Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

2 Jagdish Kaur
domains ranging from politics to education and from trade to entertainment,
among others, is unfortunately often overlooked.
This paper reports on some of the findings of a study that is motivated by an
interest in the successes of non-native speakers in communicating in ELF rather
than in the failures. The aim of the study is to explicate how non-native
participants in dialogue accomplish shared understanding in ELF as they seek to
achieve their communicative goals. Given that ELF users of diverse linguacultural
backgrounds are likely to use equally diverse varieties of English at
varying proficiency levels, the issue of mutual understanding is a matter of
concern. Fine-grained analyses of naturally occurring ELF interactions however
reveal that the participants of the study employ various interactional procedures to
negotiate and jointly construct understanding. The “practice of repeating”
(Schegloff 1997) by both speaker and recipient is one such procedure. While
repetition has various functions in dialogue (cf. Tannen 1987, Norrick 1987), the
focus of this paper is on the use of repetition to facilitate and enhance
understanding when it is challenged or threatened. Both the pre-emptive and
remedial functions of repetition in this context will be investigated.
2. Method
2.1 Participants
The data used in this study was collected between October and December 2005 as
part of the researcher’s Ph.D study. An academic institute set up by a local
university in Kuala Lumpur to offer Master programmes to international students
had been earmarked as a suitable site for data collection as it allowed the
researcher access to a group of non-native users of English who used the language
on a daily basis for both academic and interpersonal purposes. A total of 22
participants recorded their interactions in ELF on numerous occasions, in various
situations during the duration of the data collection phase. The table below
provides details of the participants with regard to their ethnicity, mother tongue
and position at the institute.
Table 1: Participants according to ethnicity, mother tongue and position
Ethnicity Mother Tongue Position No.
1. Burmese Burmese Student 1
2. Cambodian Cambodian Student 2
3. Filipino-Chinese Chinese Lecturer 1
4. Indonesian Indonesian Student 1
5. Italian German Research Student 1
6. Korean Korean Student 2