This study is to construct and describe opening sequences of English and Vietnamese conversations. The data were 120 conversational opening sections (60 English and 60 Vietnamese) gathered from movies. | Tạp chí Khoa học Ngôn ngữ và Văn hóa ISSN 2525-2674 Tập 1, Số 2, 2017 CONVERSATIONAL OPENING SEQUENCES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE CONVERSATIONS AT OFFICES Hoang Tra My* Mientrung University of Civil Engineering (MUCE) Received: 17/10/2016; Revised: 23/12/2016; Accepted: 21/08/2017 Abstract: This study is to construct and describe opening sequences of English and Vietnamese conversations. The data were 120 conversational opening sections (60 English and 60 Vietnamese) gathered from movies. The method of qualitative content analysis is applied to code the data manually to find out opening sequences. Then, the method of conversation analysis is resorted to in describing these sequences. The findings display that English and Vietnamese opening sections follow three sequences: summons-answer, greeting, and phatic communication. Generally, the summons-answer and phatic communication sequences are exploited fairly equally by both Vietnamese and English speakers whilst the greeting sequence is much more preferred by Vietnamese ones. However, in details, the structures of and the content said in each sequence are extremely different between the two languages. These differences reveal that conversational opening is mainly to increase the work efficiency by English subjects but both to increase the work efficiency and to rapport by Vietnamese ones. Keywords: content analysis, conversation analysis, conversational opening, conversational opening section, opening sequences 1. Introduction Conversational opening is the first part of a conversation. It occurs when speakers want to raise a topic for discussion or it is a process of initiating a topic of concern (Schegloff, 1968). Historically, research in conversational opening has attracted the attention of a considerable number of researchers worldwide, including Schegloff (1968) who is regarded as a pioneer and groundbreaker in this area. With the method of Conversation Analysis, Schegloff examined 500 telephone calls to .
