Repetition for mutual understanding: The case of ELF communication

• Published in: Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics Vol. 16; no. 1; pp. 1 - 28
• Main Author: 이강희
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 한국영어학회 01.03.2016
• Subjects: 영어와문학
• ISSN: 1598-1398; 2586-7474
• DOI: 10.15738/kjell.16.1.201603.1

Kang-Hee Lee. 2016. Repetition for mutual understanding: The case of ELF communication. Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics. 16-1, 1-28. As English is used as a medium of wider communication in international contexts, the new emerging mode of communication, which is English as a lingua franca (ELF), has been pervasively increasing. The fluidity and hybridity of ELF interactions have demanded a more cooperative and adaptive manner of communication. Through various communicative strategies, ELF speakers attempt to enhance clarity and explicitness and negotiate and co-construct shared meaning. The aim of the paper is to explore how ELF speakers exploit their existing pragmatic resources and facilitate mutual understanding to promote clarity and explicitness, focusing on the communicative strategy of repetition. The finding shows that although repetition is often regarded as an indication of dysfluency and lack of proficiency of non-native speakers, repetition enables speakers to pre-empt potential understanding problems by improving clarity and explicitness. ELF speakers adeptly employ the strategy of repetition to overcome vagueness and uncertainty in interaction, often with rephrasing or reformulation rather than adopting a simple verbatim repetition. Although repetition and rephrasing are by no means communicative strategies that are exclusively used in ELF interaction, it is more observable that these strategies are frequently used as a means of accommodation for explicitness and mutual understanding in ELF situations. KCI Citation Count: 2