Talking over telephone is an art.

Good telephoning techniques can help you

win friends and create goodwill. There is an old proverb “you do not get a second
chance to make a first impression,” which is fully applicable in telephone
conversation. Therefore, we can define telephone conversation as an exchange of
information between two persons over telephone. This is not a face-to-face
conversation rather a person-to-person conversation where nobody sees other but
hears each other and interacts instantly. In this analysis will be discovered how
important discourse in spoken conversations is.

One of the most common structures to be defined through conversation

analysis is the adjacency pair, which is a call and response type of
sequential utterances spoken by two different people. Here are some examples that
we can find in the given conversation above:

Question/Answer

Ms. Anderson: ….May I speak to Mr. Franks, please?

Mr. Smith: I’m afraid Mr. Franks is out of the office at the moment…

Asking about ability/Temporizing

Mr. Smith:…How about Thursday morning?

Ms. Anderson: Unfortunately, I’m seeing someone else on Thursday morning.

Leave taking/Leave taking response

Ms. Anderson: ..Goodbye.

Mr. Smith: Goodbye.

 Next, a discourse marker is a particle (such as oh, like, you know, well) that
is used to direct or redirect the flow of conversation without adding any
significant paraphrasable meaning to the discourse. Also known as DM, discourse
particle, discourse connective, pragmatic marker, or pragmatic particle.
To give an instance,
Mr. Smith: Well, he usually..
Mr. Smith: I see…

In conversation analysis, turn-taking is a term for the manner in which

orderly conversation normally takes place. A basic understanding can come right
from the term itself: It's the notion that people in a conversation take turns in
speaking. We can face with this structure in our conversation too. For example:
Mr. Smith: Hello, Diamonds Glore, this is Peter speaking. How may I be of help
yo you today?
Ms. Anderson: Yes, this is Ms. Janice Anderson calling. May I speak to Mr.
Franks, please
Mr. Smith: I’m afraid Mr. Franks is out of the office at the moment. Would you
like me to take a message?
Ms. Anderson: Uhm…actually, this call is rather urgent.

Besides these initial structures of spoken conversation, we can see filled

pauses used (such as uhm, er, oh). To give an example:
Mr. Smith: I’m afraid Mr. Franks is out of the office at the moment. Would you
like me to take a message?
Ms. Anderson: Uhm…actually, this call is rather urgent.

In conclusion, this discourse analysis of spoken conversation reflected the

results of how our social and everyday life is highly associated with how we
produce and receive the language. During our normal and everyday conversations,
we must pay attention to the context and also the relationship between the
participants; because this nature of context can drive and also be the structure of
the conversation anatomy. This shows that discourse analysis studies have a huge
association with everyday life and also our social interactions but understanding
the language
beyond sentence level, it can provide help in understanding the functions of the
conversations and the main characteristic of it.