Closing the conversation: Evidence from the academic advising session

Abstract

Abstract This article provides evidence that institutional conversations differ from natural conversations, even in their closings, an aspect of structure which they share. Utilizing 31 academic advising session interviews, we contrast felicitous closings by both native and highly proficient nonnative speakers with infelicitous closings by nonnatives. We show that the closings of these interviews cannot be reopened in the ways described by Schegloff and Sacks (1973). In fact, the data show that native speaker interviews are not reopened at all, but are only followed by separate and highly limited postsession conversations. Since nonnative speakers often do not know or follow the context‐specific constraints, their conversations provide evidence for the rules of such exchanges.