Closing

Encyclopedia of Terminology for CA and IL: Closing
Author(s):	Isabella Buck (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany) (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4222-0426)
To cite:	Buck, Isabella. (2024). Closing. In Alexandra Gubina, Elliott M. Hoey & Chase Wesley Raymond (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Terminology for Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics. International Society for Conversation Analysis (ISCA). DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/E32Z9

Closing most commonly refers to the structured ending of a conversation, i.e. the collaborative work of participants to bring a conversation to an end. In order to appropriately close a conversation, participants must “coordinate the suspension of the transition relevance of possible utterance completion” (Schegloff & Sacks 1973: 295) so that they’re not held accountable for ceasing to talk, hanging up the phone or walking away. However, the activity of closing does not only apply to entire conversations. CA research also deals with practices by which conversationalists close sequences, activities or single topics.

During a conversation, members are continuously concerned with producing further turns after each new place of transition relevance. To suspend the conditional relevancy of further topic-bound turn-constructional units and, thereby, methodically close down the ongoing conversation, participants can employ adjacency pairs that are specially fitted for handling the “close order problem” (Schegloff & Sacks 1973: 297). This is exemplified by the following extract:

(1) (Button 1987: 102)

01  Guy:    I‘ll be down there, oh en you’ll – you’ll be 
02          aroun’ then when I [(come in)
03  Emma:	                     [Yeah.
04  Guy:    Okay.
05  Emma:   Okay dear,
06  Guy:    Buh bye,
07  Emma:   Bye bye,
08          . . . . end call . . . .

A smooth and unproblematic closing like the one depicted here is called an archetype closing (Button 1987: 102). Schematically, the transcript above and, thus, the archetype closing can be rendered as follows:

Line 1: topic closure
Line 2: acknowledgement

Pre-closing
Line 3: first pair part of a possible pre-closing
Line 4: second pair part of a possible pre-closing 

Closing sequence
Line 5: first pair part of a terminal greeting  
Line 6: second pair part of a terminal greeting 
Line 7: both participants hang up or walk away -> disengagement

To create the opportunity to launch a possible pre-closing, conversationalists have to bring the previously discussed topic to an end, for example by summarizing the main points (cf. line 1; Heritage & Watson 1979). Afterwards, one participant can use a possible pre-closing element such as “okay”, “thank you”, “well” and the like (cf. line 3), thereby occupying the floor “without using it to produce either a topically coherent utterance or the initiation of a new topic” (Schegloff & Sacks 1973: 304). Mondada & Sorjonen (2021) discuss “okay” – as it is used in the previous example – as a means not only for the closing of entire conversations but also for sequence and activity closings in many different languages. As a few instances of paraverbal parameters, both rhythm and tempo have been analyzed as prosodic contextualization cues (Gumperz 1992) for the termination of conversations (Auer 1990). Furthermore, as far as multimodal settings are concerned, Broth & Mondada (2013) describe that starting to walk away is a resource that makes closings recognizable.

However, the use of terminal exchanges like in the transcript above does not necessarily lead to the final closing sequence, since closings cannot be achieved unilaterally. Rather, the participants have to mutually orient to and thereby legitimize the termination of a conversation. Only if co-conversationalists acknowledge the possible pre-closing can participants continue collaborating on the closing section. Otherwise, a conversation can also be re-opened to topic talk. In this respect, Button (1987, 1990) describes how, after the first attempt to close down an interaction, the co-conversationalist introduces other material in addition to closing components. He describes such turns that occur between the initiation of a closing sequence and the terminal exchange of greetings as ‘movements out of closings’. Altogether, he examines seven different sequence types in closings, including arrangements, topic initial elicitors and appreciations.

Closings have been investigated for various settings. Heath (1986) and West (2006), for example, study the organization of closings in primary care visits and revealed systematic patterns for who initiates a closing and how it is initiated. LeBaron and Jones (2002) describe the multimodal resources participants employ to organize the closing of a chance reunion in a beauty salon. They show that the function of behavior in closing sequences is best understood by analyzing them within their embedded social and physical situations. Moreover, Clayman & Heritage (2002) attend to closing phases of news interviews and pointed out that a great deal of the closing process has to be understood “as a solution to the problem of how to bring an unscripted interaction to a close in accordance with a prearranged schedule” (Clayman & Heritage 2002: 73f.).

Additional Related Entries:

• Opening
• Participation
• Participation framework
• Sequence

Cited References:

Auer, P. (1990). Rhythm in Telephone Closings. Human Studies, 13(4), 361–392.

Broth, M. & Mondada, L. (2013). Walking away: The embodied achievement of activity closings in mobile interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 47, 41–58.

Button, G. (1987). Moving out of Closings. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and Social Organisation (pp. 101–151). Multilingual Matters.

Button, G. (1990). On varieties of closings. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Interaction Competence (pp. 93–147). University Press of America.

Clayman, S. E. & Heritage, J. (2002). Openings and closings. In S. E. Clayman & J. Heritage (Eds.), The News Interview. Journalists and Public Figures on the Air (pp. 57–94). Cambridge University Press.

Gumperz, J. J. (1992a). Contextualization and understanding. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon (pp. 229–252). Cambridge University Press.

Heath, C. (1986). Body Movement and Speech in Medical Interaction. Cambridge University Press.

Heritage, J. & Watson, R. D. (1979). Formulations as Conversational Objects. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday Language. Studies in Ethnomethodology (pp. 123–162).

LeBaron, C. & Jones, S. (2002). Closing up closings: showing the relevance of the social and material surround to the completion of an interaction. Journal of Communication, 53(3), 542–565.

Mondada, L. & Sorjonen, M.-L. (2021). OKAY in closings and transitions. In E. Betz, A. Deppermann, L. Mondada & M.-L. Sorjonen (Eds.), OKAY across languages: Towards a comparative approach to its use in talk-in-interaction (pp. 94–127). John Benjamins.

Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up Closings. Semiotica, 8(4), 289–327.

West, C. (2006). Coordinating closings in primary care visits: producing continuity of care. In J. Heritage & D. W. Maynard (Eds.), Communication in Medical Care: Interaction between Primary Care Physicians and Patients (pp. 379–415). Cambridge University Press.

Additional References: