Abstract
This article gives a canonical sequential analysis of openings and closings based on a corpus of department meetings. The first section of the article shows how opening a meeting constitutes a shift in turn-taking system. The second section identifies five techniques used in opening meetings. The third section identifies six techniques used in closing meetings. The final section of the article concludes how openings and closings mirror each other, with similar “stepping stones” to be “traveled”; and discusses the potential of this being a canonical and cross-cultural model. The study has implications for the community of conversation analysts, for business communication studies, and for practitioners.
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