Dealing with communicative problems in English as a lingua franca

Abstract

These days English happens to be one of the most widely used languages of international communication. Speakers communicating in English as a lingua franca have a diverse linguistic command of it. However, these are not only the problems of linguistic (structural) origin that speakers need to deal with while interacting in English. In the article, I aim to discuss, first, how the differences in socio-cultural interaction styles can influence communication, second, what is interaction participants’ orientation to the problems originating in those differing styles and, finally, how such problems are negotiated in communication. Ethnomethodological conversation analysis is used to analyze illustrative excerpt of interaction in English.