the ways people manage call-waiting, as a kind of intrusion, in telephone conversation. Cantonese telephone conversations in domestic settings in Hong Kong were collected for analysis. The conversation-analytic approach is adopted in analysing people's responses to this intrusion. The data show that the call-waiting signal is seldom ignored by the participants. In most cases, people initiate hold-on requests so as to switch partners. There are some recurring features in these hold-on turns, namely the disjunct marker, the hold-on request, the account and the apology. Among the four features, the disjunct marker is often placed at the beginning of the hold-on turns. Not all four features will appear in any one case. There are also cases where the recipient of the intruding summons closes the current conversation before switching partners. In these cases, pre-closing techniques such as appreciation, reasons-for-the-call and arrangements are found. It is observed that people tend to initiate the hold-on turns after the end of the signal. If the recipient of the summons is talking during its occurrence, he will usually cut short his turn to initiate the hold-on request sometimes without regard to where he is in his current turn. If the intruding summons takes place during the other party's turn, the recipient of the summons may wait until an opportunity comes up to initiate the hold-on request. The hold-on request is seen as the first pair part of an adjacency pair, the second pair part is produced by the other party on the telephone. Cases show that the other party typically grants the hold-on request by saying something like "Yes / Okay" or by not taking a turn which amounts to an agreement to the request. In most cases, the recipient of the summons will switch back to the original call after talking to the party on the intruding call. When the participants resume their conversation, two recurring features are found. Firstly, the one who speaks first in the resumed talk is the recipient of the summons. Secondly, there is a pair of turns designed specifically to check each other's availability before the conversation is continued. In addition, several types of immediate actions following the availability pair are found such as initiations of closing of the original call, closing-implicative questions, back-references, or return to the topic before the intruding call. Finally, a brief comparison between the English and Cantonese data shows that the ways people handle telephone intrusion are very similar. |