Conversation opening as one of the three most important phases of conversation is constructed interactively by participants. A lot of researches focus on it in various contexts, but there is no study of it in the setting of Chinese university GFL class. In this respect, this paper focuses on the analysis of conversation opening based on authentic recorded GFL classroom conversations from a Chinese university in order to approach the research desideratum described. Within the theoretical and methodological framework of the concept of communicative genres, this paper is dedicated to a detailed investigation of the conversation opening on the internal structure, situational realisation level and external structure in order to reconstruct the interactional processes between the teachers and learners in the opening sequences as well as to elaborate the structural features. On the basis of the data analysis, it can be stated that the interactants jointly negotiate and open the classroom conversations in a pattern-like form. Structurally, the communicative pattern of the conversation opening is essentially composed of the acoustic part, the greeting sequences and the transition to the middle of the conversation. In addition, the features of the conversation opening are still reflected at the three levels of analysis by the use of lexical means and the adjacency pairs as well as by the characteristics of the constellation of participants in the conversation. However, deviations from the sedimentations of the pattern (such as expanded or compressed conversation opening) are found in the data, as communicative patterns are not static and can always be updated in situ.
This study is aimed at clarifying the notions of ‘situation’ and ‘communicative situation’, drawing upon Alfred Schütz’s theories of pragmatic and communicative aspects of the lifeworld. The concepts of ‘situation’ and ‘communicative situation’ are approached in relation to the phenomena of human action and human communication, respectively. Following Schütz, it is argued that the overall nature of ‘situation’ arises from its ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ aspects, i.e. the spatial, temporal and socio-cultural conditions experienced by an individual and shaped by his or her unique ‘biographical situation’. This perspective is temporarily suspended in communication: private systems of relevances are superseded by intersubjective constructions or interpretations of ‘what-we-are-doing-in-and-through-communication’. The ‘communicative situation’ is conceived of as a dynamic phenomenon and a true achievement of social actors, who permanently define and redefine, interpret and reinterpret both its overall character and its relevant elements. This theoretical framework, enriched by the concept of semiotic multimodality, is exemplified by an analysis of conversational data drawn from ethnographic research into television news production. At the end of the paper, a distinction between the typifications made by ordinary social actors and by social scientists in characterizing communicative situations is discussed.
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