Bøger i Developments in English as a Lingua Franca serien

Reflexive language - the capacity of language to speak about itself - is unique to human languages; yet little is known of its use in actual dialogue. Fundamental features of language are manifest in dialogic speech and in lingua francas. Both are taken on board in this book, which radically widens our conception of reflexivity in discourse. Reflexivity, or metadiscourse, is central to successful communication. It is also vital in understanding academic argumentation, essential to academic self-understanding, and at the same time it has wide applications.

This volume aims to fill two gaps in pragmatic research into English as a lingua franca (ELF): the investigation of conflict talk and the incorporation of a multimodal perspective into the analysis of ELF interactions. To this end, multimodal conversation analysis is used, combined with the perspective of politeness theory. The author shows how interactants use multimodal resources to manage competitive overlaps, disagreement, and third-party complaints in casual ELF conversations among friends. In doing so, the notion of cooperativeness is re-examined, and the appropriateness of an intercultural approach to analyzing multimodal resources in ELF interactions is demonstrated.

In this first book-length treatment of MELF, the authors assert that MELF represents an important contribution to our understanding of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), in that existing ELF research has been limited to relatively low stakes communicative situations, such as interactions in business, academia, internet blogging or casual conversations. Medical contexts, in contrast, often represent situations calling for exceptional communicative precision and urgency. Providing both evidence from their own research and analysis from (the limited number of) existing studies, the authors offer a counterpoint to the optimism regarding communicative success prevalent in ELF. The book proposes a theoretical perspective on how the various features of healthcare communication serve as important variables in shaping interaction among speakers of ELF, further enlarging our understanding of this emerging sub-field.