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7 - (Mis/Non)Understanding in Intercultural Interactions

from Part II - Key Issues in Intercultural Pragmatics Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2022

By
Jagdish Kaur
Edited by
Istvan Kecskes
Istvan Kecskes
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Albany
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Summary

Intercultural interactions in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) are increasingly becoming the norm as speakers of diverse first languages and cultures find themselves needing to communicate in both personal and professional domains for any number of reasons. The chapter provides an overview of ELF pragmatics research that is focused on how multilingual, multicultural speakers in real-world settings achieve mutual understanding through the effective use of ELF. Specifically, the chapter examines the pragmatic strategies that speakers deploy to preempt misunderstanding as they conjointly negotiate and construct shared meaning. Practices that enhance explicitness and clarity, such as repetition, rephrasing, topic negotiation, and the insertion of a parenthetical remark that provides additional information, reveal how speakers who anticipate difficulty in understanding, possibly arising from linguistic variability and cultural difference, increase efforts to minimize mis/non-understanding. Using data extracts from relevant ELF studies, the chapter illustrates how speakers in these intercultural interactions accommodate their interlocutors and the context of communication to arrive at shared understanding.

Keywords

ELF interactionmisunderstandingintercultural communication strategieslingua francarepetitionrephrasingclarity
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics , pp. 164 - 186
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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