Patterns of thanking in the closing section of UK service calls

Marking conversational macro-structure vs managing interpersonal relations

Bibliographic Data

ID21200979
AuthorsMaj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen (0000-0002-9522-591X, University of Manchester, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume7
Issue4
Pages664-692
Publication date2016-12-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePragmatics and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1878-9714 • E-ISSN: 1878-9722
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/ps.7.4.07mos
OpenAlexW2212499256
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited22

I investigate patterns of usage of thanking formulae in the closing section of a corpus of 94 telephone calls made by tenants to a UK housing association. The data suggest that unilateral thanking is the norm when calls are institutionally and interactionally unmarked. In contrast, mutual thanking correlates mainly with the presence of interactional problems of various kinds, or, in a few cases, with features that are not problematic as such, but simply interactionally marked given the nature of the activity. When initiated by agents rather than by callers, thanking is frequently hearable as conveying an apologetic stance. Participants thus seem to orient to different thanking patterns as devices which may be used either to mark the preceding interaction as an instance of ‘business-as-usual’ or, if such is not the case, to restore interpersonal harmony or index awareness that aspects of the preceding interaction have otherwise deviated from situational expectations

Epistemology · Interpersonal communication · Linguistics · Political science · Situational ethics · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychology of Social Influence · Social Psychology · Stalking, Cyberstalking, and Harassment

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