The functional components of telephone conversation opening phase in Jordanian Arabic

Abstract

Abstract Our study purports to examine the rhetorical structure of informal telephone conversation opening phase in Jordanian Arabic and the lexico-grammatical and stylistic encodings of these pragmatic options. To this end, a corpus of 100 telephone conversation recordings was collected from Jordanian Arabic. The recordings were based on the participants’ personal cell phones with their families and friends. Our data analysis drew on House (1982) and Sun’s (2004) models of interactional moves to find out the component options used to articulate this phase. The results revealed that although the group of participants use a set of functional components similar to those identified in other cultures, there are additional functional component options like ‘ostensible invitation’ and ‘God-wishes’ that are only used by Jordanians. Besides, they utilize various lexico-grammatical devices and stylistic options to articulate these components. These choices can be attributed to the socio-cultural background of the Jordanian Arabic native speakers.