Abstract
Research into communication strategies and ELF is a thriving area of investigation, that has so far looked into cooperative strategies leading to successful communication and mutual understanding, or how miscommunication is resolved, above all in academic as well as business ELF (BELF) contexts, and, more recently, international students’ communities.
ELF interactions have been shown to be characterized by the speakers’ mutual cooperation in the co-construction of meaning. Repetition, paraphrasing, as well as self- and other-repair and pre-emptive moves have emerged as important strategies, together with the exploitation of multilingual resources and repertoires. Communication strategies, rather than a mere compensation device, are thus to be considered an essential element in the process of effective communication, in that they are strategically used by speakers as part of “communicative capability.”
This paper explores communication strategies emerging from data in the Leisure subsection of the VOICE corpus. Through a qualitative Conversation Analysis approach, the analysis focuses particularly on interactional strategies employed to ensure mutual understanding and effective communication. Data have been first analysed through keywords signalling request for clarification and/or repetition, and then qualitatively focusing on how individual multilingual resources are naturally deployed and shared in the strategic co-construction of meaning and comprehension, particularly as to concepts and ideas that are lingua-culturally connoted.
Abstract
L’area di ricerca relativa alle strategie di comunicazione nell’ELF è molto attiva, ed ha sinora preso in considerazione strategie cooperative che portano alla comunicazione efficace e alla reciproca comprensione, oppure alla risoluzione di problemi comunicativi, specialmente in ambito accademico, in contesti commerciali (BELF), e, più recentemente, in comunità internazionali di studenti.
La ricerca ha mostrato come le interazioni ELF siano caratterizzate dalla reciproca cooperazione dei parlanti nella costruzione del significato. Strategie rilevanti che sono emerse sono ripetizioni, parafrasi, come pure mosse preventive e di auto o etero-riparazione, insieme all’utilizzo di risorse e repertori multilingue. Le strategie di comunicazione non rappresentano quindi uno strumento semplicemente compensativo, ma vanno considerate come un elemento essenziale nel processo di comunicazione efficace in quanto sono impiegate dai parlanti in modo strategico come parte della “communicative capability”.
Questo articolo esplora le strategie di comunicazione che emergono dai dati della sezione Leisure del corpus VOICE. Tramite un approccio qualitativo di Analisi Conversazionale, lo studio si focalizza principalmente sulle strategie interazionali impiegate al fine di assicurare la comprensione reciproca e la comunicazione efficace. I dati sono stati prima analizzati tramite parole-chiave relative a richieste di chiarimento e/o ripetizione, e successivamente in modo qualitativo analizzando come le risorse multilingue individuali vengono impiegate e condivise in modo naturale in processi strategici di co-costruzione del significato e di comprensione, particolarmente in relazione a concetti che sono connotati dal punto di vista linguistico-culturale.
About the author
Paola Vettorel is Assistant Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures – University of Verona. Her main research interests include ELF and its implications in ELT; ELF and digital media. Among her publications: English as a Lingua Franca in wider networking. Blogging practices. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter (2014); (ed.) New Frontiers in Teaching and Learning English. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars (2015); ELF and Communication Strategies: Are they taken into account in ELT materials? RELC Journal (2018); BELF, Communication strategies and ELT business materials, Iperstoria (2019).
Appendix: VOICE transcriptions conventions
Note: not all markup elements in the corpus are reported in the paper.
| <L1dut> | Tag signaling that a word is produced in the speaker’s L1. The language is specified. |
| <LNspa> | Tag signaling that a word is produced in an LN. The language is specified. |
| ? | rising intonation |
| e:r | lengthened sound |
| (.) | brief pause |
| (1) (2) | longer pause, timed in seconds |
| @ | laughter |
| <1>words</1> | overlapping speech |
| <un>xxx</un> | unintelligible speech |
| {words} | translation of non-English speech and contextual events |
| (word) | word fragments, words or phrases which cannot be reliably identified |
| CAPS | emphasis of a syllable or a word |
| = | continuation/completion of speech by another speaker without pauses |
| . | follows words pronounced with a falling intonation |
| <soft> words </soft> | soft voice |
| <slow> words </slow> | slow mode |
| <fast> words </fast> | fast voice |
| <imitating> words </imitating> | imitating mode |
| te- | The hyphen indicates that a word is not produced in its entirety. |
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