Answering machine talk – under academic scrutiny

• What is ‘Answering Machine Talk’?

“Answering machine talk represents a form of mediated conversation in which messages are recorded to facilitate communication between participants.“

• What of the resources?

“The talk which occurs in such messages draws upon the pool of available resources for telephone-based communication…”

• What of the constraints?

“[telephone-based communication] … modifies these resources as the result of constraints imposed by the communicative environment.”

The quotes come from the paper : Discourse routines in answering machine communication in Australia (Discourse Processes, Volume 17, Issue 2, 1994) by , now Professor in Applied Linguistics, at the School of Communication, International Studies and Languages, of the University of South Australia.

We shouldn’t ignore an earlier paper : Answering machine talk (Discourse Processes, Volume 14, Issue 2, 1991, Ruby Gold) which had laid the important groundwork for the subject, explaining that:

“Answering machine talk appears to be a unique form of discourse employing elements of ‘performative’ spoken language, written language, and special uses of prosodic markers to create ‘dialogue’ with an absent interlocutor.”