Eso Lang. Soe. 6, 209-219. Printed in Great Britain Same setting, different norms: Phone call beginnings in France and the United States DANIELE GODARD The University of Pennsyleania apstRacT French native speakers’ reactions to phone calls indication of a difference in the norms of interaction between the two countries. This difference, in turn, is understood whet izes that ‘event, is open to different cultural rity in the physical conditions of t ie answerer. (Sequencing conven lity; telephone calls; France and United State the United States are an sper, Twill contrast the expected behavior ofthe caller and answerer at the beginning of 2 telephone. conversation at a private residence in the United States and in France. The behavioral differences attached by lf lo? is an instance of a summons-answer seq there are features which are specific to the telephone ca opening speaker and hearer cultural ass [Asa foreigner who has lived in the United States for only a few m been made conscious of some differences in the speech bs telephone calls: I have sometimes been irritated and even ins sometimes been amused. Here are two the following sequences occurred, with t {x} Convention: A indicate ‘Answerer, and C ‘Caller, 209DANIELE GODARD CIs Jane at your ho Can I speai to her, (Gn this case, A was amused) What does is mean? Simply that T am not ful 88 the technical sense proposed by Hymes (1972: 54) A speech communi les of speaking, ‘Methodologicelly speaking, the cross-cultural encounter hi but also its drawbacks. While the non-identity of rules shed fi Thad myself internalized, s spelt which wuld permit met interpret the Neha T nieeaed Hn Wis therefore nesasnry for me to une members of the pect eee informants to check Leary ed knowledge of the norms for de, once the existence of a rule had been uncovered od States. At the same time, I collected examples of which I was able to witness here, and then asked members for thei alone could tell me whether I hat which gov pe C. 2. C: excuses himself and 4a8ks for addressee caller has obtained a awakened at § a.m. by voice which said: ‘Hello? How are you? Can I come for you?’, and a friend, when questioned, ssid that she had noticed the same behavior when she was awakened at night by a charming voice, casual and +h began to ask how she was. This absence of exp! the ease of a wrong number, and esp the answerer, but itis, indeed, the typical behavior. As of evidence is that Ido not know my own number by heart, never having had 1o verify it when T picked up the phone. ~ Once assured that he has reached the right house, the French ealler wi before he asks for his verification announces his identity thus forces the of = general norm which governs introductions. By definition, introductions are reciprocal, whether they are being performed by a third person or whether people introduce themselves to each other. People ar are ‘ot offered in exchange for the other one; some people prefer to avoid the per- tobe a borrowing {2} Brackets indicate that there are several possibilities: either t or 2 PEERED ERESESEo eee DANISLE GoDARD “from the norms “for ich govern interaction in a work situation where the purpose a probably determines a different set of rules, As far as I have observe, the answerer identifies himself immediately when he is ina re as well as in Paris. In the situation which I have called acy’, to acknowledg to check hhas reached the right house. ‘The first utterance on the caller’s part ‘would thus be: ‘Is this X?" or ‘X? Recently, a woman called our house, which iS STON here in @ ss or immediacy in the the sequence would be: how are you?” ‘Thuis, when the ealler does not know the name of the other one, it leads to the misunderstandings which we not t name himself or be how to eall the qualification of the norms of interaction cheract ) Name yourself () Ask for your friend. Ie seems that step (2) is only opti States, and step (3) com- On several occasions, friends visiting my house have received T answered the telephone, the co ‘can T speak to Joan, please?” niin times na PHONE CALL BEGINNINGS:IN’FRANCE AND THD UNITED STATES Inall cases, I was well acqiainted ting me. Yet coming from a so that the caller name himself and, sn acquaintance and the telephone was answered by her husband whoa I al knew. I named and excused mys és hhad no direct answer but I heard: ‘Jane, it’s for youl? This example correspon to the caller’s behavior in the example just above. That caller and an answerer I was treated as if I did not exist hecause, in the frst ca 1 vias not the person to whom the caller wished to speak, and, in the second ex was not addressing the person with whom I wished to speak. In both esses ‘was shocked because, as already mentioned, ifthe answerer knows the person w {sat the other end of the line, they must according to French customs exchan ‘few words together, even when both know the caller has not reached th ded addressee of the ted, there is ample 4 strong rule in operation hes ler must leave his name. The si which T collected the following data was that I was living in a rented hou while the owners were abroad for a year. None of these calls was an emeigens and there was no expectation on the part of the callers that I would be able pass long their message within a reasonable time, Nevertheless, callers invari their names when I told them that the person whom they were could not be reached. These circumstances exclude purely practical on of the behavior. ‘The pattern of identification is exemplified in t ig examples: As ‘Hel » Mrs KP he won't be here before the end of. Mrs X from... I wi jood afternoon! May I speak to Mr or Mrs A: ‘No, they won't be hereDANIELE GODARD | Is there any way I can reach Mr K at this moment?” A: Well, he isin London, and won't be back before the end of July.” ‘not invalidate our contention that the answerer is not viewed 28 a full participant in the interaction; agai conduit. T tation, inthe United States, I found that there was a difference between the answer I got to uest for information about behavior in that situation and the behavior I witnessed myself. When questioned, an American informant would say that it was difficult to ask who was calling in a home tion because the caller would then feel that he was being filtered on the basis of y 8, T observed that this ver poss (2) We have another example of the non-coincidence between what peo think they do and what they actualy do, a now classical finding in soc inguistics umperz’s summary of @) The analysis is incomplete because all the relevant features of the have not been ask who was asked for, wl \b who oF during mealtimes, Otherwise the caller will have to compensate for his disturbing behavior, that i, first, he must have a good reason for ealling, and, second, he Possible, that is to say, 28 soon as he is sure that he has got the right namber, since one has no reason to introdace oneself toa total stranger; he w himself, In inbing the answerer __- between the participant forth the more to the less formal intimacy), one has the fo in turn, isa funetion of the so that one expects a correl of course, of nore the step in case of my forms (2) Je suis desolé de vous déranger. @) Excusez-moi de vous déranger. G) Je ne vous dérange pas?, Je vous dérange peut-étre? (4) Je ne te dérange pas? Je te dérange?, Tu n’es pas occupé? How is the caller's ignorance of the identity and occupation of the answerer dealt with in the United States? (1) The fact that a telephone call may be disturbing is not ignored since there are times when it is understood that calls are not appropriate, (2) However, this potential disturbance docs not seem the United Si weigh as heavily in es, because the spee sequence receives itself a different o the service (immediate installation, relati inference which one may draw from be attached to the act of telep! indeed obligatory rarely n as a lack of interest. When calls are mad he rights, and, in general, he PHONE CALL BEGINNINGS IN FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES followed by an answer had the characteristics of a summons, which he define functionally as an ‘attention-getting device’, His demonstrat ‘wo steps: first, he shows that the ring fo y type of summons~answer sequence; then, he raises the question of the function of the summons-answer sequence itself, and affirms its efficacy as a conver ional opening device. ‘The summons-answer sequence is seen as a unit for two reasons: (2) it presents characteristics as a whole with respect to the following behavio f the parti it eannot constitute insures at th ne the obligati summoner to talk again ar answerer t listen further; itis, as a sequence, non-repeatable. structure is such that there is a ‘conditional relevance’ of th answer on the summons, i.c. given the first element the second is expected, s: that if there is no answer the caller will normally infer that nobody is present and if the answerer lifts the eceiver he speaks firs. So far, there cannot be any Uifference between the tele ing is certainly the first clement of a sequence which presents the same characteristics as the ‘ones Schegloff has uncovered, ‘There is another aspect of the summons as a speech act, however, which Schegloff has not emphasized: he defines the summons as an attention-getting device of which other examples are terms of address, courtesy phrases like ‘pardon me’, physical devices such as a tap on the shoulder, waves of a hand ete. or e expected: it means in other terms that a summons has an authoritative character. his feature of summonses is present in all instances but interacts with other aspects of the relationship between the participants (in terms of distribution of power, in ‘The specificity of a telephone call is that the answer has to be given features of the relationship between the participants are not known, which makes the authoritative character of the ring appear more clearly: the telephone call takes precedence over any activity one is performing at the call, a the following observations, which are valid in France as well asin the United States, will show: (2) Ifthe answerer is not the specific addressee, (a) unless there are specific in- exer will fetch the return the call, (2) If the answerer is the addressee and is dealing at the time of the call in face-to-face interaction with people who have the same right as the caller, the akes precedence over the person who is present (e.g. in stores, in doctors’ ices). This fact is partic store to buy something or asked for an appoint «doctor or a professor has taken more trouble to get in touch with the other than a caller: the fact that the caller takes precedence eannot be explained 215 ONE CALL BEGINNINGS IN FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES something almost unheard of in France. ‘The fact that conversational openings ‘are so much more direct in the United States and that there is no rule which requires that the caller check the number, excuse and ‘engage into polite conversation with whoever answers, as well asthe precede of a telephone iddressee may be doing, are indica Blom, J.P. & Gumpers, J. (1972). Social mes atc struc in Nonway. In J. Gurapere & D, Hymes ms a rophy of communication, New York: Tl aM Gollinan, 1 (4971). Relations ix publi. New York: Ussie Books Gumpers, J. & Hynes, D. feds) tons in cocolngustics: The ethnaeraphy of Rinebare and Winston Ine In J. Gompere & D: Hiymes (eds), Directions in socolnguisticr: The ethnography of commoner ‘New York: Hole, Rinehart and Winston Ine 35-71 Tag i978), Foundations in socolngusis, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylean Labov, W. (1066). The Socal stratification of Enlish in New York Cy, Wastin Center for Applied Linguistcn, Scheglof,E. (2968). Sequencing (eds), Divections in sot linge Holt, Rinehary snd Winston i coversatonal openings. In J. Gumpers and D. Hymes et: The ethnography of communication, New Yorks 346-aBo,