Telephone Conversation

by Robert Hopper

"... Hopper’s aim is to begin to reveal to us the complex world of telephone conversation, and that is what he succeeds marvellously in doing." ―Discourse & Society "A guided tour through the interior world of phone interactions, Telephone Conversation is a playful, often poetic excursion into the dance-like qualities of language as and in technology." ―Wayne A. Beach "Telephone Conversation is an engagingly written book, peppered with snippets of telephone chat that enable readers to see the extraordinariness of ordinary talk." ―Quarterly Journal of Speech "... the first comprehensive work on telephone interaction... Written in a lucid, often poetic manner, it keeps the reader’s interest to the end." ―Anthropological Linguistics Voice mail, answering machines, car phones, call-waiting, call-forwarding―it seems the telephone at times controls our lives. Here Robert Hopper eavesdrops on the sounds of telephone conversation, the most important yet least examined province of contemporary communication and an important aspect of contemporary life.

264 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1992