“Who’s there?”

Abstract

A significant part of the work in business settings, especially in multinational projects, is done through talking over the phone in conference calls. The differences in the setting in comparison with face-to-face meetings create a new dynamic of talk and turn taking because of the lack of body language. This article analyzes a number of the differences between these two types of meetings, using a corpus of (International) Business English, in which the multinational participants discuss an information technology research project. English is used as a lingua franca among participants from different companies and different nationalities (e.g., Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish). Features studied include self-identification, the number of turns, interruptions, overlaps, back-channeling behavior, pauses, side comments, small talk, breaks, distribution of talk, meeting structure, and length of conferences. The findings show that because of the lack of body language signals, there are differences in most of these features, for example, fewer interruptions, overlaps, and pauses in concalls than in face-to-face meetings. Small talk is restricted to the end or beginning of calls if it happens at all, side comments do not happen among the participants but may occur with people outside the conference. Back channels occur more frequently in conference calls, as they constitute the only means of communicating attention. The latter highlights the concerns for politeness to secure good working relationships in business relations.