Abstract In this study, using descriptive sketches as a prompt, 95 female Japanese university students engaged in Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) to produce projected opening sequences for mobile phone conversations with family members and close friends. The DCT data suggest that the on-screen mutual recognition features afforded by mobile phones prior to the receiver answering reduces the relevance of conventional greetings and identification. As a result, callers tend to introduce the topic immediately following the summons–answer sequence, while answerers often use leading inquiries (e.g., nani? “what?” or dooshita no? “what’s up?”) to prompt topic initiation. The DCT projections indicate that mutual awareness shifts the interactional work of opening a call away from formal identification procedures toward displays of relational familiarity.
Freiermuth et al. (Tue,) studied this question.