Telephone Conversation

"Any student of language-in-use whatever their discipline will find this book instructive, illuminating, and entertaining...It is also fun for anyone who hates or loves the phone and wondered why." - Don H. Zimmerman. We are the people of the phone. We measure out our lives in coffee-spoon-sized speech events. Both at home and at work, we conform to the telephone's rhythms as other people respond to rhythms of nature, family, or institutions. Telephones are escaping their wires to enter our cars, airplanes, and patios. The call-waiting beep promotes the routing interruption of one phone call by another. Voice mail and the answering machine add monologues to the mix. These telephone machines snare us in their rhythms and routines. We can take control of this situation only by understanding the facts of telephone speaking. In this book, Robert Hopper eavesdrops on the sounds of telephone conversation, the most important yet least examined province of contemporary communication. The telephone is surely the primary electronic medium for interpersonal communication, but we rarely ask how telephones affect our interaction with one another.
"Telephone Conversation" describes the interactional organization of talking on the telephone. It provides a detailed examination of this technologically mediated form of social activity. It is not simply a book on telephone communication, it is a rigorous sociology of an important aspect of contemporary life.