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A B S T R A C T Conversation analytical (CA) methodology was used to specify the new opening practices in Finnish mobile call openings, which differ systematically from Finnish landline call openings. Since the responses to a mobile call orient to the summons identifying the caller, answers have changed and diversified. A known caller is greeted. The self-identification opening that was canonical in Finnish landline calls is mainly used for answering unknown callers, while channel-opener openings involve orientation to ongoing mutual business between the speakers. Some of these changes reflect real-time coordination of the social action that the mobility of mobile phones enables. In all, the adoption of new ways of answering a call shows that people orient themselves to affordances that new technologies allow them. Mobile phone communication opens a salient new area both for the analysis of talk-ininteraction itself and also for understanding communicative behaviour in the era of ubiquitous information technology. K E Y W O R D S : affordances, call opening, conversation analysis, mobile phone calls, recipient-design, telephone calls In this article, we introduce a new pattern for initiating conversation on a mobile phone. Mobile phone talk is an ideal object for conversation analytical (CA) methodology as all other dimensions of communication except voice are naturally excluded. Indeed, much CA work has been based on (landline) telephone calls. The findings on the openings of landline telephone

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The study of institutional interaction explicates the verbal activities and interactional arrangements through which institutional practices are realized. I demonstrate that to analyse these practices sensitively, the analyst must possess sufficient knowledge of the context. In institutional settings an agent may orient to expert knowledge or organizational procedures taken for granted for the practice in question, but not known to outsiders. Understanding the context-sensitive meaning of the activities may depend on access to these particulars. Methodologically, the procedural relevancy of context is a crucial criterion against arbitrary invocation of a countless number of extrinsic, potential aspects of context. I will show that the analyst's ability to use procedural consequentiality as an analytical criterion depends on the analyst's sufficient knowledge of the context in question. By characterizing the ways `generic' interactional patterns are used in institutional settings, we can also address larger sociological questions about institutional identities and the exercise of institutional power.