“Because We Are Peers, We Actually Understand”: Third‐Party Participant Assistance in English as a Lingua Franca Classroom Interactions

Abstract

This study qualitatively investigates miscommunication moments during which a teacher of English who speaks a first language other than English and students with various linguacultures collaboratively resolve communicative problems with the assistance of other students in the classroom. These other students, referred to as third-party participants because they are not originally part of the miscommunication phenomena, help resolve miscommunication by sharing their interpretations of what their peers say. Combining sequential analysis with ethnographic information, this study examines how students as third-party participants take initiative in resolving miscommunication by representing their peers' viewpoints and how teachers elicit assistance from these third-party participants. The analysis reveals that third-party participants' repair efforts can be effective in multilingual classrooms in various ways, including helping to save face among interlocutors involved in miscommunication, negotiating meaning, creating active class participation patterns, and engendering the class norm that dealing with miscommunication and achieving mutual understanding are everyone's responsibility in multilingual classrooms. The analysis also demonstrates the important role of nonverbal elements (e.g., gaze, smile, and gesture) for enhancing explicitness in English as a lingua franca communication. This study suggests recommendations for second language teacher education regarding the need for second language teachers to develop a mindset for intercultural, multilingual classrooms.

Communicative Effectiveness in BELF (English as a Business Lingua Franca) Meetings: ‘Explaining’ as a Pragmatic Strategy

“…This multifunctional strategy, which Lichtkoppler (2007) referred to as “a vital constituent of ELF talk” (p. 59), may be used to signal nonunderstanding or to request confirmation or clarification; it may also be used to enhance understanding by increasing redundancy. When faced with recipient nonunderstanding, speakers may opt to rephrase prior talk (e.g., Hynninen, 2011; Matsumoto, 2018; Mauranen, 2007; Pietikäinen, 2018; Pitzl, 2005) or replace nonunderstood lexical items with what may be perceived as more easily understood ones (Björkman, 2014; Kaur, 2011b) as a way of increasing explicitness and communicative clarity.…”

Exploring Epistemological Expansions of English as a Lingua Franca

“…For instance, Pitzl () examined “non‐linguistic means for clarifying matters” (p. 92) in one case of fragile talk in her interactional data in business contexts. But few researchers have conducted in‐depth analyses of nonlinguistic interactional elements in a way that treats them as integral to ELF and ELF communicative strategies (Kimura & Canagarajah, ; Matsumoto, ); instead, most research has treated nonverbal elements as supplemental to speech.…”

“…In response to the exclusion or underestimation of nonverbal semiotic resources, Block argued that communicative practice should be analyzed considering a range of embodied and multimodal resources that are simultaneously aligned with linguistic elements—or what Bezemer and Kress () have referred to as interlocutors’ “multimodal ensemble” (p. 166). Although a few recent empirical ELF studies (e.g., Konakahara, , ; Matsumoto, , , , , ) have integrated multiple semiotic resources into their analyses, a multimodal orientation in ELF research remains the exception rather than the norm. This is unfortunate because a multimodal orientation has the potential to enrich ELF research and deepen ELF interactional analysis.…”

“…In order to demonstrate different aspects of ELF interactions, recent research (e.g., Bjørge, ; Björkman, ; Guido, , ; Jenks, , ; Kappa, ; Knapp, ; Konakahara, , ; Matsumoto, ; Wolfartsberger, ) has begun shedding light on uncooperative ELF interactions, such as disagreements, impoliteness (e.g., face‐threatening acts; see Brown & Levinson, ), and other interactional tensions in a range of ELF interactional contexts. Furthermore, as several scholars (e.g., Konakahara, , ; Matsumoto, , ) have argued, it is essential to investigate the interrelationship between verbal and nonverbal behaviors in such situations—namely, the multimodal practice of disagreeing in ELF interactions. Nonverbal behaviors might express sensitive messages related to disagreement more explicitly than speech for the sake of saving face.…”

“…To illustrate this point, I draw on an example from writing classrooms at a U.S. university (Matsumoto, ) where a major goal is for students from a variety of linguacultures to develop their English language and their English writing skills. In this context—what would typically be labeled an ESL classroom—the students and their instructor were both English language users and learners.…”