Über das A und O des Telefonierens

»Ich bin das A und O, der Anfang und das Ende, spricht Gott der Herr, der da ist, der da war und der da kommt, der Allmächtige.« (Off. 1, 8)

Abstract

Opening and closing sections of telephone calls largely depend on the type of conversation in which they occur. The author differentiates between business or service calls on the one hand und purely phatic and purposive phatic telephone conversations on the other. As opposed to the two phatic ones, the openings and closings of the former are clearly reduced. All the opening and closing sections are constructed from adjacency pairs. The most important feature of the closing section is that — as long as the participants are not cut off — it can change direction at any point, with the parties resuming the conversation. The resulting ›loops‹, like almost everything in telephone conversations, depend on mutual agreement. Yet the receiver also has the right to a unilateral exit from the conversation. Recursiveness is the response to limitation, unilateral exit the expression of independence.