2011/03/01 by YUMI MATSUMOTO, Yumi Matsumoto · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Multilingual Education and Policy #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies #Linguistic Variation and Morphology
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01172.x
This is a qualitative study of nonnative English speakers who speak English as a lingua franca (ELF) in their graduate student dormitory in the United States, a community of practice (Wegner, 2004) comprised almost entirely of second language users. Using a sequential analysis (Koshik, 2002; Markee, 2000; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, Koshik, Jacoby, & Olsher, 2002), the study investigates how these ELF speakers successfully manage their intercultural communication through accommodation strategies (e.g., Jenkins, 2000, 2006) used to address differences in pronunciation and familiarity with a range of ELF speech styles. Drawing on my own experience as a member of this community, I investigate how speakers display equality and legitimacy as English language users in the ELF community in face‐to‐face interactions when they negotiate understanding in spite of their different accents. ELF speakers exhibit a wide variety of pronunciations as a result of first language cross‐linguistic influence, and those phonological differences may hamper intercultural communication, more than any other linguistic feature. For this reason, I have chosen to focus on phonological issues for this study. I argue that sequential analysis of the interactions among speakers of English as a lingua franca may provide useful examples of successful communication among these groups. Data from such analysis should be included in English language teaching as a model of successful interaction strategies directed toward students who will face these situations. The analysis of this ELF data will also be useful as a model for the study of other languages that are often used as lingua francas.