ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology of Language
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1605183
This article is part of the Research TopicDiscourse, Conversation and Argumentation: Theoretical Perspectives and Innovative Empirical Studies, Volume IVView all 6 articles
Topic shifts in Female Friends' Socialization
Provisionally accepted
- 1Taif University, Ta'if, Saudi Arabia
- 2King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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This study is a real-life repertoire of female interactions in topic shifting. It identifies how female friends, a Filipina beautician and her Saudi client, move between topics when they socialize via English as a lingua franca (ELF) to disclose their feelings and opinions, an overlooked area in both ELF and topic shifting research. Conversations totaling 360 minutes were analyzed using the conversation analysis approach for scrutinizing the sequences of topic shifts. The findings categorize topic shifting into topic transition and topic change, and each type is classified into marked and disjunctive shifts. The study identifies exclamatory expressions as a new cohesive strategy for expanding the initiated topics during topic changes and transitions, some of which are accompanied by smiling voices. Unlike available research findings, long pauses are not always indicators of topic endings and can be an expansion strategy for the current topic. The findings confirm that interruptions are acceptable in this informal setting and do not hinder the flow of conversations. These findings expand the limited literature on the nature and sequences of topic shifting among same-sex friends in ELF contexts and demonstrate the participants' efforts to understanding each other, no matter which mother tongue they speak.
Keywords: conversation analysis, English as a lingua franca, Female interaction, Friendship, Topic shifts
Received: 02 Apr 2025; Accepted: 12 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 AL-NOFAIE and Alsuhaibani. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yasser Alsuhaibani, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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