Abstract
The paper, based on the analysis of Italian answering-machine outgoing messages (OGMs), aims at showing the specific illocutive and locutive strategies developed by private callees in order to induce callers to leave a message, against the background of the constraints of the situational setting (off-line interaction, caller's anonymity, machine-mediated communication). The analysis sheds light on constitutive and optional elements of private OGMS, as partially grounded on telephone calls conventions, and explores how these are selected by callees in relationship with the mediated character of communication on the one hand, and with the representation and construction of an interpersonal relationship between participants on the other.