A study examined the validity of the distinction between interactional language, used to express social relations and personal attitudes, and transactional language, which conveys factual or prepositional information and is message oriented, within and across languages and cultures. Data were drawn from natural telephone conversations of three types: Chinese native speakers (n=6 females) conversing in China; Chinese native speakers (n=6 females) conversing in Chinese in the United States; and native English speakers (n=6 females) conversing in English in the United States. Only outgoing calls made from the participants' homes, intended for other females, were used. The corpus included 267 calls collected over six months. Transactional, interactional, and mixed transactional/interactional language was analyzed in each call, and both common and culture-specific characteristics of the language in the three call types are identified and discussed. Shared features of the two cultures are found in phatic inquiries, pre-closing strategies, initiation of closing, and formality of style. Cultural differences include self-identification sequence and interactional patterns in closing. (MSE)