Conversation analysis of opening sequences of telephone calls to bookstores in English and Italian

In this article we attempt to apply the principles and tools of Conversation Analysis (CA) to domain-specific discourse. Considering that the CA approach is largely unused in LSP research, we will begin by discussing the relevance and applicability of CA to domain-specific analysis. We then illustrate experimental cross-cultural data from 2 corpora of telephone call openings to a variety of English and Italian workplaces, and 2 corpora of calls to English and Italian bookstores, as an example of how CA may produce concrete evidence which may help us to define what is domain-specific about certain kinds of telephone talk.