G’day or Guten Tag?: A cross-cultural study of Australian and German telephone openings

Taking an interactional sociolinguistic approach, this quantitative study analyses factors (age, gender, purpose of call and rules of mirrored form) that modify German and Australian telephone openings. Additionally, it identifies differences in how members of these two cultures answer the phone.The Australian results show that callees are more likely to self-identify in a business than in a private context. Most business callers mirror self-identification and men are more likely to self-identify than women. Callee salutations are more likely to occur in private calls than in business calls. In business calls callees aged <51 are more likely to include a salutation than 51+ callees.In the German results mirroring of self-identification with self-identification and salutation with a greeting is likely in both private and business calls. Age also plays a role in the inclusion of a salutation, with 36+-year-old callees less likely to include a salutation than younger German callees. Use of Sie is more likely in business than in private calls.Comparative results show that overall Germans tend to self-identify more frequently than Australians and Australian callees are more likely to include a salutation than Germans. Mirroring of self-identification occurs in both Australian and German calls.