Lingua franca speaker behavior

Meierkord (1998) noted that studies on lingua franca all stress the cooperative nature of lingua franca communication. The question is whether this really is cooperation or a particular type of collaboration. Conversations in our database point to the fact that ELF speakers primarily have their communicative goals rather than cooperation in mind. They want to get their message through with all possible communicative means at their disposal, and they want to make sure that their meaning is understood. But in order to do so they do not necessarily look for common ground or mutual knowledge. Rather, they focus on linguistic means and certain discourse strategies as the following examples demonstrate:

German: – So you own a house.

Urdu: – Yes, I have a house. I bought it… that’s mine. Nice

house.

German: – OK, OK, this is what I am saying. The house is

yours. You own it.

Pakistanese: – You said you live with your son. So your wife is not

here.

Chinese: – Yes, I am alone. I am with my son.

Columbian: – Will your wife come to visit?

Chinese: – Yes, she came yesterday.

Pakistani: – Did she come from China?

Chinese: – Yes, she arrived from Nanjing.

As the examples show ELF speakers usually try to achieve their communicative goals with discourse means such as repetitions, paraphrasing, giving more information than needed, and using words and expressions whose most salient meaning coincides with their literal meaning rather than seeking what common ground and knowledge they share with their interlocutors. This is true at least for the first phase of production and/or comprehension. The first major was the dominating, self-centered behavior of ELF speakers. Subjects engaged in parallel monologues and exhibited no fine-tuning of moves to fit their interlocutors’ needs. They ignored questions, and there was a lack of prefacing or mitigating of dissimilative action. New topics were usually started without preparation or initiation.

The analysis of our database showed similar speaker-hearer performance.

However, this egocentric communicative behavior goes together with a special kind of camaraderie and consensus orientation. My findings point to the fact that lingua franca speakers do not ignore their interlocutors’ needs, rather they know that they have very little in common both culturally and socio-linguistically, and act accordingly. As claimed above, the main thing they can rely on in getting their message through is the linguistic code, the linguistic system of English which is, to a great extent, given the same way to each party. All ELF speakers have studied the system, structure and vocabulary of the English language.

ELF data show that non-native speakers use the linguistic code itself as a common ground rather than the socio-cultural background knowledge that differs significantly with each participant. This strong reliance on the linguistic code results in the priority of literal meaning over non-literal, figurative language and formulaic language. This is why ELF language use generally lacks idiomaticity, which is so important in native-native communication. For lingua franca interlocutors it is almost always the literal meaning that is the most salient meaning both in production and comprehension.

This is where a significant difference between native speaker and lingua franca communication should be noted. While for native speakers either (or both) literal and non-literal meaning can be the most salient meaning, non-native speakers usually consider literal meaning as the most salient meaning of an expression in most situations. If that does not work out they make the necessary modifications by negotiating meaning.