“Do you want to continue?” – Coordinating the closing of conversations and managing face concerns

Abstract

This study investigates how participants manage the decision to end or continue their conversation when directly asked about their preferences. The dataset consists of 19 conversations where the researcher explicitly asked if the two participants wanted to continue their conversation, thus causing some potential interactional trouble for the participants. The participants’ decision to continue was intertwined with the local sequential context in which the question occurred. The results show how participants follow the norms prioritizing face-saving even in a quasi-natural setting and illuminate how micro-level interaction order can outweigh individual preferences in ending conversations.